A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – A federal appeals court handed U.S. President Donald Trump his first victory in an effort to ban many transgender Americans from serving in the military, lifting a court’s injunction against the new policy.

The February 2018 plan crafted by former defense secretary Jim Mattis, at the president’s request, appears less restrictive than the blanket ban initially promised by Trump because it allows transgender people to serve if they do so “in their biological sex,” a panel of three judges in Washington ruled Friday.

The ban still can’t be immediately implemented, however, because injunctions from several other courts remain in place. In November, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to conduct an expedited review of the cases and to preempt rulings by appeals courts. [ Source: Bloomberg (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said Sunday that the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan – the “deal of the century” – will be presented “within the next several months.”

The comments came during National Security Advisor John Bolton’s visit to Israel this week. Bolton arrived on Saturday evening, and is scheduled to meet Netanyahu Sunday night. He was last in Israel in August, and this will be his second visit to the country since taking over as National Security Advisor in April. He will travel from Israel to Turkey for talks there expected as well to focus on the situation in Syria.

“It is not clear in which century Trump intends to announce his ‘deal of the century,'” Meretz leader Tamar Zandberg said in response to Friedman’s announcement Sunday.” But we do not need to wait for anyone in order to begin the most important thing for the future of the State of Israel: a peace accord with the Palestinians. Netanyahu has already been negligent for a decade while not starting negotiations, and it is sad that Trump’s way to help him in the elections is to delay announcing his plan, instead of accelerating it.” [ Source: Jerusalem Post (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Recent precision strikes and coordinated attacks targeting the Islamic State’s media cells have diminished the group’s communications capabilities by nearly half in less than six months, according to the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Combined Joint Task Force–Operation Inherent Resolve announced Sunday that strikes conducted by Operation Roundup between Dec. 23 and 29 hit Islamic State fighters, media cells, and a general service building in Syria’s Middle Euphrates River Valley region. As a result, the coalition said the Islamic State’s communications capabilities have been reduced by approximately 45 percent since September.

“The degradation of ISIS in both Iraq and Syria is directly reflected in the decline of their media operations,” Brig. Gen. David Doyle, the coalition’s director of operations, said in a statement. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – President Donald Trump threatened to keep the U.S. government partially shut for months or years on Friday after he and Democratic leaders failed to resolve their dispute over Trump’s request for $5.6 billion to build a wall on the Mexican border.

After Democratic congressional leaders refused Trump’s requests at a meeting in the White House Situation Room, the Republican president threatened to take the controversial step of declaring a national emergency and building the wall without congressional approval.

Trump is withholding his support for a bill that would fully fund the government until he secures money for the wall. As a result, around 800,000 public workers have been unpaid, with about a quarter of the federal government closed for two weeks. [ Source: Reuters (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney says he hopes more progress can be made Sunday in negotiations on how to end a partial government shutdown, but indicated that the two sides are still far apart on the issue of a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mr. Mulvaney said that congressional and administration negotiators couldn’t even get a grasp of basic definitions during a Saturday session.

“The discussion immediately turned to a bunch of technical requirements or technical requests that the Democrats were asking for for the first time ever in these negotiations, so I think this is going to drag on a lot longer,” Mr. Mulvaney said in an interview airing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think that’s, that’s by, by intention.” [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – A key al Qaeda operative linked to the planning and execution of the deadly 2000 attack on the American warship USS Cole was killed during a U.S. airstrike in Yemen, military officials confirmed Sunday.

Jamal al-Badawi, a “legacy” al Qaeda member was killed while traveling through Marib governate by an American strike, U.S. Central Command spokesman Capt. Bill Urban said in a statement. He did not confirm whether al-Badawi was killed by a drone strike or by U.S. fighter aircraft, or whether other members of the terror group were also killed in the attack, roughly 70 miles from the Yemeni capital of Sana’a.

The slain al Qaeda terrorist was likely a senior member of the group’s Yemeni cell, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or AQAP — which remains the organization’s best-funded and most dangerous terror cell in the world. [ Source (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on the U.S to recognize Israeli sovereignty of the disputed Golan Heights.

Netanyahu announced that he and Bolton would visit the region on Monday, weather permitting.

Standing next to U.S. national security adviser John Bolton before a working dinner in Jerusalem, Netanyahu says: “When you’re there, you’ll be able to understand perfectly why we’ll never leave the Golan Heights, and why it’s important that all countries recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.” [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Sen. Lindsey Graham said that after speaking with President Trump this weekend, it’s clear Mr. Trump is holding firm in his demands for border wall money as part of a deal to end a partial government shutdown.

“It was pretty clear to me that we’re never going to have a deal unless we get a wall as part of it,” Mr. Graham, South Carolina Republican, said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Mr. Graham said Republicans are stuck negotiating with people who want to “abolish” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and who accuse anyone who supports a wall as being racist. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Iran is set to deploy a fleet of warships to the western Atlantic Ocean in the coming months, a naval commander said Friday, in an apparent bid to counter the presence of a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

Rear-Admiral Touraj Hassani told the state-run IRNA news site the flotilla of warships would depart for the Atlantic in March, and the mission would take several months.

“The Atlantic Ocean is a long route, and it is likely that this Iranian mission would take five months to complete,” he said. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to depart on a tour of the Middle East next week in a bid to galvanize regional leaders to confront Iran and remind allies that the United States is not disappearing from region amid the Trump administration’s decision to pull American troops out of Syria and possibly Afghanistan, according to senior State Department officials.

Pompeo will depart next week on his way to meet with government leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait.

The goal of the trip is to show regional allies that the “United States is not leaving the Middle East,” according to senior State Department officials who previewed the secretary’s itinerary on Friday. [ Source: Washington Free Beacon (Read More…) ]

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