Critics see the no-confidence vote as part of broader moves to weaken judicial checks on Netanyahu’s government.

Israel’s cabinet has passed a vote of no confidence against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, the country’s justice minister has said, in a first step in the removal of yet another vocal critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government.

The vote on Sunday comes just two days after the government dismissed Ronen Bar, the head of Shin Bet, the country’s internal security agency – a decision later frozen by the Supreme Court.

Baharav-Miara, the country’s most senior legal official, is accused of “inappropriate behaviour” and of “ongoing substantial differences of opinion between the government and the attorney general, which prevents effective collaboration”, according to the prime minister’s office.

The attorney general, who did not attend the cabinet meeting, refuted the claims and accused the government of trying to operate above the law. The vote of no confidence aimed at gaining “limitless power, as part of a wider move to weaken the judicial branch” and to “promote loyalty to the government”, she said in a letter sent to the cabinet ahead of the vote.

The vote does not translate into her dismissal yet. A committee will review the arguments and hold a hearing to consider the case. Should the committee fail to support her removal, the Supreme Court could still block it.

The attempted dismissal of both the Shin Bet chief and the attorney general has attracted thousands of protesters who say the unprecedented moves are a threat to democracy and part of a crackdown on the few remaining voices critical of Netanyahu.

The prime minister, meanwhile, has cited an “ongoing lack of trust” in Bar, who is expected to testify on April 8. Netanyahu has insisted it is up to the government to decide who will head Shin Bet.

Critics say the prime minister moved against Bar due to his criticism of the government over the security failure that allowed Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the deadliest day in the country’s history. They also allege that Netanyahu’s ongoing bribery trial is at play.

Shin Bet has investigated Netanyahu’s close associates on suspicion of receiving money linked to Qatar.

Bar said in a letter that his ouster was motivated by a desire to halt the “pursuit of truth” about the events leading up to October 7. Shin Bet this month released a report that acknowledged it should have thwarted the Hamas-led assault while criticising Netanyahu for helping to create the conditions for the attacks.

Netanyahu’s office has dismissed such accusations as “fake news”.

NEW YORK (AP) — During the first Trump administration, the biggest concern for many journalists was labels. Would they, or their news outlet, be called “fake news” or an “enemy of the people” by a president and his supporters?

They now face a more assertive President Donald Trump. In two months, a blitz of action by the nation’s new administration — Trump, chapter two — has journalists on their heels.

Lawsuits. A newly aggressive Federal Communications Commission. An effort to control the press corps that covers the president, prompting legal action by The Associated Press. A gutted Voice of America. Public data stripped from websites. And attacks, amplified anew.

“It’s very clear what’s happening. The Trump administration is on a campaign to do everything it can to diminish and obstruct journalism in the United States,” said Bill Grueskin, a journalism professor at Columbia University.

“It’s really nothing like we saw in 2017,” he said. “Not that there weren’t efforts to discredit the press, and not that there weren’t things that the press did to discredit themselves.”

Trump supporters say an overdue course correction is in order

Supporters of the president suggest that an overdue correction is in order to reflect new ways that Americans get information and to counter overreach by reporters. Polls have revealed continued public dissatisfaction with journalists — something that has been bedeviling the industry for years.

Tension between presidents and the Fourth Estate is nothing new — an unsurprising clash between desires to control a message and to ask probing, sometimes impertinent questions. Despite the atmosphere, the Republican president talks to reporters much more often than many predecessors, including Democrat Joe Biden, who rarely gave interviews.

An early signal that times had changed came when the White House invited newcomers to press briefings, including podcasters and friendly media outlets. The AP was blocked from covering pool events in a dispute over Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, setting off a flurry of First Amendment concerns among press advocates and leading the administration to assert that the White House, not the press, should determine who questions him.

Two months before the administration took office, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who served under Republican President George W. Bush, had urged that changes be made.

“It’s time to bring that (briefing) room in line with how readers and viewers consume the news in 2025,” Fleischer said in an interview. “They don’t get their news from The Washington Post, The New York Times and the three networks anymore. They get their news from a myriad of sources.”

In practice, some newcomers have refreshingly tried to shed light on issues important to conservatives, instead of hostile attempts to play “gotcha” by the mainstream media, Fleischer said. There were also softballs, like when the Ruthless podcast asked press secretary Karoline Leavitt if reporters who questioned border policy were “out of touch.” The conservative Real America’s Voice network tried to knock Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy off stride by asking why he wasn’t wearing a suit in the Oval Office.

While the White House Correspondents’ Association has protested the AP’s treatment and efforts to upend tradition, it has been largely toothless. For more extensive discussions, the president and his team generally favor interviews with outlets that speak to his supporters, like Fox News.

