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Senator Mark Kelly – whose wife, Gabrielle Giffords, narrowly survived an attempted assassination while she was in Congress in 2011 – says he is worried about “increased threats” to his family’s safety after Donald Trump accused him and other Democratic lawmakers of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH”.

“This kind of language is dangerous, and it’s wrong,” Kelly said on Friday on MS NOW’s Morning Joe, with political violence one of the top topics in the US’s public discourse. He continued: “I’m not going to get into my specific security arrangements, but it would be irresponsible for me not to consider that [Trump’s] words result in increased threats to myself, even to my staff, to my family.

“It would be a rather irresponsible thing for us not to consider this seriously.”

The Arizona senator’s remarks came after he appeared in a video on Tuesday alongside five other federal Democratic lawmakers who have previously served in the military or in intelligence roles – and who all told active US service members that they should refuse illegal orders.

“Our laws are clear,” the senators and US House members in question say in the video. “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our constitution.”

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A group of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse have warned they have received death threats and are worried about an escalation as they wait for the release of the files related to the late paedophile financier.

In a statement titled “What we’re bracing for”, the women said they had received threats of harm and asked police to investigate and protect them.

Several women who were abused by Epstein have ramped up their campaigning efforts in recent weeks to push for the release of the justice department’s files related the late sex offender.

Some have spoken publicly about their ordeals, putting themselves at the forefront of a scandal that has dominated the national conversation in the US as a rare Republican rebellion saw Donald Trump drop his opposition to a move to release the files and sign it into law. Since the signing, the department of justice has 30 days to release the files.

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Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan J. Pollard downplayed the controversy around his private meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, telling NBC News the visit was “personal” and “wasn’t done surreptitiously.”

The “main point” of the meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in July, Pollard said, was to “thank” the ambassador for “his efforts on my behalf during my incarceration.”

Pollard, a former American intelligence analyst, spent 30 years in prison on espionage charges after being found to have passed critical security documents to Israeli intelligence in the 1980s. Israel made Pollard a citizen during his lengthy prison term, and he moved there in 2020, five years after his release on probation.

During Pollard’s detention, Huckabee was among several pro-Israeli politicians who advocated for his release, arguing that the sentence was too severe for someone who had been spying for an ally.

Pollard described his meeting as more of a social call and insisted the two didn’t discuss politics or Gaza. But the meeting comes amid a growing list of episodes in which the ambassador, a fierce champion of Israel, has appeared to deviate from official White House policy as the Trump administration deepens its involvement in Middle East diplomacy and peacekeeping.

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Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's Oval Office meeting turned into a surprising love fest between the two New Yorkers.

On Nov. 21, Trump, the 79-year-old billionaire Republican president warmly and repeatedly patted Mamdani's hand. Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, stood next to the seated president. Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Trump's native borough of Queens, made several references to how well Trump did in the 2024 presidential election in the city.

The warm feelings marked a stark contrast after months of fighting in the press and social media. Trump once called for the arrest of Mamdani if he didn't help with the administration's sweeping immigration crackdown, and also said he wouldn’t give federal money to New York over Mamdani’s leftist politics. Mamdani has called Trump a fascist and, in his victory speech, said he's ready to go toe-to-toe with the president, including over immigration. (Trump has repeatedly restricted entry from from majority-Muslim countries, while Mamdani will be New York City's first Muslim mayor.)

In their first meeting, Trump now said he’d readily live in Mamdani’s New York, while Mamdani said he looks forward to working with Trump on improving affordability in their shared hometown.

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U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an early ardent supporter of President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again agenda, is planning to resign from office in January.

"I'm going back to the people I love, to live life to the fullest as I always have, and look forward to a new path ahead," she wrote on the social platform X. "I will be resigning from office with my last day being Jan. 5, 2025."

Greene’s move to resign from the House of Representatives comes amid an ongoing feud with Republican Party leadership over the release of files related to disgraced financier and convicted sehttps://tse1.mm.bing.net/th/id/OIP.7hNQdCy84cCVGjl9wATBnAHaEK?pid=Api&P=0&h=220x offender Jeffrey Epstein. Greene, who represents Georgia’s 14th Congressional district, notably broke ranks to support releasing the Epstein files ahead of fellow Republicans.

