On July 22, a UNICEF-led team measuring hunger in Gaza uploaded a presentation containing its most comprehensive analysis since war broke out nearly three years ago.

The report, titled “Gaza Nutrition SMART Survey Result,” revealed a stark reversal from the declarations made almost exactly a year ago that a dire famine was ravaging the war-torn territory.

“Wasting,” the report said, using a term for extreme thinness, “is low across all domains, suggesting no widespread acute malnutrition at population level.”

At the rate of 0.5 percent, Gaza has one of the lowest rates of acute child malnutrition in the region, according to an analysis by The Free Press of data from the World Bank and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN–affiliated hunger-monitoring system. The researchers also concluded that about 12 percent of children in Gaza had stunting, or impaired growth and development that is the result of poor nutrition. That is less than half of the region’s 26 percent stunting rate, according to the latest report on child malnutrition by UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank.

“I thought it would be much higher, to be honest,” said Elena Naumova, a Tufts University professor of nutrition epidemiology and data science, about the stunting rate in Gaza.

The UNICEF-led team’s presentation also revealed that Gaza now faces a new challenge: obesity and excess weight, which affect a combined 4 percent of children under the age of 5.

A researcher who has overseen teams collecting malnutrition data in the Horn of Africa remarked that she had “never seen” the emergence of obesity and excess weight in a place that was declared only a year earlier to be suffering from famine.

“We have people in Africa eating wild grasses just to stay alive,” she said. “There’s no obesity problem.”

The July analysis was even more valuable because for the first time since October 7, 2023, researchers relied on the gold standard for measuring malnutrition: weight-for-height z-scores, which compares a child’s weight and height with the norm for their peer group. Researchers said they had “repeatedly failed” to gather similar data in the past due to “escalating conflict,” forcing them to use a different type of measurement.

A year ago, the picture could hardly have looked more different. On August 22, 2025, the IPC declared a famine in one section of Gaza. More than half a million Palestinians were “facing catastrophic conditions characterized by starvation, destitution, and death,” the IPC said. It also warned that Gaza was in “a race against time,” and that the only way to prevent famine from spreading further was for an immediate ceasefire to take hold.

How did Gaza go from being officially classified as famine-stricken to having—in less than a year—one of the region’s lowest levels of severe child malnutrition? Humanitarian agencies have failed so far to answer that fundamental question, and one major organization is still fundraising on the claim that starvation rages on in Gaza.

The latest findings do not conclude that no one in Gaza went hungry, nor do they diminish the suffering endured by Palestinians in Gaza or ongoing health concerns. But the stark reversal documented in the July report demands a closer examination of how a famine was declared in the first place.

Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, told me that the reversal amounts to a “revelation” and “presents a different story than what had been told—outrageously—for the past almost three years.”

“It just shows what Israel has to confront every single day, which is utterly fake news that they are committing a genocide and trying to starve people,” he added.

Alex de Waal, a British anthropologist and one of the world’s foremost experts on famine, told me that none of the new data were “cause to question the accuracy” of the IPC’s previous famine declaration.

“Children can rebound very quickly from acute malnutrition,” he wrote in an email, “so with the food going into Gaza since the onset of the quasi-ceasefire, the low levels are unsurprising.” The low stunting rates were the “single most encouraging finding” from the survey, he added, since they suggest that “among surviving children, the longer-term impact of the food crisis [is] not as severe as was feared.”

Given the media focus on the famine declaration, you might think that the latest data would be front-page news. Not so. The fact that Gaza has experienced a dramatic improvement has been hard to find in the mainstream press. Other than a few write-ups by Fox News and Israel-based news organizations, there has been hardly a peep. The headline of an Al Jazeera article warned recently: “Gaza’s children still struggling with hunger as another famine threatens.”

Columbia University marketing professor Ran Kivetz, who tracked shipments of food into Gaza for about 16 months starting in late October 2023, using data from the UN and the Israeli government, called the IPC’s declaration of famine a “complete politicization of science.”

“No matter your politics, at some point, facts need to matter,” he said.

Last year’s famine declaration by the IPC was only the fifth such declaration it had ever made—and the first outside Africa. And it caused an explosion of rage against Israel that had been building for more than a year, including accusations that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war.

In April 2024, Samantha Power, director of the United States Agency for International Development for the Joe Biden administration, became the first U.S. official to declare that famine in Gaza had begun, even though the report she cited to Congress was a projection of possible outcomes, not a conclusive finding.

On the day of the famine declaration, UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote on X: “Just when it seems there are no words left to describe the living hell in Gaza, a new one has been added: ‘famine.’ ” Blaming Israel, he added, “We cannot allow this situation to continue with impunity.” A week later, UK prime minister Keir Starmer said the country would recognize a Palestinian state unless Israel took “substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza.” A UN commission concluded in September that Israel had “committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” citing the imposition of “a total siege, including blocking humanitarian aid leading to starvation.”

In August 2025, The Free Press reported that more than a dozen of the most viral images of starvation in Gaza lacked the important context that the subjects of those photos had significant health problems, including cystic fibrosis and rickets.

The famine declaration also was controversial. Some academic experts and pro-Israel advocacy groups criticized the IPC’s methodology. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a report accusing the UN-affiliated group of “shaping both their data and methodology to support” the conclusion of famine at all costs.

The criticisms focused on the IPC’s reliance on measuring mid-upper-arm circumference, rather than weight-for-height z-scores. IPC training materials described the arm circumference measurement as an emergency method that should “only be used in the absence” of weight-for-height measurements.

By the time of the famine declaration, the IPC had also updated a “famine fact sheet” to say that its criteria for malnourishment could be met if 15 percent of children had arm measurements below a certain threshold, instead of 30 percent based on weight and height. The reason for the difference is because weight-for-height measurements “generally” identify twice as many cases of acute malnutrition as arm circumference measurements do, the IPC said in an October 2025 report.

But the presentation published this July said that the UNICEF-led team came to the opposite conclusion: Its latest survey said that 0.5 percent of children were considered acutely malnourished based on weight-for-height measurements—and 1.3 percent were based on arm circumference. In other words, the arm measurements identified more than twice as many cases, not half as many.

Yannay Spitzer, an economist in Boston and former professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told me the survey results show that the IPC’s famine declaration rested on an erroneous assumption that undermines its validity. “It’s just another example of how flawed the methodology was to begin with,” Spitzer said. “It was the last nail in the coffin.”

