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Let’s talk about language. Because in politics, language isn’t just what you say — it’s what people hear. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from decades of helping brands and campaigns get their words right, it’s this: the wrong message can kill even the best idea. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s America Party is a case study in how not to build trust through language.  

I’ve seen this movie before. I started my career on Ross Perot’s campaign, where we learned firsthand how the right words can electrify a movement — and how quickly the wrong ones can turn hope into skepticism. Perot’s success was based on his ability to connect with voters using language that was clear, relatable and believable. He spent a lot of time talking about a broken system, but he did so in a way that made people believe change was possible.  

Musk, on the other hand, is using the language of disruption without understanding the language of trust. And that’s why his America Party is likely to be just another blip in the long history of failed third-party efforts.  

The language of disruption vs. the language of trust  

Let’s break down Musk’s messaging. He says it’s ‘time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.’ He talks about ‘reducing government spending,’ dismantling regulatory bloat, and embracing AI-driven modernization. These are buzzwords, not beliefs. They’re designed to provoke, not persuade.  

Here’s the problem: Americans are already drowning in distrust. They don’t believe politicians. They don’t believe in institutions. And they certainly don’t believe that this billionaire with a Twitter habit is suddenly going to care about the people. Musk’s words are meant to sound populist, but they just sound AI-generated.  

Slogans can help build trust but trust cannot be built on slogans alone. It’s built on language that resonates, connects to people’s real concerns and is grounded in actions that create credibility. Perot was also a billionaire, but he understood how to speak the language of the average person and make it feel real.    

Musk, by contrast, is speaking at people, not to them.  

The pitfalls of start-up populism  

Musk’s messaging is heavy on tech jargon and light on empathy. AI-driven modernization might excite Silicon Valley, but it’s a scary prospect for many voters increasingly worried about their job, their healthcare or their kids’ future.    

Start-up language is sexy … if you’re a venture capitalist. But Musk doesn’t understand that most Americans don’t speak the language of technology.    

Perot was also a tech entrepreneur, but he left talk of mainframes out of his campaign. His version of reducing regulatory bloat was much simpler: ‘if you see a snake, just kill it — don’t appoint a committee on snakes.’  

I care for you. You’re fired  

We once had a client who wanted to test a campaign designed to show how much they cared about their customers. The slogan: ‘We care.’ As we expected, it bombed in testing. The company’s actions did not support the message. The same is true for Musk.  Musk says he wants a party that ‘actually cares about the people.’ But the language he uses doesn’t show care — it shows calculation. It’s the language of someone who wants to be seen as a disruptor, not someone who wants to build trust.  

Words like ‘disruption,’ ‘modernization,’ and ‘efficiency’ are the language of business (and often of layoffs), not the language of belonging. They don’t answer the fundamental question every voter is asking: ‘Do you understand me? Do you care about what I care about?’ If you can’t answer that in your messaging, you’ve already lost.  

The bottom line: Words matter more than ever  

It’s unclear if Musk is really serious about building something new or just tearing down something Trump. But if he wants to build a movement, he needs to do more than talk about what’s wrong.  That’s the easy part.   

Perot also said the system was broken. But he made the problem understandable and he made a solution seem achievable. He made the deficit real. He made government waste personal. He made it feel like we could all roll up our sleeves and fix it. Ultimately, he had his own issues, but at the peak of his campaign, 39% of the population said they planned to vote for him.

So much has changed since 1992, but building a third party in America remains one of the hardest jobs in politics. The only way to even start to make it work is to find language that creates hope, engenders optimism and illuminates a path to overcoming challenges that a significant plurality of Americans care about.    

Ironically, in the same poll that showed Perot leading the race, 65% of the public said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who ‘made a fortune doing business with the federal government.’ So maybe less has changed than we think.   

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Senate Republicans are gearing up to claw back billions of dollars in foreign aid and public broadcasting funding, but dissent is brewing among some who could eat into President Donald Trump’s cut request.

A cohort of Senate Republicans are publicly and privately growing squeamish over the White House’s $9.4 billion rescissions package, which would slash $8.3 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and over $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the government-backed funding arm for NPR and PBS.

The cuts stem from Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was lauded by most Republicans for its mission to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.

Still, concerns and calls for changes are being made, in particular to proposed slashes to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the public broadcasting fund.

Publicly, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, have all aired their concerns about the House-passed bill and are eyeing changes that could see the cuts reduced.

‘I don’t like it as it is currently drafted,’ Murkowski said. ‘I’m a strong supporter of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and our health programs are important.’

Collins has raised issues with slashes to PEPFAR, an issue brought forth during a hearing with White House officials last month, while Rounds is worried about funding being slashed to rural radio stations, particularly for Native American populations in his state and others ‘and their ability to get good information during times of stress.’

