THE WAR ROOM: The Israeli war cabinet was meeting this morning amidst political disagreement to vote on approval of a ceasefire agreement and prisoner exchange with Hamas militants in Gaza.

  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged a “yes,” but Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s hardline national security minister, threatened to resign and remove his party from the governing coalition if the cabinet approves because that would leave Hamas in power in Gaza.

  In the meantime, the war goes on in full fury.

  The cease fire would begin Monday and the hostage/prisoner exchanges would dribble out for 42 days. Israelis have demonstrated in what is known as Hostage Square in Tel Aviv to support the deal. 

ROCKET MAN: The latest launch of Elon Musk’s Starship from Texas ended in spectacular failure with the space capsule exploding after separation and raining back to Earth in a shower of flaming parts.

  It was the first flight of an upgraded spacecraft that was supposed to transit half the world. Musk had tweeted before the launch that, “Every Starship launch is one more step closer towards Mars.” NASA plans in the near term to send astronauts to the moon on a Starship launch.

  This was the seventh launch of the 400-foot rocket. The success of the mission was that the re-usable booster was recovered minutes after launch by a pair of mechanical arms described as giant chopsticks. 

EXECUTIVE ORDERS: President Biden has been busy issuing executive orders that challenge to the intentions of incoming President Donald Trump.

  Biden issued an order yesterday requiring software companies selling to the federal government to prove they have impenetrable security features to thwart the likes of Chinese intelligence agencies, Russian ransomware gangs, North Korean cryptocurrency thieves, and Iranian spies. It’s his administration’s last-ditch effort to secure federal computers against foreign surveillance.

  Trump has said in a social media post, “Fear not, these ‘orders’ will be terminated shortly.” 

  Biden has also issued 11^th hour orders on the environment, prison reform, immigration, and foreign relations. Yesterday the administration announced new protections for 1.3 million acres in the North Slope of Alaska to shield it from drilling in the ecologically sensitive Arctic environment. Trump has pledged to grant fossil fuel companies broad access to American land and federal waters to “drill baby drill.”

LOYALTY OATHS: Speaker Mike Johnson appointed Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas to be the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, replacing Michael Turner of Ohio, who held the job for three years as the top Republican on the panel and had been critical of Donald Trump.

  The move is seen as yet another alignment with Trump’s agenda. Johnson said Trump was not involved with the decision, but the president-elect has been micromanaging the House since long before he was re-elected.

RUDY TOOTIE: Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani reached an agreement yesterday with two Georgia election workers he falsely accused of vote fraud that will allow him to keep his New York and Palm Beach apartments as well as other valuables.

  The two women, a mother and daughter, had been awarded $148 million in damages by a jury, but they settled for an undisclosed amount. “The past four years have been a living nightmare,” the women said in a statement. “We have fought to clear our names, restore our reputations and prove that we did nothing wrong.” 

  Giuliani declared complete victory.

   The former mayor and Trump advisor never showed up in court in Manhattan yesterday, risking a third contempt charge and possibly jail. He was expected to be the lead witness in a trial to determine whether he would have to surrender his Palm Beach condo.

  An hour after the trial was set to begin, a video was posted on Giuliani’s Titter/X account of a lap dog named Vinny wearing a Trump tie and the message, “Vinny loves hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, but he’s ready to spend a lot more time in Washington, D.C. over the course of the next four years in support of his favorite President—Donald J. Trump!”

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT: Actor and director Justin Baldoni has counter-sued his “It Ends With Us” co-star Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds for $400 million, claiming they are attempting to destroy his career with Lively’s own lawsuit that charges Baldoni with sexual harassment during the movie shoot and waging a PR campaign to ruin Lively’s wholesome image.

  Baldoni’s suit  claims that Lively, her publicist, and Reynolds smeared Baldoni and took control of his film, which he directed.

  Baldoni already sued The NY Times for publishing a story based in part on leaked memos from inside his camp about their own PR campaign against Lively. It was headlined “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”

THE OBIT PAGE: David Lynch, the writer and director of darkness behind such television and movie projects as “Twin Peaks,” “Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive,” and “Eraserhead,” died at age 79. The cause and location were not revealed by his family, but Lynch was a smoker and had emphysema.

  Lynch had an unsettling style that became known as “Lynchian.” He broke out in 1977 with “Eraserhead” and Americans fixated on their television screens with the “Twin Peaks” series in 1990 and ’91.

  Lynch never won an Academy Award but was  nominated for directing “The Elephant Man,” “Blue Velvet,” and “Mulholland Drive.” In 2019 he was awarded an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement.

BELOW THE FOLD: With Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos under fire for killing an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for President, the Post has adopted a new mission statement.

  Known for the much quoted slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” created at the behest of Bezos, the new mission statement for the Post is ““Riveting Storytelling for All of America,” which isn’t quite a tune you can dance to.