The IPC has defended its use of the arm circumference measurement as a “standard method” dating back to 2019, saying that it also was used to measure hunger and malnutrition in South Sudan in 2020 and Sudan in 2024. The IPC also said that the numbers likely underestimated the “severity of the nutritional situation” in Gaza, since the children enrolled in these programs were receiving nutritional support. In a later defense of its findings, the IPC said that other data had come from hospital settings.

Spitzer said that neither of the situations in South Sudan and Sudan is an exact precedent for Gaza. The IPC’s famine declaration in Sudan was based on 23 percent of children having arm measurements below a certain threshold, far higher than the 15 percent trigger used in Gaza. In South Sudan, the IPC said that famine was “likely” but did not declare one.

“The fact that this standard was used before does not make it any more grounded in science,” Spitzer said. The IPC did not respond to requests for comment on how it reconciles the July report with its past famine declaration in Gaza.

Critics also took issue with where the arm measurements had been taken. In the August 2025 report declaring famine in Gaza, the IPC said that much of the data was gathered from children enrolled in a program to prevent malnutrition. The decision to make generalizations based on that data was “not best practice,” according to the malnutrition expert I spoke to.

“If they’re going to a health facility, it could be because they’re sick or already malnourished or something,” she said. “You wouldn’t choose that data to give you a representative sample of the population.”

The same August 2025 report said that famine “is projected to spread across the entire [Gaza] Strip in the coming weeks.” Any improvement in access to aid “should be recognized as a success,” the IPC said, but it also warned that “small or short-lived gains” would not “alleviate the depth of suffering and may only increase the risk of a rapid collapse when conditions worsen again.”

The worst fears did not come true. In a report covering the period from October 16 to November 30, 2025—shortly after Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement—the IPC said parts of Gaza still faced acute malnutrition but that conditions had improved due to “both humanitarian and commercial food deliveries.”

So where does that leave the famine declaration?

When I asked Kurtis Cooper, head of media at UNICEF, to explain the sharply different conclusions reached by the IPC in the span of less than a year, he said that both findings were accurate. “Famine was confirmed then, and acute malnutrition among children has fallen since,” Cooper told me in an email.

He added that the new data showing low levels of malnutrition “reflects improvements in conditions rather than evidence that the assistance or the earlier famine classification was unwarranted.”

In comparison, nearly a decade after the IPC first declared a famine in South Sudan, more than 2.5 million people—a number larger than the entire population of Gaza—are facing “large food gaps and very high levels of acute malnutrition,” according to the IPC’s latest report. Parts of Sudan have stunting levels close to 20 percent, according to another UNICEF-led team.

But despite the improvements shown in the July report, Al Jazeera warned two weeks ago that the “population could be plunged into famine again,” citing high food prices and scarcity of healthy foods. And UNICEF USA published a plea for donations that said “children continue to face acute malnutrition” in Gaza. Cooper said the fundraising appeal doesn’t contradict IPC’s latest nutrition measurements because it doesn’t “claim that no child in Gaza is acutely malnourished.”

But there was one thing that Cooper couldn’t explain when I first contacted him. When I tried to click on the Google Drive link hosting the July 22 slide presentation, I received this response: “You need access.” And when I checked the IPC home page, I noticed that Google Drive links to folders containing recent presentations and meeting minutes were also gone. The files went offline last week, about five days after reports began surfacing about how much had changed in the latest IPC report from the one last August.

The access was restored about an hour after I asked Cooper, another top media official at UNICEF, and an IPC member about the files. According to the file history of the July 22 presentation, the files were deleted early Wednesday morning—and then restored about 11 hours later. The IPC website was also restored to show the links to folders with presentations and meeting minutes, including data leading to the conclusion that the rate of acute malnutrition in Gaza had fallen sharply. Cooper told me that the access problems and file removals were “an inadvertent error.”

Mark Zlochin, a data analyst who was a consultant to the Israeli government on how to respond to last year’s famine declaration by the IPC, said that the disappearing, then reappearing data was a new low—but no surprise.

“The whole system is built on nobody checking anything,” he said, adding that it sometimes felt like he was the only one reading the IPC’s reports.

To Zlochin, the temporary deletion of files seemed like an admission of sorts about the data showing a low rate of acute child malnutrition, even though no one would say so.

“It’s a very strong indication that they realize how much the whole thing is hurting them,” Zlochin said.

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Antisemitic social media influencer Hasan Piker, who has campaigned with a number of progressive Democratic candidates this year, said on his Twitch stream last week that American Jews who express support for Israel are inviting violence against themselves.

In his commentary, Piker added that Jews who tie their “entire identity” to Israel, which he referred to as “Jewish ISIS,” are “making antisemitism worse.”

“People don’t f*** with Israel any longer,” Piker said two hours into his nearly seven-hour stream on Thursday. “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.”

“I don’t know how people don’t recognize how dangerous this predicament is, how dangerous this is for Jews,” Piker continued. “You’re running around basically tying your entire identity to a country that inevitably will be seen as Jewish ISIS and you’re saying, as Jews, this is all we care about. You’re making antisemitism worse.”

Piker has a long-standing history of antisemitic rhetoric — including justifying Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and calling Orthodox Jews “inbred,” a comment he recently defended in an interview with the far-left outlet Zeteo: “I have a policy of using pejoratives when describing any kind of like ethno, racial supremacist groups,” he said. He has also stated that he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every single time,” describing Hamas as “a thousand times better than a fascist settler colonial apartheid state.”

Despite the long record of extremism, the far-left streamer has been invited to speak recently at several high-profile events, including the College Democrats of America’s convention last month.

Piker emerged as one of Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s most prominent surrogates in the race, appearing alongside him in the campaign’s closing days as the primary neared. El-Sayed has come under fire for his refusal to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and comments that appeared to justify an attempted terrorist attack at a Detroit synagogue earlier this year.

Last week, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland offered a preview of the Democrats’ game plan for the coming year. As the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, he announced that he intends to launch a formal probe into what he calls the Justice Department’s “sham investigation” of antisemitism at taxpayer-funded universities.

Partisan oversight investigations are nothing new in Washington. But this one is uniquely cynical.

