THE WAR ROOM: Israel again yesterday widened its theater of war, bombing what it said were Hamas leaders in Qatar, the country that has hosted peace and hostage-release negotiations involving the Gaza war.

  The attack endangers Qatar’s position as the diplomats trying to bring an end to the conflict. Qatar protested, a spokesman saying, “This criminal assault constitutes a blatant violation of all international laws and norms, and poses a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents in Qatar.” 

  Israel has signaled that it’s willing to go anywhere and do anything to get the people who planned the October 7^th massacre. A senior general said, “Hamas will have no place to hide from us. Wherever we locate them, whether they are senior or junior figures — we strike them all, all the time.”

  President Trump disapproved without fully condemning the attack, posting that, “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a Sovereign Nation and close Ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker Peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.”

ECON 101: The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its estimates downward, reporting that the economy in 2024 and earlier this year added 911,000 fewer jobs than first reported. That means the economy added about half the jobs earlier reported indicating a cooling.

  Revisions are not uncommon, but the revised report could be hazardous for the people running the BLS. Trump fired the bureau’s chief in August claiming a poor jobs report was rigged to make him look bad. 

TRAIN TIME: Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy threatened to withhold all federal funding form the Charlotte, North Carolina transit system following the random murder of a young woman riding on the system’s  Lynx Blue Line last month.

  The White House posted a statement saying, “President Donald J. Trump denounces senseless crime in Democrat-run cities & the horrific murder of a young woman in Charlotte by a deranged criminal monster.”

  Security video shows a man named Decarlos Brown standing up and stabbing the woman in front of him, 23-year-old  Iryna Zarutska, who fled Ukraine in 2022 with her mother, sister, and brother to escape the war with Russia.

  Duffy says he will defund the Charlotte transit system if investigation finds a failure to protect Zarutska. Brown has been reported to have been homeless with a history of arrests, and having suffered from mental health problems. He’s charged with first-degree murder.

  Zarutska is described as having been a talented artist who adjusted quickly to life in the US and hoped to become a veterinary assistant.

THE REGIME:

— President Trump yesterday signed a policy memo about restricting advertising for prescription drugs on television, a move which has been one of the desires of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Restricting or banning drug advertising would put a major dent in the income of the television networks and you can expect them to fight it.

  Advertising for prescription drugs was banned until 1997. Previous efforts to ban drug advertising was barred on First Amendment grounds.

—  A federal judge yesterday blocked President Trump from removing Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, giving her time to fight her dismissal.  

— Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, said he accepts the administration’s denial that President Trump drew and signed the line drawing of a naked woman given to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein on his 50^th birthday. 

  White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the recent push by Democrats for release more information about Epstein is part of a “hoax to smear the president of the United States.”

— The Supreme Court said it will hear arguments in November about the legality of President Trump’s tariffs. The President has said that killing his tariffs would “literally destroy” the United States and turn it into a “third-world nation.”

— Trump on Monday during an appearance at The Museum of the Bible said that there is “zero” crime in Washington after his crackdown. He also said that domestic disturbances … “a little fight with the wife … should not count in his statistics.

  “Things that take place in the home they call crime,” he said. “They’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime scene.”

  The NY Times points out that on Sunday alone Washington had one murder, six motor vehicle thefts, two assaults with a deadly weapon, four robberies and more than 30 thefts, according to police statistics.

THE WAR ROOM: Poland said that it has shot down Russian drones that entered its airspace during a major attack on targets in Ukraine, calling it an “act of aggression” by Moscow. “We are dealing with a large-scale provocation,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk  said. “The situation is serious, and no one doubts that we must prepare for various scenarios.”

TIK TOK, TIK TOK: Don’t mess with the younger generation’s social media. Teenagers and young adults hit the streets of Nepal in violent protests following the government’s ban on 26 popular social media apps. Twenty-two people were killed, many of them by soldiers who opened fire.

  Protesters set fire to government offices, the Supreme Court, politicians’ homes and the seat of government. By the end of yesterday the social media ban was repealed and the prime minister and four other ministers resigned.

THE SPIN RACK: A Michigan judge threw out criminal charges against 15 people accused of being fake electors for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, saying prosecutors did not present evidence of intent to commit criminal fraud. — New test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show eighth-grade science scores have fallen 4 points since 2019 and 12th-grade math and reading scores are down 3 points. 

BELOW THE FOLD:  Apple introduced a new and even slimmer iPhone. The iPhone Air. It’s $999. We’ll call it a thousand. 

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