Senate Republican leadership already has plans for an amendment process on the bill, which will likely culminate in another marathon vote-a-rama amendment session — roughly two weeks after the grueling amendment process for Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that he intended to put the package on the Senate floor next week, likely ahead of the Friday deadline for lawmakers to advance the clawbacks.

If the bill is amended, it would have to be sent back to the House before heading to Trump’s desk.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital that he expected the vote-a-rama to begin Wednesday, and said the hope was that leadership would be able to address as many concerns among Republicans as possible before bringing the bill to the floor.

‘Whatever it takes, we’re having those conversations,’ he said. ‘The point is, once we get to the vote-a-rama, we want to have as much issues resolved so we know where we’re at on the floor without any surprises. And I think we can do that, maybe not, but I think we can. I think we got a good picture of where we’re at right now.’

Other lawmakers see the package in its current form as a no-brainer to pass.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said that if amendments were offered to keep spending that he agreed with, he could find himself supporting tweaks to the package. But he challenged his colleagues to reject a spending cut package that ultimately amounted to less than half a percent of the nation’s entire budget.

‘This is gut check time for our Republican colleagues,’ he said. ‘They either believe in reducing spending or they don’t. They either believe in spending porn or they don’t, and I’ve listened to my colleagues, especially in the last 100 plus days, talk about how great DOGE was. Well, now is the chance to show it.’ 

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President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama chatted about golf during a viral moment of bipartisanship during former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in January, just days before Trump’s return to the Oval Office, a new book detailing the unprecedented 2024 election cycle reported. 

Trump and Obama were seen smiling and quietly chatting with one another in the pews of the Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 9, 2025, in a moment that spread like wildfire on social media as Americans sounded off with speculation over what the pair of presidents who had long traded political barbs were talking about. 

‘2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,’ which was released Tuesday, said that Trump arrived in Washington for Carter’s funeral as a ‘conqueror’ following the November 2024 election and sat next to Obama for the funeral service. 

‘He’d attended Jimmy Carter’s funeral, walking into Washington not as a scourge but as a conqueror,’ the book reported of Trump. ‘He could ignore the speech on character by the outgoing president, and the cold shoulder from the vice president he’d defeated.’

‘Instead he sat next to Barack Obama and invited him to play golf, enticing him with descriptions of Trump’s courses around the world,’ the book continued of the pair’s conversation. ‘He was no longer an anomaly. He was being treated like an American president. He wanted to be remembered as a great one.’

Trump and Obama were seated near other high-profile former U.S. leaders, including former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Mike Pence, former President Bill Clinton, former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as then-President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Social media commenters at the time remarked that footage and video clips of the pair were unexpected, and others joked that Obama may have voted for Trump despite years of the pair trading political barbs. 

‘Trump and Obama sitting next to each other was not on the 2025 bingo card,’ one social media user posted to X in January. 

‘Did Obama vote for Trump too?!’ Clay Travis, founder of sports and politics commentary platform OutKick, joked at the time. 

‘We need lip readers to see what Trump said to make Obama laugh,’ another person posted to X in January. 

Trump was asked about the viral moment ahead of his inauguration, remarking that he ‘didn’t realize how friendly it looked.’

‘I said, ‘Boy, they look like two people that like each other.’ And we probably do,’ Trump added at the time. ‘We have a little different philosophies, right? But we probably do. I don’t know. We just got along. But I got along with just about everybody.’

Fox News Digital’s Kristine Parks contributed to this report. 

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Amazon is extending its annual Prime Day sales and offering new membership perks to Gen Z shoppers amid tariff-related price worries and possibly some consumer boredom with an event marking its 11th year.

For the first time, Seattle-based Amazon is holding the now-misnamed Prime Day over four days. The e-commerce giant’s promised blitz of summer deals for Prime members started at 3:01 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday and ends early Friday.

Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 and expanded it to two days in 2019. The company said this year’s longer version would have deals dropping as often as every 5 minutes during certain periods.

Prime members ages 18-24, who pay $7.49 per month instead of the $14.99 that older customers not eligible for discounted rates pay for free shipping and other benefits, will receive 5% cash back on their purchases for a limited time.

Amazon executives declined to comment on the potential impact of tariffs on Prime Day deals. The event is taking place two and a half months after an online news report sparked speculation that Amazon planned to display added tariff costs next to product prices on its website.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denounced the purported change as a “hostile and political act” before Amazon clarified the idea had been floated for its low-cost Haul storefront but never approved.

Amazon’s past success with using Prime Day to drive sales and attract new members spurred other major retail chains to schedule competing sales in July. Best Buy, Target and Walmart are repeating the practice this year.

Like Amazon, Walmart is adding two more days to its promotional period, which starts Tuesday and runs through July 13. The nation’s largest retailer is making its summer deals available in stores as well as online for the first time.