"I’ve always represented the common American man and woman as a member of the House of Representatives which is why I’ve always been despised in Washington DC and never fit in," Greene said in a statement posted on X, adding that she was disappointed in the pushback she faced in Congress and legislators failure to meaningfully improve the lives of her constituents.

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Women carry children as Israeli forces forcibly displace them from Nur Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank, with Israeli soldiers looking on, one with his weapon raised, on February 10, 2025. © 2025 Wahaj Bani Moufleh.

The Israeli government’s forced displacement of the populations of three West Bank refugee camps in January and February 2025 amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Geneva Conventions prohibit displacement of civilians from occupied territory except temporarily for imperative military reasons or the population’s security. Displaced civilians are entitled to protection, accommodation, and to return as soon as hostilities in the vicinity cease.

(Jerusalem) – The Israeli government’s forced displacement of the populations of three West Bank refugee camps in January and February 2025 amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 32,000 people reportedly removed have not been permitted to return to their homes, many of which Israel forces have deliberately demolished.

The 105-page report, “‘All My Dreams Have Been Erased’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank,” details “Operation Iron Wall,” an Israeli military operation across Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps that began on January 21, 2025, days after a temporary ceasefire was announced in Gaza. Israeli forces issued abrupt orders to civilians to leave their homes, including with loudspeakers mounted on drones. Witnesses said soldiers moved methodically through the camps, storming homes, ransacking properties, interrogating residents, and eventually forcing all families out.

Senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, should be investigated for the refugee camp operations and appropriately prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Governments should impose targeted sanctions and take other urgent action to press Israeli authorities to end their repressive policies.

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You suspected that Maga had not conquered the Washington national cathedral when Bill Kristol was spotted at a men’s urinal conversing with Chris Wallace. You knew it for sure when James Carville, Anthony Fauci and Rachel Maddow were seen sitting close to one another in the nave.

The funeral of the 46th US vice-president, Dick Cheney, who died earlier this month aged 84, was a throwback to a less raucous and rancorous time. Ex-presidents and vice-presidents, Democratic and Republican, made small talk, but Donald Trump, who spent Thursday crying treason and calling for Democrats to be put to death, and his deputy JD Vance were not invited.

More than a thousand guests saw eight military body bearers place Cheney’s flag-draped casket on a catafalque as gently as lowering a baby in a crib. Then two hours of plangent music, solemn processions and tearful eulogies beneath stained glass and a soaring vaulted ceiling amounted to a requiem for the Republican party.

Cheney used to be known as its Darth Vader and, fittingly, the neo-Gothic church’s exterior boasts a hand-carved grotesque of the Star Wars character. Vader terrorised the galaxy but saved his son and renounced the dark side of the Force on his deathbed. Cheney had imperial ambitions of his own but gained a measure of redemption by defending his daughter and democracy from Trump.

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The Trump administration on Thursday announced new oil and gas drilling off California’s and Florida’s coasts, setting the stage for a political showdown – including with Sunshine state Republicans who have largely opposed petroleum development in the Gulf of Mexico.

This announcement comes as the US petroleum industry, despite contending with low crude prices, has been pushing for an entree to additional offshore drilling areas. The industry’s move for increased access also marks an effort to increase jobs and US energy independence, according to the Associated Press.

The federal government has prohibited offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which extends from Florida shores to portions of Alabama, since 1995. The ban stemmed from worries about potential oil spills.

While California does have some offshore oil development, there have not been new leases in federal waters for nearly 30 years, the AP said.

A proposed schedule for petroleum leasing in federal waters includes up to 34 auctions from 2026 to 2031; these auctions include up to six sales off California’s coastline, 21 off of Alaska’s coastline, and two in the Gulf of Mexico’s eastern portion, Politico said. The sales in Alaska would reportedly include a region that has never had oil drilling.

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