Author: Reporter

Gaza has long been a powder keg, and it exploded after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on October 7 and began killing and abducting people. More than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians — were killed in the Hamas attack, and the Israeli army says about 200 hostages were taken into Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. Nearly half Gaza’s population — the vast majority of whom are already refugees — have been displaced. Israel has imposed a complete siege on Gaza, preventing the entrance of food, water...

President Joe Biden on October 25 spoke out against retaliatory attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. He also said he was redoubling his commitment to working on a two-state solution to end the decades-long Israel-Palestinian conflict. Biden said the attacks by “extremist settlers” amounted to “pouring gasoline” on the already burning fires in the Middle East since the Hamas attack. “It has to stop. They have to be held accountable. It has to stop now,” Biden said at the start of a news conference...

The new leader of one of the chambers of Congress that will certify the winner of next year’s presidential election helped spearhead the attempt to overturn the last one, raising alarms that Republicans could try to subvert the will of the voters if they remain in power despite safeguards enacted after the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Mike Johnson, the Louisiana congressman who was elected speaker of the House of Representatives on October 25 after a three-week standoff among Republicans, took the lead in filing a brief in a lawsuit that sought to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020...

A low-key lawmaker in Congress for less than a decade, new House Speaker Mike Johnson is not recognizable to most Americans. But the social conservative and devoted ally of former President Donald Trump has been a quiet force within the Republican conference he now unexpectedly leads. Most importantly, he was able to get all of their 220 votes to become speaker on the House floor. That’s something none of his more well-known colleagues were able to do, as Republicans struggled for more than three weeks to pick a replacement for ousted Kevin McCarthy. Colleagues say the deeply religious Louisiana...

Muslim and Jewish civil rights groups say they have seen large increases in reports of harassment, bias, and sometimes physical assaults against members of their communities since the October 7 Hamas attacks. The Anti-Defamation League and the Center on American-Islamic Relations saw increases in reported instances, many involving violence or threats against protesters at rallies in support of Israel or in support of Palestinians over the last two weeks as war broke out between Israel and Hamas. Other attacks and harassment reported by the groups were directed at random Muslim or Jewish people in public. A spokesperson for the...