WAR PLANS: Israel and the Trump administration are making plans for renewed attacks on Iran following elections in both countries, the NY Times reports according to administration sources.

  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this week to discuss what would be a short and intensive campaign, the Times reports. The targets would likely be Iran’s energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and missile and drone arsenal.

  It’s questionable whether new attacks would be any more effective in bringing Iran to its knees that what has already been done. Despite President Trump’s persistent claims that he’s wiped out the Iranian military, they still have the ability to fight back. But the hope on the US part is to create enough economic damage to bring the Iranians to the table. 

UGLY AND UGLIER: Vice President JD Vance defended Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for running an ad in which Democrat Amy Acton’s mother calls her a liar for her claims that she was raped as a child by her stepfather.

  Acton is now 60 but she was removed from the family home at age 12 when her stepfather was indicted on charges of sexual abuse. But Vance said, “And now the media, and the Democrats in the State of Ohio are obsessed, because guess what, Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a tv commercial which calls it out like it is, and calls Amy Acton a liar.”

  It essence, the Vice President is siding against a 12-year-old who said she was sexually abused. Acton’s stepfather fled the state to avoid trial and her mother stayed married to him. Acton and her mother have not spoken since 1978.

  South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace … a devout Republican … said, “Somehow Vivek Ramaswamy, somehow managed to limbo under the lowest bar of decency in this country.”

MORE UGLY: Michigan’s Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers last night accused Democrat Abdul el-Sayed of being “bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood, having donors to his campaign from Hamas” and supporting Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

  “If you are going to go to the United States Senate, we need to know: Are you for America or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?” Rogers asked.

  The Muslim El-Sayed was born in the US but the Republicans have been trying to paint him with an allegiance to extreme Musim groups. President Trump always refers to him by his middle name, Mohammed.

  El-Sayed tried to keep things focused on the ground level of voter interest, being able to afford living.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK: A New Mexico judge yesterday ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion penalty for deceiving users about its data privacy practices. Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, 

  In September at the end of a two-week trial, a jury in Santa Fe ruled that the company had committed 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws, each carrying a penalty of up to $5,000.

  Meta had already been fined $942 million in New Mexico for attracting young users of its apps to become addicted.

  In August, Meta reached a settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia, and US territories, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and make major changes in its programming that have caused children to be addicted to its social media platforms.

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— President Trump tacitly admitted that he relaxed sanctions against Russia to win the freedom of American Stephen Hubbard, the 74-year-old American held by Russia for four years.

  Speaking of himself in the third person, Trump wrote on his Truth Social that “Numerous people, who requested that sanctions be immediately imposed on Russia, have called to apologize to President Trump,” and “If sanctions would have been placed, certainly those negotiations would have come to a complete and total halt.”

  Those “numerous people” probably don’t exist.

— The Department of Justice is demanding that California take the unprecedented step of segregating election ballots from 20,000 people the department says are “likely” not citizens eligible to vote.

  The feds want all those people investigated before their vote is counted. But an initial review by local officials suggests the list is at the least “unreliable” and that some people on it had said they were born in the US.

  The Trump administration is determined to prove massive vote fraud, although it’s never been found. In checking 200 names on the list of 7,000 under question in Los Angeles County, election authorities found that 112 were people whose registrations are canceled or inactive. They also found that about 70% of the people sampled had no voting history.

— The Supreme Court decided to temporarily stop the Trump administration from immediately denying gender-transition medical treatments for transgender inmates in federal prisons. 

  The Bureau of Prisons set new policies under President Trump that would prohibit inmates from receiving gender care medicines. Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito  and Clarence Thomas, said they would have granted the  emergency request to stop treatments.

— The White House is blocking news outlets Politico and the Independent from traveling with the press pool because of their coverage. A White House lawyer sent Politico a letter demanding that the news organization  retract “defamatory” articles about Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and issue corrections or “face the consequences.”

  Politico had incorrectly reported that Wiles played a role in setting up short-term Press Secretary Katie Zacharia’s interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.

THE SPIN RACK: General Motors says it will use artificial intelligence to cut the time it takes to develop a new model car to two years. Chinese companies are already using AI to quickly roll out new designs. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Back during the February government shutdown, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted one of Dwight Eisenhower’s historic 30-inch globes installed in his office so he dispatched aides to get it. They dropped it, impaling the globe on its wooden base somewhere in the vicinity of Antarctica.