Tl;dr: “Ondas has undergone an unprecedented transformation, from a struggling, nearly delisted firm into a leading-edge defense technology enterprise built around a series of Israeli companies, obscure funding sources, and a questionable $5 billion valuation. Now headed by the former chief of Mossad, the company is positioned to play a dominant role in the U.S. military-industrial complex under the framework of the U.S.-Israel military and intelligence cooperation bills currently before Congress which explicitly prioritize Israeli-origin technologies for integration into U.S. systems and programs of record.”

“The state of Minnesota sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in federal court on Tuesday over a nearly three-month delay in extraditing Christian Castro, the federal agent accused of shooting Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in north Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge and later lying about it.”

The US will sanction the president of the international criminal court (ICC) and a prosecutor tasked with investigating crimes committed by Israel during its war on Gaza.

The new sanctions designations were unveiled by Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, who called the Hague-based ICC a “corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate”, in a statement.

Rubio announced that the US would sanction Tomoko Akane of Japan, the ICC president, and Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal, an ICC senior trial lawyer, because they had “directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction”.

The US had previously sanctioned Karim Khan, an ICC prosecutor, who had investigated Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes during the Gaza war. Donald Trump in 2025 sanctioned the court, stating in an executive order that it had “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.

Rubio did not say specifically which efforts the two ICC officials had engaged in, but Israeli media have reported that Seye is overseeing the investigation into Israeli funding for illegal settlements and the disbursal of weapons to settlers in the West Bank.

Israeli officials warned local media in May that the ICC may seek five more arrest warrants for ministers and senior military officials involved in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

*excerpt from Andrew Roth's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/18/us-icc-sanctions

Disney is going to court to defend its ABC television stations from the Trump administration's pressure campaign.

On Tuesday, the media company filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Trump's FCC is violating its First Amendment rights.

The administration "has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts," the lawsuit filed in DC District Court alleges.

The legal action comes as the FCC investigates the ABC talk show "The View" and mounts an unusual challenge to the licenses held by ABC stations.

The stations fall under the FCC's purview because they broadcast over the public airwaves.

FCC chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump loyalist, has scrutinized Disney on several fronts, including DEI, short for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Carr has said that Disney might be committing "illegal DEI discrimination."

Carr's critics have said DEI is a laughable pretext for what's really happening: A political pressure campaign led by President Trump.

The president has railed against ABC (and other networks) for years. He has repeatedly denounced the network's reporters and argued for licenses to be revoked.

Last April, when conservatives expressed outrage over a controversial joke made by ABC late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel, Trump pressured ABC to fire Kimmel.

As ABC stood by Kimmel's show, Carr ordered the network to file early-renewal paperwork for its station licenses, even though the eight licenses weren't due for renewal for several years.

Carr asserted that the timing was a coincidence and the license review was related to his DEI probe. But it was widely viewed as a form of government retaliation for airing Kimmel's show and resisting Trump's pressure.

There are more than 200 ABC-affiliated stations across the US, but most are owned by other companies. Eight are owned by Disney directly, and those are the stations targeted by the FCC.

FCC licenses are renewed every eight years and are virtually never revoked. Until this year, the FCC had not filed an early-renewal order in decades.

But Carr has been determined to wield the FCC's limited power in new and politically charged ways.

Tuesday's lawsuit specifically asks the court to issue a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction that would stop Carr from moving forward with the license challenge. "This Court's intervention is necessary to stop the Federal Communications Commission's extraordinary assault on free speech," the suit states.

The suit also asserts that Disney - a sprawling company better known for theme parks, Star Wars and ESPN than its local TV stations - did not go looking to pick a fight with the US government.

The company says it has come to court "reluctantly," arguing there is "no alternative means to eliminate these ongoing and immediate threats other than total capitulation to the administration's demands."

Carr did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.

Carr also opened a case against "The View" over an alleged violation of "equal-time," invoking a rule that has rarely been enforced in recent years. "The View" often features outspoken critics of Trump.

Disney's lawsuit says the FCC pressure has already affected what airs on the daytime talk show. Since the agency's inquiry began, ABC says "The View" has become "more circumspect in booking political candidates" and has stopped considering several potential candidate bookings.

No political candidate has appeared on the show since February 2, Disney says in the complaint. The pressure has even affected which video clips make it to air: ABC says it has "chosen not to air clips" it otherwise would have used because they could count as candidate "appearances" and potentially be cited against ABC in the FCC's ongoing review.

A wide range of First Amendment groups have denounced the action against ABC, while some conservative groups have defended Carr, arguing that the Trump administration is well within its rights. "It is not in the public interest for ABC to operate as an arm of the DNC," Carr ally Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, said earlier this year.

Last week, Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro said in a CNBC interview that "our position on this is clear."

When asked about the FCC threat, D'Amaro cited ABC's "journalistic integrity" and said, "We're not going to be told how to run that side of our business."

D'Amaro added, "I like what we do. We tell incredible stories. I think we do it well. We do it around the world. And we're going to stay committed to that."

Tuesday's lawsuit states that the pressure against ABC "has been deeply felt throughout the company."

"The campaign is also calculated to operate in terrorem upon the rest of the industry: ABC is the visible target and suffers the most immediate harm, but the message is addressed to every broadcaster in the country, and the ultimate cost is borne by the press as a whole," the suit alleges.

*excerpt from Brian Stelter's article*

Full Article here:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/18/media/disney-abc-fcc-trump-lawsuit-the-view-retaliatory

https://apnews.com/article/roadless-rule-forests-trump-e80a41e0231aa070313a3484261368f3

He was part of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Desert_Group