The White House National Security Council reportedly sought to keep the decision to stop supplying U.S. weapons that Israel could use to launch an all-out assault on Rafah out of the public eye for several days until after President Biden delivered a public address for Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

Biden signed off on the pause in an order conveyed last week to the Pentagon, The Associated Press reported, citing U.S. officials who were not authorized to comment on the matter. But the NSC wanted to keep the decision quiet until after it had a better understanding of the scope of Israel’s intensified military operations in Rafah and Biden delivered a long-planned speech on Tuesday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. The shipment was supposed to consist of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs, a senior U.S. administration official told the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. 

The focus of U.S. concern was the larger explosives and how they could be used in a dense urban area.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Biden said he would halt some shipments of U.S. weapons to Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a major invasion of the city of Rafah, the last major Hamas stronghold in the Gaza Strip. It was the first time Biden said he was prepared to condition American weaponry on Israel’s action in the seven-month-long war launched in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. 

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem.” 

Biden’s administration in April began reviewing future transfers of military assistance as Netanyahu’s government appeared to move closer toward an invasion of Rafah, despite months of opposition from the White House. An official told the AP the decision to pause the shipment was made last week and no final decision had been made yet on whether to proceed with the shipment at a later date.

BIDEN VOWS TO WITHHOLD WEAPONS FROM ISRAEL IF NETANYAHU GOES FORWARD WITH RAFAH INVASION

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House on Thursday about the AP report but did not immediately hear back. 

U.S. officials had declined for days to comment on the halted transfer, word of which came as Biden on Tuesday described U.S. support for Israel as “ironclad, even when we disagree.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, in an interview with Israeli Channel 12 TV news, said the decision to pause the shipment was “a very disappointing decision, even frustrating.” He suggested the move stemmed from political pressure on Biden from Congress, the U.S. campus protests and the upcoming election.

The decision also drew a sharp rebuke from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who said they only learned about the military aid holdup from press reports, despite assurances from the Biden administration that no such pauses were in the works. The Republicans called on Biden in a letter to swiftly end the blockage, saying it “risks emboldening Israel’s enemies,” and to brief lawmakers on the nature of the policy reviews.

Biden has faced pressure from some on the left – and condemnation from the critics on the right who say Biden has moderated his support for an essential Mideast ally.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier Wednesday confirmed the weapons delay, telling the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense that the U.S. paused “one shipment of high payload munitions.”

“We’re going to continue to do what’s necessary to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself,” Austin said. “But that said, we are currently reviewing some near-term security assistance shipments in the context of unfolding events in Rafah.”

President Biden talks to House Speaker Mike Johnson during the Holocaust remembrance ceremony at the U.S. Capitol on May 7, 2024. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“If we stop weapons necessary to destroy the enemies of the state of Israel at a time of great peril, we will pay a price,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said, raising his voice with Austin. “This is obscene. It is absurd. Give Israel what they need to fight the war they can’t afford to lose.”

Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a Biden ally, said in a statement the pause on big bombs must be a “first step.”

BIDEN WARNS NETANYAHU AGAINST RAFAH INVASION AS ISRAEL PREPARES FOR ACTION

“Our leverage is clear,” Sanders said. “Over the years, the United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel. We can no longer be complicit in Netanyahu’s horrific war against the Palestinian people.”

Austin, meanwhile, told lawmakers that “it’s about having the right kinds of weapons for the task at hand.”

“A small diameter bomb, which is a precision weapon, that’s very useful in a dense, built-up environment,” he said, “but maybe not so much a 2,000-pound bomb that could create a lot of collateral damage.” He said the U.S. wants to see Israel do “more precise” operations.

Israeli troops on Tuesday seized control of Gaza’s vital Rafah border crossing in what the White House described as a limited operation that stopped short of the full-on Israeli invasion of the city that Biden has repeatedly warned against, most recently in a Monday call with Netanyahu.

President Biden is welcomed as he arrives to honor the memory of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, at the Capitol, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Israel has ordered the evacuation of 100,000 Palestinians from the city. Israeli forces have also carried out what it describes as “targeted strikes” on the eastern part of Rafah.