Here’s what to expect:

Amazon expanded Prime Day this year because shoppers “wanted more time to shop and save,” Amazon Prime Vice President Jamil Ghani recently told The Associated Press.

Analysts are unsure the extra days will translate into more purchases given that renewed inflation worries and potential price increases from tariffs may make consumers less willing to spend. Amazon doesn’t disclose Prime Day sales figures but said last year that the event achieved record global sales.

Adobe Digital Insights predicts that the sales event will drive $23.8 billion in overall online spending from July 8 to July 11, 28.4% more than the similar period last year. In 2024 and 2023, online sales increased 11% and 6.1% during the comparable four days of July.

Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, noted that Amazon’s move to stretch the sales event to four days is a big opportunity to “really amplify and accelerate the spending velocity.”

Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights and strategy at software company Salesforce, noted that July sales in general have lost some momentum in recent years. Amazon is not a Salesforce Commerce Cloud customer, so the business software company doesn’t have access to the online giant’s e-commerce sales and so is not privy to Prime Day figures.

“What we saw last year was that (shoppers) bought and then they were done, ” Schwartz said. “We know that the consumer is still really cautious. So it’s likely we could see a similar pattern where they come out early, they’re ready to buy and then they take a step back.”

Amazon executives reported in May that the company and many of its third-party sellers tried to beat big import tax bills by stocking up on foreign goods before President Donald Trump’s tariffs took effect. And because of that move, a fair number of third-party sellers hadn’t changed their pricing at that time, Amazon said.

Adobe Digital Insights’ Pandya expects discounts to remain on par with last year and for other U.S. retail companies to mark 10% to 24% off the manufacturers’ suggested retail price between Tuesday and Friday.

Salesforce’s Schwartz said she’s noticed retailers becoming more precise with their discounts, such as offering promotion codes that apply to selected products instead of their entire websites.

Amazon Prime and other July sales have historically helped jump-start back-to-school spending and encouraged advance planners to buy other seasonal merchandise earlier. Analysts said they expected U.S. consumers to make purchases this week out of fear that tariffs will make items more expensive later.

Brett Rose, CEO of United National Consumer Supplies, a wholesale distributor of overstocked goods like toys and beauty products, thinks shoppers will go for items like beauty essentials.

“They’re going to buy more everyday items,” he said.

As in past years, Amazon offered early deals leading up to Prime Day. For the big event, Amazon said it would have special discounts on Alexa-enabled products like Echo, Fire TV and Fire tablets.

Walmart said its July sale would include a 32-inch Samsung smart monitor priced at $199 instead of $299.99; and $50 off a 50-Inch Vizio Smart TV with a standard retail price of $298.00. Target said it was maintaining its 2024 prices on key back-to-school items, including a $5 backpack and a selection of 20 school supplies totaling less than $20.

Independent businesses that sell goods through Amazon account for more than 60% of the company’s retail sales. Some third-party sellers are expected to sit out Prime Day and not offer discounts to preserve their profit margins during the ongoing tariff uncertainty, analysts said.

Rose, of United National Consumer Supplies, said he spoke with third-party sellers who said they would rather take a sales hit this week than use up a lot of their pre-tariffs inventory now and risk seeing their profit margins suffer later.

However, some independent businesses that market their products on Amazon are looking to Prime Day to make a dent in the inventory they built up earlier in the year to avoid tariffs.

Home fragrance company Outdoor Fellow, which makes about 30% of its sales through Amazon’s marketplace, gets most of its candle lids, labels, jars, reed diffusers and other items from China, founder Patrick Jones said. Fearing high costs from tariffs, Jones stocked up at the beginning of the year, roughly doubling his inventory.

For Prime Day, he plans to offer bigger discounts, such as 32% off the price of a candle normally priced at $34, Jones said.

“All the product that we have on Amazon right now is still from the inventory that we got before the tariffs went into effect,” he said. “So we’re still able to offer the discount that we’re planning on doing.”

Jones said he was waiting to find out if the order he placed in June will incur large customs duties when the goods arrive from China in a few weeks.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Dylan Earl said he needed a “fresh start” in life. Unsatisfied by his prospects in his dreary English town, he decided to orchestrate a terrorist attack in London on behalf of a Russian mercenary group.

If he’d had things his way, the 20-year-old, small-time drug dealer would have moved to Russia to join its military. He’d heard that he could make good money fighting for what he saw as a just cause but feared his lack of spoken Russian would hold him back.

As it happened, Earl was able to join the war from the comfort of his home in England’s Midlands. All it took was a simple “Hi” to an anonymous Telegram account called “Privet Bot” that was inviting Europeans to join the “resistance” against Ukraine’s allies.

Just five days later, Earl arranged for a group of men to set fire to a warehouse in east London, choosing the target because of its links to Ukraine. The next month, Earl was arrested and charged with aggravated arson and an offense under the UK’s new National Security Act, to which he pleaded guilty. A second suspect, Jake Reeves, would plead guilty to aggravated arson and another National Security Act charge.

