August 8, 2025

Vol. 14, No. 2366

ALL OF IT: The Israeli security cabinet today over the objections of the military approved a plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take control of Gaza City, essentially bringing all of the Gaza under military rule.

  Netanyahu’s office said the security cabinet adopted “five principles for concluding the war,” including disarming Hamas, freeing hostages, demilitarizing Gaza, establishing military control, and setting up “an alternative civilian administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.”

THE MESS WITH TEXAS: Call out the posse. Texas Sen. John Cornyn convinced FBI director Kash Patel to have his agents track down Democratic members of the Texas house who fled the state to stop a vote on congressional redistricting that would give the Republicans five more seats in the US House.

  The legislators have made little secret of where they are, mostly in Chicago, New York, and Boston. What power the FBI has in the situation is dubious. The Texas House issued civil warrants to detain and return the legislators, but they’re not enforceable outside Texas.

POLITICAL PURGE: In a continuing purge at the FBI, the agency abruptly fired two senior officials, one of whom briefly served as acting director, and the other who was a leader in responding to the January 6^th insurrection.

   Brian Driscoll, the former acting director in the early days of the Trump administration, was told to pack up and leave by today. He had resisted demands for names of FBI agents who had worked on the investigation into the Capitol attack, stalling what he saw as a possible purge.

  Steven Jensen, also fired, was head of the FBI’s Washington field office, a leader in the January 6^thinvestigations.

  Driscoll said in a message to colleagues, “I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I currently have no answers. No cause has been articulated at this time.”

ICE, ICE, BABY: Dean Cain, the 59-year-old actor who played Superman in the 1990s “Lois & Clark” television series, announced that he’s going to sign up to become an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

   The Department of Homeland Security eliminated the age limit for new ICE officers and will require no more than a high school education. The department announced incentives for a planned 10,000 recruits, including a signing bonus up to $50,000, options for “student loan repayment and forgiveness,” and retirement benefits.

  Cain, a devotee of Donald Trump, posted a video to Instagram urging people to join ICE, listing those incentives. The “Superman” theme song played in the background of his video.

  Unlike ICE agents who’ve been wearing masks as they round up immigrants, Cain said he would not. “I’ve just outed myself completely right now,” Cain told Fox News host Jesse Watters. 

REGIME NEWS:

— In a further effort to stamp out affirmative action for racial diversity in college admissions, President Trump signed an order requiring colleges and universities to report their consideration of race to the Department of Education. 

  The Supreme Court knocked down affirmative action in admissions but said colleges may still consider how race has shaped students’ lives if applicants write about it in their admission essays.

  The universities are trying to weigh grades and test scores against the obstacles an applicant is overcoming in life. Trump accuses colleges of using personal statements as a way to skirt the Supreme Court decision. He wrote in his executive order, “Race-based admissions practices are not only unfair, but also threaten our national security and well-being.”

  This new policy is similar to clauses embedded in the settlement agreements with Brown and Columbia Universities, restoring their federal research money. The universities agreed to give the government data on the race, grade point average, and standardized test scores of applicants, as well as admitted and enrolled students. 

— President Trump has called for a 2030 census that would not count people in the country illegally. It’s been a long term goal of his.

  The census headcount is used among other things for how presidents and members of Congress are elected. The 14th Amendment requires the “whole number of persons in each state” to be included. The Constitution also gives control of the census to Congress, not the president.

  Trump, however, instructed the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, to “immediately begin work” on a census using “the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024.” What that means is a mystery. Election results are not used in counting the population.

THE OBIT PAGE: Sallie Bingham, the writer, philanthropist, feminist and political activist whose break with her brother led to the sale of her family’s Louisville, Kentucky publishing and media dynasty, died on Wednesday at home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was 88.

  Bingham’s grandfather in 1918 bought The Louisville Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, two esteemed newspapers, control of which was passed down through the men in the family. As a member of the board, Ms. Bingham began questioning the paper’s treatment of its employees, women, and minority groups, and publicly joined a political committee, violating the company’s ethics rules.

 Kicked off the board by her brother, Barry Jr., and unable to make change, Ms. Bingham put her shares on the public market, leading ultimately to sale of the papers to the Gannett Newspaper chain.

  She ended up writing a memoir, “Passion and Prejudice: A Family Memoir,” in which she condemned her family as immoral, misogynist and racist.

THE SPIN RACK: The FAA says it plans to hire 9,000 new air traffic controllers by 2028 and that still won’t be enough. After several months of academy training, it takes two to four years of on-the-job training for an air controller. — NASA says it plans to put a nuclear reactor on the moon. The US is trying to regain dominance of space exploration.

BELOW THE FOLD: The Trump administration laid off McGruff the animated anti-crime dog, who famously said, “Take a bite out of crime.”

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