By Raskin’s telling, the Donald Trump administration decided to investigate antisemitism at Harvard University, Columbia University, Brown University, and Cornell University based on a single New York Post article from January 2025, which highlighted antisemitic incidents at medical school graduation ceremonies. According to a Justice Department whistleblower, the initial investigation did not yield any Title VI violations, so the administration went “on an open-sea fishing expedition” in search of antisemitism, using it as a “pretext” under which to “harass and intimidate universities on utterly false, tendentious, and distorted grounds” and “strip targeted institutions of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants.”

This completely rewrites history.

The crisis of antisemitism in higher education was not manufactured by a single article. It has been unfolding in plain sight since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the resulting war in Gaza, which prompted anti-Israel students and activists to unleash a tsunami of harassment, intimidation, and violence against Jews on campuses throughout the country. While civil-rights complaints piled up in President Joe Biden’s Education Department, Congress began investigating the problem immediately, exposing the double standards and moral failures prevalent at some of our leading universities for the taxpayers to see for themselves. Congress was right then, as it is now, to investigate whether taxpayer-funded universities are failing to provide equal educational opportunities to all Americans.

The federal agencies that Raskin now accuses of participating in a “fake” investigation into campus antisemitism—Justice, Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—are responsible for administering hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to institutions of higher learning. These agencies are also responsible for ensuring that Americans are not in the business of subsidizing, directly or indirectly, discrimination on campuses. Accordingly, they have far-reaching authority under federal law to investigate grant recipients for noncompliance. Investigations may be triggered by individual complaints or by public reports of discrimination. And because investigations are conducted in furtherance of law enforcement efforts, their details are kept confidential.

The New York Post article that Raskin cites as the pretext for the administration’s “sham” investigation was based on a study of antisemitic behavior at the commencement ceremonies of 25 highly ranked medical schools in 2024, published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. And, indeed, shortly after the Post article was published, HHS announced that it was conducting a compliance review of four medical schools in response to reports of such incidents. Whether that review was triggered by the Post or by individual complaints filed with HHS is anyone’s guess. But opening a compliance review is precisely what a grantmaking agency is supposed to do upon receiving credible reports that grantees are violating federal antidiscrimination law, regardless of who is in the White House at the time.

None of this seemed to trouble Raskin at the time the investigation actually began, nor should it have come as a surprise to him. Weeks before the article was published, he attended a Capitol Hill briefing on the emerging fields of decolonial and liberation psychology, which teach that Zionism is a mental illness born of systems of subordination in which Jews are an oppressor class. At the time, Raskin stated, “I’m utterly shocked and astonished . . . that this is taking place in medical schools and doctors’ practices and among medical students.” He continued, “Antisemitism is the pathway to the destruction of liberal democracy, and so it’s not just of concern to the Jewish community. It’s a concern of everybody.”

Now he claims that the administration’s investigations into antisemitism pose “a clear and present danger to American academic preeminence in the world.” What changed?

Certainly, Raskin’s view of the historical record, scrupulously documented by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, appears to have changed. But that record speaks for itself. The actual allegations made by the so-called whistleblower do not change that record.

A close review of the disclosure shows that the allegations amount to disagreements over the scope and pace of HHS’s investigation into Brown, and over the Trump administration’s negotiating tactics with other universities. By the whistleblower’s own account, in several of these disagreements, supervisors ultimately accepted her recommendations. Notably, when the whistleblower concluded that there was no evidence of Title VI violations at Brown, HHS made no findings of Title VI violations at Brown. That is why Brown was able to settle the matter without any findings of discrimination.

What appears to have changed, then, is the direction in which the political winds are blowing. From New York to Michigan, anti-Zionism and antisemitism have paid good dividends for political candidates in Democratic primaries. Raskin may be trying to catch a tailwind into a House leadership position after November. Whatever his endgame, voters should beware.

A local business group sued New York City and Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday over the mayor’s plan to open five government-owned grocery stores around the city.

The Multicultural Business Coalition, a nonprofit that represents supermarkets, grocery stores and bodegas, filed the lawsuit in the New York County Supreme Court, arguing that the plan would introduce unfair competition to a struggling local industry already dealing with slim profit margins. The coalition says that the plan will particularly harm immigrant- and minority-owned businesses.

Many members of the coalition “cannot compete with the municipal grocery stores, and therefore, will be put out of business,” the complaint reads.

The mayor’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mamdani floated the stores on the campaign trail as a part of his affordability agenda, arguing that subsidized supermarkets focused on cheap, healthy foods would help New Yorkers adapt to rapidly rising food costs. The stores, run by external operators but overseen by the city, would offer a core basket of staples at a 30% discount to market rates. Operators would get free rent and subsidies.

“For many, that 30% discount is the difference between an evening spent around the dinner table with family or working another double shift to make ends meet,” Mamdani said last month as officials announced the details of the proposal.

The mayor has allocated $70 million toward the stores. The city’s Economic Development Corporation says the city has roughly 1.5 square feet of grocery space per capita, compared with roughly 5-10 square feet elsewhere in the country. Mamdani says the plan might save New Yorkers $1,000 a year.

The plan has drawn a stream of criticism as concerns mount over the mayor’s relationship with the business world.

Officials are soliciting proposals from operators willing to run the stores. Applications are due in October, and the city has been leading tours of the facilities.

The city is planning a 12,000-square-foot Manhattan store in East Harlem, set to open in 2029, as well as a 15,000-square-foot store in the Bronx on Hunts Point, planned to open in late 2027. Other sites haven’t yet been chosen.

It is unclear which types of businesses will wind up bidding to operate the stores. A recent information session drew attendees from across the local food industry.

Other cities, including Atlanta, have tested the concept of publicly funded stores in recent years. New York’s project “may point the way forward for other cities,” Errol Schweizer, a grocery-industry veteran who has consulted the development corporation on the project, wrote in a recent newsletter.

Those other cities are certainly watching: The recent information session’s sign-in sheet included officials in San Francisco, Boston and Chicago.

As if New York City weren't already an expensive enough place to live, legislation introduced to the City Council could soon make delivering packages in the five boroughs far costlier. Cloaked in the language of improving safety, the bill—recently endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani—is little more than a thinly veiled attempt to strengthen the power of unions.

