"A year of combat"—this is how Israel's new Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, described 2025 at a conference organized by the Israeli ministry of defense.
The exact sentence, translated from Hebrew, was: "The year 2025 will continue to be a year of combat." The word ‘continue’ is crucial, suggesting that Israel will resume its wars, despite ceasefire agreements signed with the Lebanese government in November and Palestinian groups in January. In other words, it seems that Zamir is signaling that Israel will reopen these two fronts, even in the face of ceasefire deals.
Despite Israel's insatiable appetite for war, it is hard to imagine what the Israeli army could achieve through renewed violence when it has already failed to accomplish its objectives in nearly 14 months in Lebanon and over 15 months in Gaza.
Patricia Ryan Nixon has been repeatedly described as the most enigmatic of the post-World War II First Ladies. Preternaturally poised, attractively dressed and coiffed, relentlessly cheerful, and an indefatigable campaigner, she appears to have never put a foot wrong in her public life. For all these things, she earned the sobriquet “Plastic Pat.” Even as her heart must have been shattered, she stoically stood by as her husband endured the humiliation of being forced to resign the office of the President of the United States – an office she had been so instrumental in his winning twice. Since she was almost pathologically private, it’s good to see a modern biography of her.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s recent executive order mandating that nearly all state employees return to the office full-time—five days a week by March 17, 2025—has ignited a debate over its potential to disrupt workforce retention and efficiency. The order, which marks a decisive shift from the remote and hybrid arrangements adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, is aimed at optimizing the use of state-owned facilities and ensuring that public services are delivered in person.
- by Greg Palast
- for the Hartmann Report
- January 24, 2025
Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.
And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.
Stay with me and I’ll give you the means, methods and, most important, the key calculations.
The February 2025 Free Press Salon was held over Zoom on February 8. This is what happened.
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Free Press Board member Mark Stansbery started out the February 2025 salon by leading a discussion on the topic of Black History Month, highlighting the importance of understanding the struggle for liberation and recognition.
The cognitive status of federal officials needs to be addressed. Too many of them manifest some degree of impairment and are not fit to serve in government. There is little question that our last president, Joe Biden, was intellectually diminished, and may have been suffering from a neurologic disorder. His speech was hesitant and slow when he wasn’t reading, he had difficulty answering questions, and his gait was abnormal. When he ran for president in 2020, he was more intact and deteriorated over the four-year course of his term. Biden is now 82 years old.
Our current president, Donald Trump, is 78 and will be 82 when he finishes his term. Trump at times misnames people and places when speaking and uses the wrong words occasionally. Some of his actions are impulsive, like his idea to take over Gaza, and some appear contradictory. It is unclear at this point whether he is mildly cognitively impaired, has a personality disorder, or possibly both. As people age, personality quirks, present when younger, tend to become more pronounced, particularly if cognitive difficulties have emerged.