More than a year on, six others stood trial between May and July at London’s Old Bailey in relation to the attack.

On Tuesday, three were convicted by the jury of aggravated arson, while a fourth – the man who prosecutors said drove them to the site – was acquitted of that charge, which he denied.

Of the two men accused of failing to inform the police of a potential terror attack, one was acquitted on two counts and the other found guilty on one count and cleared of a second.

British prosecutors said the “Privet Bot” account was associated with Wagner, a Russian mercenary group that has fought in Ukraine and maintained Moscow’s footprint in Africa. The account is now defunct, but correspondence revealed in the trial showed the length to which operatives went to recruit foot soldiers in the “shadow war” against the West.

Russia has not relied on well-trained agents in this campaign, but a network of low-level criminals: some sympathetic to Moscow’s cause, others simply wanting cash. Whereas espionage and sabotage used to take years to recruit and plan for, these operations now require just a few hours on Telegram and some cash. Analysts say this tactic is a dark spin on the modern “gig” economy: Hostile states use a young workforce that is temporary and flexible. The work is on-demand, just-in-time, no-strings-attached.

This has created headaches for those tasked with keeping Europe safe. Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, warned last year that Russia is on a “mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets.” Richard Moore, then head of MI6, the foreign intelligence agency, put it more bluntly: “Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral.”

Some messages were deleted by the suspects, and investigators could not establish the identity of all the anonymous accounts involved. Where reproduced, some exchanges have been edited for clarity and length.

The crime

Earl made money dealing cocaine, with about £20,000 ($27,000) in cash and more in cryptocurrency to show for his exploits. But he wanted to make it big, and that meant getting out of England. One place in particular caught his eye.

It is not clear when Earl first became interested in Russia. On June 23, 2023, he joined a Telegram group called “AP Wagner Chat.” That same night, Yevgeny Prigozhin – then the head of Wagner – declared what would prove to be a short-lived mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin died in a plane crash two months later.

Earl joined both smaller pro-Russian Telegram chats and larger groups such as “Grey Zone,” which boasted some 500,000 subscribers, and, according to British investigators, functioned as Wagner’s de facto mouthpiece. At least eight times between 2023 and 2024, the trial jury heard, the account promoted “Privet Bot,” encouraging people to join operations across Europe.

The account soon gave Earl his first target: a warehouse in Leyton, east London. The site was run by a Ukrainian man, whose businesses included delivering Starlink internet terminals to Ukraine – crucial technology for Kyiv’s war effort.

In case Earl was not sure what kind of work he was getting into, “Privet Bot” told him to watch the series “The Americans” – a Cold War drama in which Russian spies, embedded in Washington, DC, conduct dangerous missions for the Soviet Union.

The new world

Earl may have imagined himself as a Cold War-era spy, but much of that world has faded.

Landsbergis said it was like drones replacing legacy equipment on the battlefields of Ukraine. “They’re just cheaper, and as efficient to (achieve) your stated goals.”

Russia’s shift to this tactic may initially have been out of necessity. With hundreds of its diplomats and agents expelled from European countries in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow had to get creative in how it conducted its operations.

But the tactic proved fruitful: Attacks like that in Leyton are cheap to set up, often deniable, and below the threshold likely to trigger a response under NATO’s Article 5.

The foot soldiers

Earl was committed to the mission; he just needed recruits. He found one in Reeves, a 23-year-old from Croydon, south London. It is not clear how Earl and Reeves first came into contact.

By day, Reeves worked as a cleaner at London’s Gatwick Airport. But in his ketamine-fueled nights, he became increasingly fascinated with his contact, Earl, whom he believed to be a Russian national, or at least a Russian speaker, with ties to the Kremlin.

While lacking Earl’s ideological fervor, Reeves could still help his cause by finding him willing foot soldiers. Prosecutors alleged he recruited Nii Mensah, now 23, another Croydon local who said he was “down for da cause,” as well as a large payday. Mensah appears to have recruited Jakeem Rose, also now 23, who lived near Mensah. Now they just needed a driver.

The night

Paul English took a laxative on the evening of March 20, 2024, to prepare for his bowel cancer screening the next morning. Planning for a quiet night, the 61-year-old would instead find himself driving “cross-legged” across London.

His neighbor’s son, Ugnius Asmena, needed a favor. He and his mates needed a lift around the city. Might English be able to help out?

As English recalled in his police interview, Asmena’s offer was simple: £500 for a night’s work – half up front, the rest later. All he had to do was take him to Croydon, pick up a couple of others, then head north across the River Thames. English agreed, because he was “skint,” or broke. Soon after, he was driving towards Leyton with Asmena in the front, and two others – Mensah and Rose – in the back, prosecutors said.

