Another Israeli Election

Happy Thursday! Dan Snyder, the scandal-ridden Washington Commanders owner for the past 23 years, announced yesterday he’d hired a team of bankers to potentially consider a sale of the team.

Look out: If they can force a billionaire to sell his football team for a multi-billion dollar profit after decades of allegedly fostering a toxic workplace environment, stealing from other teams, and hiring private investigators to to dig up “dirt” on his colleagues, imagine what they could do to YOU.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Members of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee approved a fourth consecutive 75-basis-point interest rate hike on Wednesday, raising the central bank’s target federal funds rate to a range between 3.75 percent and 4 percent—the highest level since early 2008. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters in a post-announcement press conference that he anticipates additional rate hikes “will be appropriate,” but the size of those increases could begin to tail off. “The question of when to moderate the pace of increases is now much less important than the question of how high to raise rates and how long to keep monetary policy restrictive,” Powell said.
• Representatives of the Ethiopian government and rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front formally agreed on Wednesday—after a week of peace talks in South Africa mediated by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo—to reimplement a ceasefire and bring an end to the violence and devastation wrought by the warring factions over the past two years. A ceasefire had previously been agreed to in March, but it was broken after five months with both sides accusing the other of making the first move.
• Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, took a more sympathetic tone on Wednesday with the protesters who have been demonstrating against the regime for nearly two months. “These are our own kids and we don’t have any dispute with them,” he said, opting instead to cast the protests as “hybrid warfare” on the part of the U.S., Europe, and Israel.
• After talks between Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Russia announced it will resume cooperation with a UN-brokered agreement allowing Ukraine to continue to export grain through the Black Sea corridor despite the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
• Outgoing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has asked supporters protesting his loss in Sunday’s election to stop blocking roads, saying the tactic was not a “legitimate” means of protest. While Bolsonaro has not yet openly conceded the race to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his administration said it is cooperating with the transition of power.

Israel’s Far-Right Ascends

On a recent visit to the United States, Israeli President Isaac Herzog gave remarks to a gathering of American Jewish leaders. “The friendship and close bond between Israel and the United States is unbreakable and it is a value that we must all cherish and work for,” Herzog told them. “May I also add we must respect each other’s democracies.”

During Herzog’s trip, Biden administration officials had reportedly warned him about their reluctance to work with certain far-right candidates. In that context, Times of Israel editor David Horovitz wrote, Herzog’s comments sounded like a circuitous plea: “Don’t ice us out if the extremists win.”