Privately, concern has mounted inside the White House about what’s unfolding in Rafah, according to the AP, but publicly administration officials have stressed that they did not think the operations had defied Biden’s warnings against a widescale operation in the city. The State Department is separately considering whether to approve the continued transfer of Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which place precision guidance systems onto bombs, to Israel, but the review didn’t pertain to imminent shipments.

Itamar Yaar, former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council and CEO of Commanders for Israel’s Security, a group of former senior Israeli security officials, said the U.S. move is largely symbolic, but a sign of trouble and could become more of a problem if it is sustained.

“It’s not some kind of American embargo on American munitions support, but I think it’s some kind of diplomatic message to Mr. Netanyahu that he needs to take into consideration American interests more than he has over the last few months,” he said, adding it’s “a kind of a signal, a ‘be careful.’”

The U.S. dropped the 2,000-pound bomb sparingly in its long war against the Islamic State terrorist group. Israel, by contrast, has used the bomb frequently in the seven-month Gaza war. Experts told the AP the use of the weapon, in part, has helped drive the Palestinian casualty count that the Hamas-run health ministry puts at more than 34,000 dead, though it does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Trump, reelected, will subvert the law — first by freeing the Jan. 6 insurrectionists

Of all the promises that Donald Trump has made for a second term as president, he’s all but certain to fulfill one if he’s reelected: pardoning most, if not all, of the rioters who’ve been arrested, pleaded guilty or been convicted by judges or juries for their roles in besieging the nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and injuring roughly 140 police defenders.

That’s nearly 1,400 people — “unbelievable patriots” all, in Trump’s noxious telling — who tried to overturn a free and fair election.

Most of the former president’s other campaign vows — deporting millions who’ve long lived in this country, deploying federal troops against protesters, spending government funds at whim and gutting the civil service, for example — can be stopped by Congress or the federal courts. Many likely would be.

A president’s pardon power, however, is virtually unlimited, as the Supreme Court held in 1886. And Trump, though not alone among presidents in this, has abused that power before.

What could be more abusive or obscene than unilaterally absolving the would-be insurrectionists, nearly 900 currently, who have been fairly prosecuted and sentenced according to the rule of law that a president is sworn to uphold?

Yet, like so many of his outrageous statements, Trump’s pledge to wipe the criminals’ records clean and spring jailed “hostages” on “the first day we get into office” doesn’t shock as it should. It’s just Trump being Trump, shooting off his mouth.

But this vow isn’t like the implausible claims that he’d build a 2,000-mile border wall and Mexico would pay for it, or that he’d ban all Muslims from the country. A reelected Trump could and likely will make good on the vow that would erase accountability en masse for the fatal, antidemocratic violence on Jan. 6.

He’s committed. Since his first 2024 campaign rally in Texas more than a year ago, Trump typically opens the events with a recording of the so-called J6 Prison Choir, made up of insurrectionist inmates at the D.C. jail, singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” over his taped recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Each time, Trump salutes and reiterates his pardon promise. (The Washington Post identified some of the orange-clad choristers in a jailhouse video as defendants charged with assaulting police, including Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died a day later.)

As Trump tells the rallygoers, “Our people love those people.”

@jackiekcalmes

Ohio’s Republican Attorney General is pushing back against critics after warning that anti-Israel protesters wearing masks are facing potential prison time due to state law and XXX

“The First Amendment protects you and saying whatever it is you have to say. Even hateful things are protected by the First Amendment,” Ohio AG Dave Yost told Fox News Digital this week. “The First Amendment, though, was always designed to be a shield against the government. It’s not a sword against your fellow students and they have rights too. Your First Amendment rights are limited by their right to be able to go to school, use the library, get the value of their education and the tuition that they paid for.”

In a letter sent on Monday, Yost warned university presidents of a historic state law that could mean masked anti-Israel demonstrators on college campuses could face felony charges. 