English said he did as he was told: He drove to Leyton, filling a jerry can with gasoline en route, and waited in the car with Asmena, while Mensah and Rose got out to “do their thing.” Minutes later, the pair jumped over the fence and back into the car, leaving English to make their getaway.

Just before midnight, the London Fire Brigade was called to the Cromwell Industrial Estate. The blaze caused more than £1 million in damage, the court heard.

Later that night, Mensah Googled “Leyton fire.”

“Bro lol,” he said to Earl on Telegram. “It’s on the news.”

When the jury returned Tuesday after several days of deliberation, Asmena, Rose and Mensah were each found guilty of aggravated arson, charges they had denied. English was acquitted of the same charge, which he had also denied.

The motive

Burning a warehouse will not on its own tip the balance of the war in Russia’s favor. But cumulatively, such attacks can unsettle Ukraine’s Western backers.

According to a database of alleged Russian “shadow” attacks compiled by the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think-tank, the number carried out quadrupled between 2022 and 2023, then nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024.

These alleged attacks have included blazes at a shopping mall in Poland and an Ikea store in Lithuania, cyberattacks on Czech railways, and the vandalism of Jewish buildings in France. Russia has denied allegations of any involvement.

Recalling his time in office in Lithuania, Landsbergis said responding to such attacks felt like playing whack-a-mole: “You catch one and Russia easily replaces them with several others hired through Telegram.”

Galeotti, the Russia analyst, said this alleged campaign has two main goals: To show Europe that there are costs to backing Ukraine, and – even if the operations fail – to cultivate a “general sense of chaos” in Europe.

“Everything that goes wrong, someone sees the ‘dread hand’ of Putin behind it,” Galeotti said. “If nothing else, it makes the Russians seem much more powerful that they really are.”

The fallout

Back in Croydon, Mensah wanted payment. But there was a holdup: Earl said he wouldn’t be paid until the Russians could judge the extent of the damage.

But “Privet Bot” wasn’t happy. It told Earl that he had jumped the gun. “We could have burned the warehouses much better and more if we had coordinated our actions,” it told him. As such, Earl wouldn’t receive the full fee.

Earl’s accomplices grew bitter – none more so than Mensah. Earl couldn’t stump up the cash for the first job, but felt he had something better: an even more lucrative contract for another arson attack – this time in London’s swish Mayfair district.

The targets were a restaurant and wine shop owned by Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a Russian businessman who had criticized the war in Ukraine. Earl went back to his UK contacts.

Reeves was happy to help, messages showed. He couldn’t be “broke forever,” he told his school friend, Dmitrijus Paulauskas, a Russian-speaking Lithuanian who moved to Britain when he was young. Although Paulauskas was not involved in planning the attack, in his messages he said he was “gassed” (excited) that Russia had “integrated into the UK underworld.”

Paulaskas was cleared by the Old Bailey jury on two counts of failing to disclose information about terrorist acts. Another defendant, Ashton Evans, 20, faced the same charges and was found guilty on one count and acquitted on the second.

The end game

While preparing for the attack in central London, Earl began to have grander ambitions. “Privet Bot” was encouraging: “You are wise and clever despite being young! We have a lot of glorious jobs ahead.”

But to recruit more people, Earl needed faster payments from Russia. Most of Earl’s messages to the bot were not recovered in the investigation, but one late-night, Google-Translated outburst had not been deleted, showing Earl pleading with his superiors to equip him to become “the best spy you have ever seen.”

The next day, Earl was arrested by British police. He pleaded guilty to aggravated arson and to an offense under the National Security Act. Reeves was arrested nine days later, and pleaded guilty to similar charges. Sentencing for Reeves and Earl – and the four others convicted – will take place at a later date, the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service said.

The next phase

Historically, Moscow has gone to great lengths to reward and retrieve its spies. But these “gig economy” recruits can’t expect the same.

To Russia, they are disposable; to their home countries, they are traitors. In her summing up, the judge put it starkly: “Our parents and grandparents would have had a simple term for what Dylan Earl and Jake Reeves did: treason.”

Although sabotage is an old crime, Europe has struggled to combat the new ways of committing it. Landsbergis said Europe’s disjointed response meant Russia could act with impunity. Now, Europe should “go after the archer, not the arrows,” he said.

The tempo of Russia’s alleged attacks has, however, slowed in recent months, Galeotti noted, perhaps due to the success of European authorities in thwarting them and bringing the perpetrators to justice. Or, he said, Moscow may be taking stock of what it learned from 18 months of “entrepreneurial” thinking.

“I would love to think that it was just something they tried and then abandoned. But I have a feeling we’re going to see them return to it, having internalized the lessons of the first ‘test’ operations,” he said.

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Israel’s defense minister said he told the military to advance plans for what he called a “humanitarian city” built on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza, according to reports in Israeli media.