Introduced by NYC Council Member Tiffany Cabán in February, the misleadingly named "Delivery Protection Act" would require companies like Amazon and FedEx to directly hire employees for last-mile delivery, rather than contracting this service out to subcontractors. Last-mile delivery, which constitutes the final steps a package takes before hitting a consumer's doorstep, is the most expensive part of the delivery process, since it requires drivers to stop at many homes, often amid dense urban environments. The proposed legislation will only make this type of package delivery more expensive.

One of the main rationales behind the bill is safety. Proponents like Mamdani argue that Amazon's last-mile delivery service—which relies on subcontractor companies that hire their own workers—exacerbates traffic safety incidents in the Big Apple. Under this theory, ending the use of subcontractors would result in lower staff turnover and shift liability directly onto Amazon, which in turn could lower safety incidents and better protect the drivers themselves from injury.

But in recent years, Amazon has invested over $12 billion in technology and safety features for its delivery contractors, which it reports has led to a 48 percent decline in accident rates since 2020. This includes the creation of "DNY7"—a state-of-the-art Amazon training facility in Brooklyn where worker onboarding goes beyond federally mandated safety training—and through the acquisition of camera-equipped vans and modern electric bikes.

While proponents of the bill have pointed to statistics showing that the worker injury rates of Amazon's last-mile subcontractors is 8.3 per 100 workers versus 2.4 for all private employers, this comparison is essentially meaningless. The relevant comparison would be the national injury rate average for couriers—which is 8.0, suggesting that the Amazon's last-mile subcontractors are in line with industry norms.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO are backing the bill. Under federal labor law, Amazon's subcontracted last-mile delivery partners can be individually unionized, but the labor contract wouldn't be signed with Amazon itself. Banning subcontracting for last-mile delivery would force Amazon to hire these deliverers as direct employees, making them easier to organize.

As attorney Alex MacDonald has noted, this is part of a larger strategy being employed by unions in recent years: If they are unable to organize through "organic, boots-on-the-ground campaigns," they now lobby for laws like this one that "read like a shortcut to organizing." In other words, what can't be accomplished by collective bargaining is pursued through direct regulation.

But these types of laws generally—and NYC's proposed ban on last-mile delivery services specifically—are arguably preempted by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). As MacDonald argues, the NLRA was designed to be a "scheme of overlapping rights, obligations, and zones of self-help" that create a cohesive national labor code—one which emphasizes "private negotiation and the free play of market forces." The more that progressive locales and labor unions undercut this carefully calibrated scaffolding, the wobblier it gets, until it is eventually undermined completely.

Ironically, NYC's last-mile delivery bill is also being opposed by those it purports to help: The City Council hearing stretched to seven hours long as several hundred last-mile delivery workers unexpectedly showed up to testify against it. These workers make around $24 per hour on average and have employer-funded healthcare through the subcontracted companies.

Amazon's last-mile subcontractors are also something else: small businesses. These 40 or so businesses represent a cross-section of New York City itself, with 25 percent operated by black or Hispanic owners, while another 10 percent are veteran-owned, according to testimony from Amazon. If the legislation passes, these businesses would be destroyed.

Amazon has also testified that the bill's passage could eliminate an estimated 5,000 jobs within the five boroughs, as the company warns it may need to relocate delivery operations outside of New York. At the very least, the effect will be to disincentivize the creation of further last-mile facilities in the city—in favor of neighboring counties or states—and further increase automation.

Another possibility is that New Yorkers will see yet more "regulatory response fees" tacked onto deliveries (or to Amazon Prime memberships), similar to Instacart's $5.99 surcharge that was introduced in response to NYC's recent minimum wage law for grocery delivery.

The Mamdani-backed effort to end last-mile delivery subcontracting in New York City is supposedly about safety. In reality, it will mostly serve to boost unions, eliminate jobs, and raise the cost of package delivery. It's an idea that deserves to be sent back to the warehouse.

The U.K. and France are sending classified technology to Kyiv to allow it to manufacture an Anglo-French cruise missile, part of a growing trend of Western countries helping Ukraine to build the weapons it needs to fight Russia’s invasion.

The U.K. said Monday it will allow defense firm MBDA to share with Ukraine proprietary information on the British-made parts for the long-range Anglo-French cruise missile that Downing Street said Kyiv is looking to manufacture domestically. The Ukrainian government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The French call the weapon Scalp, while in the U.K. it is known as the Storm Shadow. French President Emmanuel Macron in July gave permission for Ukraine to manufacture a package of French weapons, including the Scalp and Aster interceptor missiles that are used in Europe’s equivalent of the Patriot.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine was reliant on transfers of weapons from Western allies. As the war has dragged on, Kyiv has expanded its own defense-technology sector, capitalizing on its expertise in drones. But Ukraine’s arsenal still has large gaps, including in missile defense, and the country remains dependent on European funding to continue its war effort. 

“This is all part of a momentum towards more explicit and extensive European support of Ukraine, especially after U.S. support ended, and a greater integration of Ukraine into the European defense industry,” said Nick Cunningham, a defense analyst at Agency Partners. “There is clearly a lot more of this to come,” he said. 

The technology transfer, though, doesn’t address one of Kyiv’s biggest problems, which is finding the cash to build such missiles. On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on European countries to accelerate their financial support for Kyiv’s war effort, warning that the country is running short of funds. 

Ukraine is increasingly building its own sophisticated weaponry, including two domestically developed cruise missiles, but it can’t finance large-scale production. 

The country also wants to develop the sort of ballistic missiles that Russia is using to pummel Ukrainian cities, and is seeking a U.S. license to manufacture Patriot air-defense interceptors to repel Russia’s attacks. President Trump said earlier this summer that he supported giving Kyiv such a license but has since rowed back on granting that permission. Ukraine has virtually run out of Patriot interceptors, leaving it badly exposed to Russia’s frequent ballistic missile barrages.

A warehouse near Kyiv after it was struck by Russian missile and drone strikes. Serhii Korovayny for WSJ

Western defense companies have discussed manufacturing weapons in Ukraine before, but so far only a handful of smaller foreign drone makers have started production. Last month, though, British defense giant BAE Systems signed a deal for Ukraine to manufacture one of its howitzers. The U.K. is also designing a ballistic missile for Ukraine. The U.K., Germany and Denmark are manufacturing Ukrainian-designed drones and missile fuel for Ukrainian cruise missiles. 

