Last week, we reported that Israel planned to resume the war in Gaza with a wave of airstrikes and a reduction of humanitarian aid to the strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began putting those plans into motion on Sunday, announcing that he had halted the entry of any "goods and supplies into Gaza."
Netanyahu, the Free Beacon's Andrew Tobin reports from Tel Aviv, "said the decision was a response to Hamas’s rejection of a proposal by U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to extend the phase one hostage-ceasefire deal that expired a day earlier." Under the proposal, which Israel had agreed to, Israel and Hamas would take another 50 days to negotiate the ceasefire’s second phase. Hamas would release half of the remaining Israeli hostages on day one and the remainder on the final day.
If Hamas continues to reject the proposal, Netanyahu said, "there will be additional consequences."
"The blockade of Gaza is one of a series of escalatory steps that Israel, backed by President Donald Trump, is prepared to take in order to end Hamas's control of Gaza," writes Tobin. "Israel expects it will ultimately have to take full military control of Gaza and is developing plans to do so starting in several weeks."
"Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Saturday that Southern Command is on high alert and preparing for a return to fighting on short notice. In recent days, Israeli troops have been training to retake the strategically important Netzarim Corridor and other areas of Gaza from which the military withdrew during the ceasefire and for the possible relocation of the civilian population from the north of the strip to humanitarian zones in the south, according to the report."
READ MORE: Israel Cuts All Aid To Gaza in Step Toward Resumption of Full-Scale War
When Georgia's community health department solicited bids for the state's blockbuster Medicaid contract in 2015, it asked insurers basic questions about dental care access and congestive heart failure. Things changed last year when the department's senior staffers hijacked the bidding process to insert questions related to transgender children.
That's according to internal documents reviewed by our Andrew Kerr. They show that the bidding application for the multibillion-dollar contract initially asked insurers "about a hypothetical 14-year-old white female with anorexia and depression who shares a bedroom with her younger sister." But career staffers "swapped the biological female for a transgender person"—and subsequently dinged bidders who provided answers that strayed from liberal orthodoxy on the issue.
The state scored applications out of 1,000 possible points, and the difference between winning and losing came down to less than 10 points. The transgender question was worth 10 points. The application also included a DEI question worth 15.
"The staffers' decision to insert that question—and reward companies that regurgitated left-wing positions on transgender care—reflects a significant disconnect between Kemp's policy preferences and the career staffers tasked with carrying them out," writes Kerr. "Kemp signed a law banning gender surgeries and hormone therapies for children in 2023. One year earlier, he signed a law that allowed the Georgia High School Association to bar biological men from competing in women's sports."
North of the Beltway, in Delaware, state Democrats passed a 2021 law forcing 40 percent of power production to come from green energy by 2035. As a result, the state's main utility company, Delmarva, must import large amounts of electricity produced by wind and solar, purchase renewable energy credits from other states, or face fines. So far, it's struggled to fill the first two buckets to the state's satisfaction—and paid $26 million in fines to stay in compliance.
In the meantime, electric bills are skyrocketing, with some residents facing a 350 percent spike in recent months. Those increases, to be sure, come amid a period of extremely low temperatures. But the green energy side of the equation is raising questions: State senate minority leader Gerald Hocker said a "meeting with stakeholders in the energy sector" made it clear "that Delaware's green energy mandates … are a significant factor in driving up costs."
Delaware's green push comes in spite of the state's unique reliance on fossil fuels. Green energy sources generate just 6 percent of Delaware's total electricity output, while natural gas generates 87 percent. Nationwide, those numbers are 21 percent and 43 percent, respectively. At the same time, most of Delaware's electricity comes from out of state, a dynamic "that has become more acute as it has moved to stop building gas power plants and shut down existing fossil fuel power generation," our Thomas Catenacci reports.
"The situation—which has emerged as a key political issue, resulted in packed town halls where angry citizens have voiced concerns and has led to the creation of a petition against Delmarva and a local Facebook group named 'Delmarva Power Victims' with more than 14,400 members—may force lawmakers to reckon with the state's far-left energy policies."
READ MORE: Delaware Residents See Surging Electric Bills as State Pushes Green Mandates
Away from the Beacon:
- The DNC put out a 32-point list of what the party did last month, and when followers widely mocked it, the party's chief mobilization officer Shelby Cole responded with this gem: "the 'check out this giant laundry list' template always used to bang for us. it's full of tiny text on purpose!! but the internet thinks we are morons this time. heard." Keep up the great work, folks!
- The Associated Press reported the obvious—that "furious Democrats filled Republican town halls across America last week"—before adding that the activists have now "turned their anger toward elected officials in their own party, who they believe are not fighting the Republican president and billionaire adviser Elon Musk with the urgency, aggression or creativity that the moment deserves."
- Investment giant BlackRock, which once called to "embed DEI into everything we do," is now shifting away from equity, citing "significant changes to the U.S. legal and policy environment." It’s almost as it they didn’t really believe the things they were saying.
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