In a briefing to reporters Monday, Israel Katz said the zone would initially house some 600,000 displaced Palestinians who have been forced to evacuate to the Al-Mawasi area along the coast of southern Gaza, multiple outlets who attended in the briefing reported. Palestinians who enter the zone will go through a screening to check that they are not members of Hamas.

They will not be allowed to leave, Katz said, according to Israeli media. Eventually, the defense minister said the entire population of Gaza – more than 2 million Palestinians – will be held in the zone. Katz then vowed that Israel would implement a plan, first floated by US President Donald Trump, to allow Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza to other countries.

Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have eagerly supported the emigration plan, despite no country publicly expressing any willingness to take part. At a White House dinner with Trump Monday, Netanyahu said, “We’re working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realize what they always said, that they want to give the Palestinians a better future, and I think we’re getting close to finding several countries.”

Katz said the zone for displaced Palestinians will be run by international bodies, not the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israeli media reported. The IDF would secure the zone from a distance, Katz said, in a plan that appears to imitate the aid distribution mechanism of the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). GHF operates the distribution sites, but the IDF surrounds them militarily.

It’s unclear what bodies would agree to participate in Katz’s plan, especially since most international organizations refuse to take part in GHF’s distribution sites due to serious concerns about impartiality and the safety of the Palestinian population. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed trying to approach the distribution sites since they began operating a month ago, according to health officials in Gaza and the United Nations.

A spokesman for Katz has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Asked about the plan at a press conference on Tuesday evening, IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said the military “will present several options to the political echelon.”

“Every option has its implications. We will act according to the directives of the political echelon,” Defrin added.

On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the UK opposes the new plan, just as it opposed GHF.

“I’m surprised at the statements that I’ve seen from Mr. Katz over the last 24 hours,” Lammy told a parliamentary committee. “They run contra to the proximity to a ceasefire that I thought we were heading towards.” Lammy added that he does not recognize the plan “as a serious context in which the people of Gaza can get the aid and support that they need at this time.”

In a statement Tuesday, Hamas said that Israel’s “persistent efforts to forcibly displace our people and impose ethnic cleansing have met with legendary resilience. Our people have stood firm in the face of killing, hunger, and bombardment, rejecting any future dictated from intelligence headquarters or political bargaining tables.”

“If they are done on a massive scale – whole communities – they can amount to war crimes,” Sfard said, dismissing the notion that any departure from Gaza could be considered voluntary.

“There is no consensual departure. There is no voluntary departure. People will flee from Gaza because Israel is mounting on them coercive measures that would make their life in Gaza impossible,” he said. “Under international law, you don’t have to load people on trucks at gunpoint in order to commit the crime of deportation.”

Qatar, which is now hosting proximity talks between Israel and Hamas, also rejected the deportation of Gaza’s population. “We have said very clearly we are against any forced relocation of Palestinians, or any relocation of Palestinians outside their land,” Majed Al Ansari, spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, said on Tuesday.

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Thirteen women and two men who survived captivity by Hamas said they experienced or witnessed sexual violence while held hostage in Gaza, according to a new report by a group of Israeli researchers known as the Dinah Project.

The Dinah Project experts — all women — gathered first-hand testimonies from the 15 returned hostages, one survivor of an attempted rape during the October 7, 2023 terror attacks, 17 eye and ear witnesses and 27 first responders who attended the scenes of the attacks.

These testimonies, coupled with forensic reports and photographs and videos from the attacks, led them to conclude that Hamas used sexual violence in a widespread, systematic and “tactical” way as a “weapon of war.”

The report, published on Tuesday, describes some of the survivors’ experiences.

One female hostage was beaten and sexually assaulted at gunpoint while in captivity, according to the report. She said she was chained by an iron ankle chain for three weeks and was repeatedly asked about the timing of her menstrual cycle. The report details that many of the 15 former hostages were threatened with rape in the form of forced marriage. Almost all of them reported verbal sexual harassment and some physical sexual harassment, including unwanted touching of private parts, it said.

Israel has in the past accused international organizations, including the UN and its agencies, of ignoring widespread sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas and other militant groups during the October 7 attacks.

The Dinah Project is an Israeli group established following the attacks to seek justice for victims of sexual violence. Made up of legal and gender experts, it is led by legal scholar Ruth Halperin-Kaddari and Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, who was the former chief military prosecutor of the Israel Defense Forces, and operates under the auspices of the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women at Bar-Ilan University.

The first official acknowledgment by the UN of the use of sexual violence during the attacks came some five months after October 7. Then, following a mission to Israel, the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten published a report concluding there were reasonable grounds to believe conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations, and that there was clear and convincing evidence that hostages in Gaza were subjected to sexual assaults.

Hamas has denied in the past that militants committed sexual violence, saying in a statement in December that these were “unfounded lies and allegations.”