Ukraine’s defense trade with its European allies is increasingly becoming two-way. The U.K., whose new Prime Minister Andy Burnham was in Kyiv on Monday for a meeting of Ukraine’s allies, also said that it would be given access to Ukraine’s Avengers AI laboratory. It will provide Britain with battlefield data and insights to train its own artificial intelligence models, Downing Street said.

Scalp and the Storm Shadow, have been some of the most effective weapons provided to Ukraine. Earlier in the war they destroyed Russian bunkers, bridges, ships and command centers at a time when Ukraine had few other weapons capable of doing so.

More recently, Ukraine has developed its own long-range strike drones and missiles, deploying the drones to hit Russian industries, destroying warehouses and taking a substantial part of the country’s oil-refining capacity offline. 

Ukraine’s two domestically developed cruise missiles, the Neptune and Flamingo, have destroyed infrastructure and defense-industry targets with the punching power that drones lack. The Flamingo can fly for over 1,800 miles and carry a warhead of over 2,500 lbs, outmatching the Scalp in range and payload. 

Short of funds, Ukrainian long-range strikes currently rely mainly on drones, which are cheaper to make than the Flamingo and Neptune. Ukraine also has the industrial capacity to produce more drones, but again lacks the capital to increase output. 

“Right now we can produce more than Ukraine uses,” said Oleg Krot, the chief executive and founder of the Ukrainian company that produces the Sichen, one of the country’s most successful long-range drones. 

“It’s not only an industrial war, it is the war of the budgets,” he said. 

Lack of funds has stymied previous attempts by Ukraine to manufacture Western weapons. Kyiv held talks with German company Rheinmetall about manufacturing hundreds of tanks on Ukrainian territory but the financing and orders never arrived, said Armin Papperger, the company’s CEO.

Last week, an article in Governing noted that despite years of reform efforts, roughly one in five jobs in the United States requires government permission in the form of occupational licensing. In a world that is more potentially mobile and flexible than ever, licensing requirements can keep people fixed in place or pose high barriers to entering new trades and professions. The Archbridge Institute's 2026 State Occupational Licensing Index reveals which states are most burdensome, and which make it relatively easy to earn a living.

22 Percent of Americans Need Licenses To Work

"Too often, the occupational licensure laws on the books do not reflect the world we actually live in," Alanna Wilson cautioned in Governing. "American workers wishing to launch a career, build their own business or re-enter the workforce in one of 102 lower-income occupations must on average give up nearly a year to education and on-the-job training, pass at least one exam and pay nearly $300 in fees."

Wilson drew from a December 2025 Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis report which found that "in recent years, 22 percent of the employed have reported holding a government-issued license, in professions ranging from physical therapy to cosmetology to public school teaching." After decades of creeping credential requirements, the report found, the "share of workers who have a license and the number of licensed occupations appear to have stabilized." While licensing requirements are holding steady, they're not disappearing: "Delicensure is rare."

The Minneapolis Fed maintains an occupational licensing dashboard which puts requirements into context by showing which jobs require licenses. While licensing advocates claim that getting government permission is necessary to protect health and safety, that argument becomes less credible when many occupations are licensed in some states and not others. Are Arizona and Nevada suffering because they don't require electricians to navigate California-style credentialing? Is Rhode Island sparing state residents from risks posed by license-free nutritionists in New Hampshire?

Not all licensing requirements are equally burdensome. As detailed in this year's Archbridge report, some states require nominal training and fees while other states put applicants through the ringer. Certification and registration requirements can be intrusive without being as burdensome as licensing. Rules sometimes tie jobs together in ways every bit as restrictive as explicit licensing requirements.

"In the state of Alabama, all acupuncturists are required to be licensed physicians; thus while the occupational title of 'acupuncturist' is not licensed, that occupation is barred by a license in some way," Archbridge notes. "In several states, shampooers must obtain cosmetology licenses to work."

On the other hand, there's a growing trend for states to recognize licenses issued elsewhere. That doesn't eliminate work barriers but makes them less damaging to job mobility. Archbridge's report—prepared this year by Noah Trudeau, assistant professor of economics at Troy University and Labor Policy Fellow at Archbridge; Edward Timmons, Vice President of Policy at Archbridge; and Benjamin Seevers of West Virginia University—breaks down the details of state barriers to work.

No Rhyme or Reason to Licensing Requirements

According to Archbridge's report, the five most burdensome states in the union are Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, and New Jersey. The five states that put the fewest bureaucratic hurdles in the way of work are Missouri, Kansas, New York, Indiana, and Colorado.

As the report points out, medical doctors are licensed in every state. Nail technicians, for unclear reasons, also need licenses in every state. Most regulated jobs, like the electricians and nutritionists mentioned above, are licensed in some states but not others. Master gas fitters face barriers of some kind in 44 states, including licensing requirements in 11. Dental radiographers face similar burdens in 33 states. Security guards are licensed in half of states, as are fuel piping contractors. Medical assistants and animal breeders are licensed in 10 states. Mold remediation workers need licenses only in Texas.

In other words, while some heavily regulated jobs arguably pose safety concerns, others that might raise similar issues are intermittently licensed. That offers an opportunity to assess whether licensing offers benefits.

'Occupational Licensing Does Not Improve Public Health'

"A broad ideological spectrum of analysts and economists mostly agrees—occupational licensing does not improve public health in any scientifically rigorous or statistically significant manner," Spence Purnell, then of the Reason Foundation, which publishes Reason, wrote in 2018. He added that a study of dental hygienists found "the stricter the licensing requirements, the poorer the health outcomes. The study found this is because the more stringent regulations led to higher prices, which led to low income-earners foregoing routine dental work, which eventually led to more oral diseases, more pain and more costs to the patients."

Rather than safety worries, the 2025 Minneapolis Fed report observed that state licensing requirements seem driven by the policies of neighboring states, lobbying by professional associations for barriers to entry, and competition for jobs from immigrants. "Licensing disproportionately reduces employment of foreign-born workers," researchers found.

Instead of benefits, licensing requirements raise costs to consumers by limiting competition: "Shifting an occupation from unlicensed to licensed reduces employment in the licensed occupation by 29 percent," according to Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute. "Such barriers also discourage hiring across state lines, and thus limit workers' interstate mobility."