“The law is an old law,” Yost told Fox News Digital. “It goes back to the 20th century, and it was originally designed to make sure that people like Ku Klux Klan were held accountable, that, of course, the reason that the Ku Klux Klan wore hoods and masks over their faces is so that they couldn’t be identified because they were committing crimes. So the General Assembly in Ohio said, okay, you can wear a mask, you can wear a hood, that’s fine. But if you commit a crime with two or more other people, while you are masking yourself, we’re going to see that as a heightened kind of crime, a worse kind of thing, because you’re consciously doing this and trying to hide your identity because you know you’re doing something wrong.”

UCLA FINALLY ASKS FOR FBI HELP — BUT TO INVESTIGATE PRO-ISRAEL SUPPORTERS

In his letter, Yost warned Ohio universities that “violation of this ‘anti-disguise’ law is a fourth-degree felony punishable by between six and 18 months of imprisonment.”

“Those guilty may also pay up to $5,000 in fines and spend up to five years on community control. (See Ohio Revised Code 3761.99.) This punishment is significantly greater than misdemeanors that typically follow minor infractions that accompany student protests.”

Students and outside activists have routinely worn face coverings with some blaming the coronavirus and others saying they are afraid of reprisals.

“They’ll tell you that in interviews,” Yost said. “I’ve seen it on numerous reports, they’re afraid of, quote unquote, reprisals. Well, reprisals from what? The university administrations are all in on this woke, anti-Israel, pro-Palestine, rhetoric. They don’t have to worry about being thrown out of school for expressing their views. But reprisals from whom? Well, reprisals from the criminal justice authorities who enforce laws like arson laws like trespassing and that’s exactly what this heightened scrutiny is all about.”

PARENTS, STUDENTS LIVID AS COLLEGES MOVE CLASSES ONLINE AMID ANTI-ISRAEL VIOLENCE: ‘VERY UNSETTLING’

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost speaks at the Conservative Political Action Coalition annual meeting at Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland, United States on March 04, 2023.  (Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Yost’s letter, which he told Fox News Digital was simply a reminder to those who intend to break the law that prison time could come along with that, sparked criticism from some on the left including Ohio Democratic State Sen. Bill DeMora, who issued a press release denouncing Yost as “disgusting” and a “pigheaded, blatant misread of the law.”

“I hope that Dave Yost takes his letter and shoves it where the sun don’t shine!” DeMora wrote.

“I think they protest too much,” Yost told Fox News Digital in response to the criticism. “All the letter does is say, hey, don’t become an accidental felon. Ohio has a law here and incidentally it’s not even implicated unless you’re committing a criminal act, another criminal act with two or more people while you’re wearing a mask. I don’t understand how advising somebody about how to be a law abiding citizen, is intimidating or disgusting. I think Bill DeMora protests too much, but then he’s Democratic operative, a member of the DNC Central Committee, and everything’s a political game to him. We have a society here that needs to run according to the rules and to allow freedom to everybody.”

Yost told Fox News Digital he has been reaching out to the Jewish community in his state and recently met with Israel’s deputy counsel to find ways to ensure that Jewish people are adequately protected.

“I am concerned about the degeneration of our ability to protect all citizens. We need to protect that right to protest. We need to protect the rights of the other students who are not protesting but are actually trying to study and learn. We need to protect the rights of the communities around the universities. And, the failure to take firm, fair action to enforce the laws that are designed to protect all of us is really concerning. It’s part of the lawlessness starting to sweep the land from things like the border and failure to enforce that to the lawless acts of the Biden administration to usurp Congress and write laws by fiat.”

If he could say one thing to the anti-Israel protesters engaging in violence while wearing masks, Yost said that he would remind them that their heroes from the past didn’t hide their identities.

A protester holds a sign during a march on Columbia University campus in support of a protest encampment supporting Palestinians. (REUTERS/David Dee Delgado)

“I’d tell them your heroes from the 1960s didn’t wear masks,” Yost said. 

“Martin Luther King Jr and John Lewis weren’t in masks when they walked in Selma. Own your expression. Own the dictates of your conscience and don’t break the law.”