The scale of the atrocities committed on the day of the attacks meant that first responders and investigators were overwhelmed. According to Jewish customs, bodies must be buried as soon as possible after death, so the focus of the first responders, many of whom were Orthodox Jewish volunteers, was on recovering remains rather than investigation.

In many instances, authorities did not have a chance to collect sufficient forensic evidence because they were attending scenes while the attacks were still ongoing. This meant that there were often no detailed records or photographs of the crime scenes in the immediate aftermath. Many of the victims of sexual violence were murdered by their attackers, which meant there were almost no first-hand testimonies, according to the report.

As some of the hostages were released and more time passed, allowing victims to process their experiences, researchers were able to collect more comprehensive first-hand evidence.

The Dinah Project researchers called for the sexual violence perpetrated during the attacks to be recognized as crimes against humanity, and said the perpetrators must be held accountable and receive international condemnation.

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Four men in Quebec, including two active members of the Canadian Armed Forces, were arrested and charged in what Canadian police say is a case of “ideologically motivated violent extremism.”

Three of the men, all in their mid-twenties, “were planning to create an anti-government militia” with the intent to “forcibly take possession of land in the Québec City area,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said in a statement on Tuesday.

“To achieve this, [the three men] took part in military-style training, as well as shooting, ambush, survival and navigation exercises,” the statement continues. “They also conducted a scouting operation. A variety of firearms, some prohibited, as well as high-capacity magazines and tactical equipment were allegedly used in these activities.”

The three were charged with facilitating terrorist activity. A fourth individual, a man in his early thirties, faces numerous firearms and explosives-related charges, police said.

In a January 2024 search near Quebec City, police say they found “16 explosive devices, 83 firearms and accessories, approximately 11,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibres, nearly 130 magazines, four pairs of night vision goggles and military equipment.”

They used the account to advertise military-style training in Quebec and Ontario, Gasse added.

Gasse did not elaborate on what specific ideology allegedly motivated the men, or the location of the land near Quebec City police claim they plotted to seize.

“It’s a good thing we caught them when we did,” Gasse said.

“The Canadian Armed Forces is taking these allegations very seriously and has fully participated in the investigation,” a department spokesperson said in an email.

Extremism within Canada’s armed forces is a longstanding issue, with a 2022 government report noting that the country’s military is “not immune to infiltration” by members of extremist groups.

“The suspected presence of members of extremist groups within [the Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces] is a pressing moral, social and operational issue,” the report concluded.

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For a fleeting moment, Ukraine’s conflict may have come full circle.

In the past 48 hours, US President Donald Trump has perhaps said his most forcefully direct words yet on arming Ukraine. And in the same period, the Kremlin have given their blankest indication to this White House that they are not interested in a realistic, negotiated settlement to the war.

Let us start with Trump’s comments on arming Ukraine, a reversion to a basic bedrock of US foreign policy for decades – opposing Russian aggression. “We’re going to send some more weapons,” the president said Monday of Ukraine. “We have to – they have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard.”

Behind him, his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nodded, despite this contradiction of the administration’s announcement days earlier of military shipments being stopped. What did Trump actually mean? He was short on detail.

A Pentagon spokesman later said that “at President Trump’s direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops.”

The about-face came days after Volodymyr Zelensky’s call with Trump on Friday, in which the Ukrainian leader said the two men spoke of joint weapons production, and air defense.

Zelensky urgently needs more Patriot interceptor missiles, which are the only way of taking down Russian ballistic missiles, and which only the US can authorize trade in. Trump spoke a day earlier with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has offered to buy Patriots from the US to supply to Ukraine. Enough is afoot to have led Zelensky to declare on Saturday his Trump call was “the best conversation we have had during this whole time, the most productive.”

Trump’s failure to provide details may be strategic, or a by-product of his occasional disdain for them. But while he may sound briefly a little more like his predecessor, Joe Biden, in terms of arming Ukraine, herein lies one stark difference. Biden publicly announced in agonizing detail every capability he gave Kyiv, perhaps hoping the transparency would avoid a sudden unexpected escalation with Moscow.

Instead, Biden ended up with an excruciating public debate with Kyiv about every new system, and arms shipment, during which every seemingly impossible demand – from HIMARS rockets, to tanks, to F-16 fighter jets, to strikes inside Russia by ATACMs – was eventually acceded to. The plain, open ladder of American escalation was laid bare to the Kremlin. Trump perhaps seeks to avoid that by saying less.

But after barely six months in office, Trump finds himself back where Biden always was, after trying almost everything else – cosying up to then criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin, falling out and making up with Zelensky, and spurning before eventually backing Europe. But the timing of his latest conversion, however enduring, reveals the desperation of this moment in the conflict.