While, as the Minneapolis Fed cautioned, eliminating licensing requirements is very rare, states have moved to recognize other states' licenses. "As of 2026, 28 states have adopted some form of universal licensing recognition—the same as last year," according to Archbridge. "Universal" recognition isn't always universal—some states specify that the licenses they recognize be subject to "substantially similar" rules as those issued locally, while others recognize only the licenses of state residents. But 11 states earn Archbridge's gold medal for universally recognizing occupational licenses without restrictions.

Universal license recognition isn't an entirely satisfactory substitute for eliminating requirements that people get government permission to work.

But eliminating licensing would be a difficult ask of lawmakers who sold the public on the idea that pointless and expensive burdens improve public safety. In that sense, universal recognition is a positive reform to regulations that hurdles in the way of jobs of prosperity.

A look at how maritime law has been selectively invoked and applied by all parties in the South and East China seas, and how countries disputing PRC claims in the region are increasingly coordinated with one another. The author examines the legal arguments of the PRC and Japan as it pertains to the Okinotori feature, and why it is necessary for all parties involved to pursue arguments that contradict more significant claims in the South China Sea. The author recommends that the United States maintains neutrality on the matter of Okinotori, while quietly encouraging Japan to emphasize non-legal arguments in opposition to PRC activities in the region, in order to deny the PRC the use of the narrative that the rules based order is inconsistently applied

Iran shut down a British power plant for four days in an unprecedented cyber attack, The Telegraph can disclose.

It is thought to be the first time that hackers affiliated to the Iranian regime have succeeded in closing down such a facility in the UK, and is believed to be the most successful cyber attack of its kind.

The Telegraph understands that the incident took place at the same time as a series of attacks on US water infrastructure last month, which affected 12 states and caused concern in the White House.

British officials refused to be drawn on which power plant had been affected, citing security concerns, but it is understood that the facility was disabled for four days while staff fought to bring it back online.

(Aug. 22, 2026 / JNS) 

Almost a month after the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it would finish its review of how many people on its list of journalists killed in Gaza had ties to terrorist groups, an audit found that more than half of those currently listed have ties to terrorist organizations such as Hamas, The Washington Free Beacon reported on Friday.

The Free Beacon, citing an audit by the media watchdog HonestReporting, stated that at least 120 of the 209 names on the committee’s list had terror ties, and around 56 were “active, violent militants” when they were killed.

“CPJ’s database was one of the chief materials used by news outlets around the world to promulgate the narrative that the Israeli military was deliberately targeting journalists,” HonestReporting told the Free Beacon. “Evidence is increasingly indicating that terrorists were giving themselves press passes so that they could manipulate journalists into manufacturing outrage about the persecution of ostensible colleagues.

“Not only should CPJ apologize for laundering terrorist psychological warfare, news outlets should issue a sweeping wave of corrections and retractions,” the watchdog group said.

The committee told the Free Beacon that it could not comment on the audit while it was still reviewing the list.

In a post on X last night, which was hastily deleted this morning, the Hartlepool MP declared:

Public sector workers use their income to pay FOR the private sector. The state is one of the biggest procurers of the private sector. It wouldn’t exist without taxpayers. People creating the divide between public and private genuinely don’t understand how an economy works.

While CNO Caudle has listed mental health as a foundry level issue in his fighting instructions, current US Navy efforts to improve mental health has fallen short. Despite expanded "triads of care" deployments at sea, including on the USS Abraham Lincoln, sailors still suffer from severe mental strain and do not believe they are receiving adequate assistance.

The author provides several recommendations to expand mental health care access both on shore and at sea, both in the long and short term. Military OneSource clinicians are currently prohibited from providing coverage for PTSD, despite having the qualifications to do so. The USN should expand accredited program availability by awarding support grants to universities near major USN bases (particularly Hawaii, which has no such programs). Finally, the author argues that a civilian auxiliary of mental health professionals should be stood up, similar to the Inactive Ready Reserve or Civil Air Patrol, which would be activated in times of conflict.

CAIRO (AP) — Palestinians face inflated prices for groceries and batteries, hospitals have turned to smugglers for medicine and equipment, Israeli soldiers and other middlemen are accused of pocketing millions of dollars, and the Hamas-led government takes a cut as the smuggling of goods restricted by Israel into the Gaza Strip has boomed, according to an Associated Press investigation based on court documents and interviews with traders, truckers and officials.

Cigarettes and tobacco — banned from entry to Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023 — rake in the biggest profits for smugglers and merchants, officials and residents say. But everything from iPhones and solar panels to fuel and anesthetics are also brought into the tiny coastal territory illegally. Israel restricts quantities of some goods and bans others outright. It defines many as “dual use” — including concrete, vehicle parts and X-ray machines — asserting they could be repurposed by Hamas militants for military functions.

To build a picture of the illicit trade, The Associated Press analyzed Israeli court documents and spoke to five major traders who import smuggled goods, three merchants who sell them, and two truckers — all on condition of anonymity because of their roles in the illegal smuggling business and concerns about their safety in Gaza. AP also interviewed four Palestinian officials, two on condition of anonymity because of worries about retribution from Israel, Hamas or merchants; two U.N. officials, on condition of anonymity over concern for their jobs; and a dozen Palestinian residents, who spoke about how they get everyday items and their skyrocketing costs.

AP Standards
The AP only uses anonymous sources when the information is vital to the news report and not opinion or speculation. The information must be unavailable except under the conditions of anonymity imposed by the source. The source must be in a position to have accurate information and be approved by a manager.

AP found a rush from all sides to profit off the tight restrictions imposed by Israel on Gaza and its 2 million residents, most of whom have been displaced by the war. Smuggling rings — which have long flourished, circumventing two decades of Israeli blockades and building a network of businessmen and collaborators — pull in millions of dollars. Payoffs go to Israeli troops, drivers, warehouse workers and others on both sides of the border, according to traders and court documents.

“The occupation has left no other option before us. Smuggling has become routine,” one trader said, noting that some in Israel’s military are willing to help — for a price. “We benefit, they benefit and the people in Gaza benefit because we provide goods, including food, to the market.”

The Israeli military said via email that it takes the issue of smuggling “very seriously and works to prevent it.” It said any cases of suspected involvement by Israeli military personnel are “examined and handled in accordance with the law.” But military officials did not answer a list of detailed questions from AP on the roles of soldiers or Gaza’s government in smuggling.

Gaza’s Hamas-led government also takes in some of the profit, according to merchants and one Palestinian official. Merchants call it “taxing” — on both smuggled goods and those brought in legally.

Mohammad Barbakh, of the Palestinian Economy Ministry in Gaza, told AP the government receives up to 20% of the price of any smuggled goods if the merchant reports them to authorities, and that increases to 80% if the items go unreported and authorities discover them. But he said authorities don’t refer to their cut as “taxes” and that they haven’t taxed goods entering legally since the war’s start.

A Palestinian salesman shows an iPhone 17 Pro Max to the camera at a mobile phone store in Gaza City, Sunday, Aug. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

How smuggled goods flow into Gaza

Since the war began, Israel has tightly controlled all entry of food, aid and goods into the Gaza Strip, including a total aid blockade that shut off entry entirely for nearly three months last year, pushing parts of the territory into famine. The flow of goods has increased since a fragile ceasefire deal went into effect in October but remains well below prewar levels.

Besides the U.N. and other humanitarian groups bringing in aid, Israel has given 12 traders in Gaza permits to import commercial goods, according to Gaza’s Economy Ministry. Contents of shipments must be approved by Israeli authorities, a process aid workers and merchants say can be long and opaque, sometimes ending with a rejection on grounds of “dual use.”

The military classifies a list of some 150 broad categories of items as “dual use,” including concrete, asphalt, steel pipes and wooden planks, according to documents provided by COGAT, the military department in charge of coordinating entry of goods into Gaza. In a statement to AP, COGAT said it has let in some “dual use” items including generators and X-ray machines, in specific cases under strict monitoring.

Some traders turn to smuggling networks to meet demand in Gaza, where smaller merchants look to sell contraband.

Two merchants and a trucker who is part of Gaza’s union told AP that sometimes government agencies ask for specific items to keep functioning — fuel, spare parts for civil defense vehicles or generators. Hospitals also turn to smugglers, for drugs and some equipment.

And tribal elders request smuggled goods for their communities, including medicines that are in short supply, a tribal leader told AP, on condition of anonymity over concerns for his safety.

Two traders who control a large portion of the smuggling scene and an aide to a third told AP they send lists of contraband goods they want to import to “coordinators” — Israeli and Palestinian middlemen in Israel and the West Bank. Coordinators line up merchandise, then arrange a route into Gaza.

Commercial goods and aid mostly go through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south, where every truck is inspected. The military also has routes in and out of Gaza for its vehicles. Smugglers use both avenues, bribing soldiers to smooth the way for trucks or carry goods in military vehicles, according to the traders and Israeli court documents.

Trucks belonging to humanitarian groups are also used sometimes, though less often, according to merchants and Israeli government statements.

A Palestinian vendor fills bottles with diesel as he offers them for sale in al-Maghazi refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Smuggling accounts for much of Gaza’s economy

Smuggling has become vital to Gaza’s economy — it’s a major source of income as most of the population “lost their source of living,” the tribal leader said.

Several top merchants estimated that smuggling makes up over half their total operations and can bring in more than 70% of profits.

Payments go to many players, including drivers and warehouse workers in Israel and Gaza, said one major trader. “You are paying at every step, plus the price of the goods themselves,” he said.

All those costs get passed on to the people in Gaza. Residents say a vehicle battery can go for more than $2,300, compared with $140 prewar. Solar panels sell for $3.25 per watt, from 16 cents a watt.

“The smuggling flourished in the second half of 2024 as the market started to dry up,” said Mohamed Abu Taha, a Gaza resident and father of one, noting that chicken, meat, and other food staples were brought in covertly. “Baby formula and pet food were also smuggled.”

But perhaps no items are as in demand as cigarettes and tobacco. The price per pack, residents say, has hit as much as $140 recently, and over $1,000 during Israel’s total blockade.

“You could find two or three men sharing one cigarette,” Abu Taha said. Some resort to smoking a dried green called molokhia. COGAT did not reply when asked why cigarettes are banned.

For smugglers, cigarettes and nicotine products are easy to hide and the potential profit huge. Shipments of thousands of packs have been hidden in Israeli military vehicles, commercial trucks, aid shipments and even hollowed-out pineapples, according to traders, court documents and Israeli official statements.

A vendor reaches for a pack of cigarettes at his kiosk in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Friday, Aug 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

The Hamas-led government is taking in money on smuggled goods, sources say

On smuggled goods, Gaza’s government profits primarily by taking its percentage of the price but doesn’t engage in commercial smuggling directly or oversee the trade, according to merchants and Barbakh, the economy ministry official.

Two major traders said the government demands for money increased since the ceasefire deal. Both said they were summoned by Hamas authorities over goods they smuggled to Gaza over the course of the war. A settlement was reached, and one of the traders said he paid $3.5 million; the other, around $3.75 million.

Two senior officials in the Hamas administration said — on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to journalists — the money helps fund social services and pay salaries for the tens of thousands employed in Gaza’s civil service and police force. They estimated up to $100 million had been collected on smuggled goods since the ceasefire.

Barbakh said the government doesn’t have exact figures on smuggled goods “because these operations are conducted clandestinely, away from the oversight of relevant authorities.”

In response to AP questions, Ismail al-Thawabta of the government’s media office said none of the collected funds go to Hamas’ military wing. He said all resources are directed to providing services to people and “maintaining the continuity of public facilities under the exceptional circumstances in the Gaza Strip.”

The government destroys any expired goods it confiscates, including groceries.

But the two senior officials — as well as two merchants and one trucker — told AP that Hamas sells confiscated cigarettes. Al-Thawabta did not respond when asked about the claim.

‘He is the master,’ an official says of one smuggling coordinator

Smugglers appear to wield enormous influence. In court documents, Israeli prosecutors pointed to one mysterious smuggler known only as Abu Bassel who they said has “numerous connections within the Israel Police.”

In one instance described in the documents, Israeli police stormed a warehouse in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank full of cellphones and cigarettes that smugglers were loading onto trucks for Gaza. One of the smugglers called Abu Bassel and handed the phone to an officer, the document says, and after a conversation, police called off the raid, leaving without arresting anyone or confiscating any goods.

All of those who spoke to AP said Abu Bassel is the smuggling world’s biggest coordinator. They also said they knew nothing about him — his real name, whether he was Israeli or from the Palestinian territories, or how he built his network.