The most recent, record Russian use of drones to attack Kyiv exposed possibly critical shortcomings in the capital’s air defenses. They would only have worsened without being resupplied, at a time when Ukraine has reported 160,000 Russian troops are massing to the north and east of the frontlines. The months ahead will be unpredictable and critical for Kyiv, even with renewed US military support.

Trump’s reversal may have stopped panic edging towards the risk of collapse. Why the shift?

Trump has always tried playing nice with Putin. Patient diplomacy, gentle words, and even last week’s brief pause in military aid – a Kremlin demand for a deal – still did nothing to change Putin’s position. The Kremlin does not want peace. And so Trump has learned slowly, rejecting the travails of recent history, that Russia is an opponent.

The end of the US’ longest war in Afghanistan, in which Biden withdrew fast in the wake of a hasty deal signed by Trump with the Taliban, led to scenes that haunted Trump’s predecessor and remain a potent stick with which Republicans beat Democrats. The repetition of a similar rout of American allies in Ukraine, or Eastern Europe, would be an indelible stain on the Republican or MAGA record. That is not imminent, or even that likely for now. But the seeds of it lie perhaps in any success for Putin’s planned aggression in the coming months.

Meanwhile, after six months of toying with the ideas of diplomacy, the Kremlin is back where it started too: willing to accept a peace only if it is surrender by another name. Its recent goal has been achieved: it has flattered the White House’s belief that it could talk out an end to the war, and taken enough time in talks that Russia’s summer offensive is now adequately manned, and the ground below these troops hard.

As recently as Monday, Putin’s top diplomat was repeating Russia’s most maximalist set of demands. Sergey Lavrov told a Hungarian newspaper that the “underlying causes” of the war must be eliminated, and gave a long, expansive list of impossibles, including the “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, lifting sanctions on Russia, rescinding all lawsuits against Russia, and returning the illegally seized Western-based assets.”

He added to that a requirement that Ukraine pledge to never join NATO, and also that occupied Ukrainian territory be recognized as Russian, including parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson that Moscow hasn’t even seized yet. It was a dizzying echo of Russia’s demands when it engaged in diplomacy for the first time in Istanbul, in the opening weeks of the war, as its soldiers shot civilians dead in the suburbs of Kyiv.

Putin’s rationale for rejecting real diplomacy is simple. He has sold this war (falsely) as an existential clash between Russia and its traditional values, and a liberal, expansionist and aggressive NATO. It is a binary moment in Russian history, his narrative insists. To entertain a short, albeit deceptive ceasefire on American terms would contradict the urgency of that false story, and risk undermining the skimpy morale of his troops, whose lives his commanders often fritter away in brutal, frontal assaults.

Putin can mollify Trump with talk of his desire for peace. But he cannot let slip the façade of the motherland being under assault. His retreat back to type has been shorter and easier than Trump’s. But still the Kremlin sees the enemy where it always has been, and where it always needs to be, for its war of choice to continue ending the lives of so many Russian men early.

And so, for a brief moment, Putin and Trump find themselves back where Russia and the US were in 2022. Moscow has tens of thousands more troops reportedly amassed to invade Ukraine yet again. Diplomacy seems pointless. Washington needs to help defend Ukraine or risk global embarrassment – the demise of its military hegemony. And Ukraine is still there, in the middle, watching both powers on either side vacillate and spin, yet holding on.

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Germany summoned the Chinese ambassador to the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday after saying China’s military had laser targeted a German aircraft taking part in an European Union operation in the Red Sea.

The flare up in tensions comes as concerns mount in the EU about Chinese influence on critical technologies and security infrastructure in Europe.

“Putting German personnel at risk and disrupting the operation is completely unacceptable,” said Germany’s Foreign Ministry on social media platform X.

There was no immediate response from China’s Foreign Ministry, and the Chinese Embassy in Berlin did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Germany’s Defense Ministry said the aircraft, taking part in the EU’s ASPIDES mission which protects international sea routes in the Red Sea, had been contributing a Multi-Sensor Platform, or “flying eye” for reconnaissance of the area since October.

A Chinese warship, which had been encountered several times in the area, had laser targeted the aircraft with no reason or prior communication during a routine mission flight, said a ministry spokesperson. The incident took place at the beginning of July.

“By using the laser, the warship put at risk the safety of personnel and material,” said the spokesperson, adding the mission flight was aborted as a precaution and the aircraft landed safely at a base in Djibouti.

The deployment of the MSP in ASPIDES has since been resumed, he said.

The MSP is operated by a civilian commercial service provider and German armed forces personnel are involved, said the ministry, adding the data collected significantly contributes to awareness for partners.

China has previously denied accusations of firing or pointing lasers at US planes. Incidents involving a European NATO member and China are more unusual.

In 2020, the US Pacific Fleet said a Chinese warship had fired a laser at a US naval patrol aircraft flying in airspace above international waters west of Guam. China said that did not accord with the facts.

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