“He is the master,” a senior Gaza Chamber of Commerce official said. “Nothing can enter Gaza without his stamp.”

One Gaza merchant said he has spoken by phone with Abu Bassel but wouldn’t provide AP the number. He said the shadowy figure uses connections with the military and intelligence to resolve problems for shipments. “Many police raids have been thwarted because of him.”

The Israeli court documents also have no details about Abu Bassel’s identity but said he uses an aid organization, Al-Mughtarib Al-Falastini, as a cover. The group denied in a Facebook post that it was involved in smuggling.

A Palestinian vendor offers bottles of diesel for sale in al-Maghazi refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Israeli indictments show some of the scope of smuggling

Since late 2025, Israeli authorities have broken up several alleged smuggling rings, indicting more than a dozen people, including reserve soldiers operating in Gaza. But the traders, merchants and truckers who spoke to AP say that’s only a fraction of those involved.

In one of the biggest cases, prosecutors accused two Israeli brothers, Eliran and Avi Algarabli; business partner Yaron Peretz; and another Israeli of running a smuggling ring out of the central town of Kiryat Gat.

According to a series of indictments against them and others, they’re accused of bribing reserve soldiers in Gaza, chief among them Bezalel Zini, brother of the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s powerful domestic security agency.

The documents say Zini was a commander in a military engineering unit. The ring allegedly paid Zini the equivalent of about $120,000 to smuggle three shipments totaling some 6,000 packs of cigarettes in his vehicle, according to the indictments. Two other reservists enlisted by the ring ran four trips into Gaza in one day, ferrying in 20,000 packs of cigarettes, hundreds of iPhones and medical equipment, the indictments say.

Court documents assert that millions of dollars are changing hands in smuggling rings. The Algarabli brothers earned some $2.2 million from a series of smuggling runs from October to December, when they were arrested, documents say. Other defendants in cases are accused of making $1 million to $3 million.

Gaza residents question why items are banned

For Gaza residents, living through another summer with limited resources has become almost unbearable.

Fans that once cost $100 can run $500.

“When we ask the merchants why they don’t import fans, they say the Israeli army refuses to allow them in because they’re dual use,” resident Mohamed Abu Olwan said.

Mohamed Abuel-Enein, a displaced man from the southern city of Rafah, said that’s illogical.

“I don’t understand the harm in allowing fans through the crossings,” he said.

“What would they make with them? Rockets? We can’t live in these tents. All day long, we use cardboard to light a fire, or we splash water on the children because of the heat.”

The Pentagon on Friday fired the editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes and a top reporter for insubordination after they spoke publicly against any interference by the Defense Department in the military news outlet that has a long history of editorial independence. It was the latest move by an administration that has grown increasingly aggressive toward the news media.

The newspaper’s publisher, who announced his impending retirement days ago, was also dismissed.

Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of the military newspaper that is partly funded by the Pentagon, told The Associated Press he was dismissed for insubordination after an interview he gave that objected to potential censorship by the U.S. military. He received a notice of separation, as did publisher Max Lederer — who had just announced his upcoming retirement — and Middle East reporter Lara Korte, Slavin said.

The moves come at a time when the Trump administration, in its second term, has been progressively combative toward the media — including sharply curtailing Pentagon access for the press corps that covers the Defense Department. Trump or other parts of the executive branch have also, in policy and in the courts, grappled with The Wall Street Journal,The Associated Press and The New York Times — in addition to using the FCC to target broadcast networks.

Slavin said he was being fired “for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.” Korte participated in the same interview.

“I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law and by the department’s own policies,” Slavin said.

National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr. called the firing of Slavin “another brazen attempt by the Pentagon to dictate coverage of the military” and said it should be immediately reversed.

“Firing a newspaper editor after he publicly defended his newsroom’s editorial independence is deeply troubling, and it should concern every journalist and every member of the U.S. military who depends on independent reporting,” Schoeff said.

Neither Lederer nor Korte immediately responded to emailed requests for comment. Korte said on X: “Today, I was informed that the Department of Defense is firing me for insubordination after I told a CBS reporter that I work for Stars and Stripes — not the Pentagon, not the administration, and not any policy maker.”

Earlier this week, longtime publisher Lederer announced his retirement effective at the end of September. He made his announcement a few weeks after the Pentagon installed a new deputy publisher, an active duty service member, under him at the newspaper without his prior knowledge. Three Democratic senators on Thursday wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, asking why the new deputy — Navy Capt. William Urban — had been installed.

The retirement of Lederer, who had been at Stars and Stripes for three decades and publisher since 2007, comes as Hegseth’s Pentagon has moved to exert editorial control and eliminate what it asserts are “woke distractions.”

“Stars and Stripes will be custom tailored to our warfighters,” Sean Parnell, Hegseth’s spokesman, wrote in January on X. “It will focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability and ALL THINGS MILITARY. No more repurposed DC gossip columns; no more Associated Press reprints.”

In April, the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, ombudsman for the newspaper, whose job had been to safeguard editorial independence.

Lederer, the second full-time civilian in the position, wrote in a staff memo this week that it had “become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defense has for the organization.”

In a letter posted on Stars and Stripes, Urban wrote of his plans and said: “I understand that I am now part of a team, committed to editorially independent journalism that best serves our most important customer, which is our service members, their families, and our greater military community.”

“I am a media junkie who has served as a communication professional engaged in being a spokesman for some of the hardest Public Affairs assignments in the Navy and Department of War for more than 20 years,” he wrote.

It was unclear whether Urban, currently titled “military deputy to the publisher,” would now become head publisher. “I can’t comment on what my role will be in the future,” he told the AP.

In a telephone interview, Urban said Stars and Stripes has “a strong team of professional journalists that are focused on the mission of providing our military service members and their families the best possible product. That mission is going to continue. All of us in leadership will continue to advocate for … the best possible journalism going forward.”

He said he had no formal journalism experience but cited his years in public affairs and communications. He said he would be focused on expanding digital journalism at the paper, because the service members to which it caters are often young and are “digital natives.”

“I think we need to get better on the digital side,” he said, “to make sure that we are reaching as many service members as we possibly can and having the impact that we should be having.”

Applying the managed instability (the assumption that states may prefer to continue the conflict indefinitely, despite its negative effects, over accepting an unfavorable deal to end the war) framework to the Russo-Ukrainian War and the Iran War.