The Trump team’s rapid response efforts to fight the ‘fake media’

The White House has also established a “Rapid Response 47” account on X to disseminate its views and attack journalists or stories it objects to. The feed’s stated goals are supporting the president and “holding the Fake Media accountable.”

Leavitt, 27, hasn’t hesitated to go toe to toe with reporters, often with a smile, and Tik-Tok collects some of those moments.

“We know for a fact there have been lies that have been pushed by many legacy media outlets in this country about this president, and we will not accept that,” she said at her first press briefing. It stood in contrast to Trump’s 2017 press secretary, Sean Spicer, who got into an angry confrontation with the press about the size of the president’s inauguration crowd on his first day in the White House, and never truly recovered from it.

Showing the spread of the administration’s disciplined approach, the Defense Department also has a rapid response account that says it “fights fake news.” The Pentagon has evicted several news organizations from long-held office space, leading some reporters to worry about access to fast, reliable information during a military crisis.

“Strategically, he likes to use the press as a pawn — it is one of the institutions that he can demonize to make himself look good,” said Ron Fournier, a former Washington bureau chief for the AP.

Trump has active lawsuits going against news outlets that displease him, such as CBS News for the way “60 Minutes” edited an interview with 2024 election opponent, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, or The Des Moines Register, for what turned out to be an inaccurate pre-election poll of Iowa voters.

The new FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, has signaled an activist stance, with investigations open against CBS for the “60 Minutes” case, ABC News for how it fact-checked the Trump-Harris debate and NBC on whether it violated federal “equal time” provisions by bringing Harris onto “Saturday Night Live.”

Even with all the change, many newsrooms are confronting the challenge

Fleischer welcomes a newly aggressive attitude toward the press. He believes many journalists were more activists than reporters during Trump’s first term. He wondered why journalists were not more aggressive in determining whether Biden’s advancing age made him fit for the presidency.

“I think that the press is either in denial, or they acknowledge that they have lost the trust of the people but they won’t change or do anything about it,” he said. “They just don’t know how to do their jobs any differently.”

Press advocates worry about the intimidation factor of lawsuits and investigations, particularly on smaller newsrooms. What stories will go unreported simply because it’s not worth the potential hassle? “It has a very corrosive effect over time,” Grueskin said.

Worth watching, too, is a disconnect between newsrooms and the people who own them. Both the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post backed off endorsements of Harris last fall at the behest of the their owners, and Post owner Jeff Bezos attended Trump’s inauguration. When the Post announced a reorganization earlier this month, Leavitt took a shot: “It appears that the mainstream media, including the Post, is finally learning that having disdain for more than half the country who supports this president does not help you sell newspapers.”

Many newsrooms are notably not backing down from the challenge of covering the administration. “60 Minutes” has done several hard-hitting reports, the Atlantic has added staff and Wired is digging in to cover Elon Musk’s cost-cutting.

For their own industry, much of the news is grim. The future of Voice of America is in doubt, eliminating jobs and, its supporters fear, reducing the nation’s influence overseas. Cost-cutters are eyeing government subscriptions for news outlets, eliminating an income source. On a broader scale, there are worries about attacks on journalists’ legal protections against libel lawsuits.

“They’re pulling at every thread they can find, no matter how tenuous, to try and undermine credible news organizations,” Grueskin said.

It is well organized. It is coming from multiple directions.

And it has been only two months.

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Associated Press writer Ali Swenson contributed to this report.

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David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

Pope Francis made his first public appearance on Sunday after spending more than five weeks in the hospital, where he survived a severe case of pneumonia that doctors said twice threatened the Roman Catholic Church leader’s life.

The 88-year-old pontiff offered a Sunday blessing from Rome’s Gemelli hospital. The Vatican’s broadcaster also read in English a statement from the pontiff issued by the Holy See Press Office. 

In it, Pope Francis said he was “saddened by the resumption of heavy Israeli bombing on the Gaza Strip, causing many deaths and injuries.” 

“I call for an immediate halt to the weapons and for the courage to resume dialogue so that all hostages may be released, and a final ceasefire reached,” the pontiff wrote. “In the Gaza Strip, the humanitarian situation is again very serious and requires urgent commitment from the conflicting parties and the international community.”

The pope said he was pleased Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to the final text of the peace agreement, “and I hope that it may be signed as soon as possible and thus may contribute to establishing lasting peace in the South Caucuses.”

POPE FRANCIS SET TO BE DISCHARGED FROM HOSPITAL ON SUNDAY: DOCTORS

“You are continuing to pray for me with great patience and perseverance. Thank you very much. I pray for you too. And together let’s pray for an end to wars and for peace, especially in tormented Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Francis wrote. “May the Virgin Mary keep you and continue to accompany us on our journey towards Easter.”

A large crowd gathered at the main entry piazza of Gemelli Hospital, including patients wheeled outside to see him in person. The pope, seated in a wheelchair, waved from the balcony and smiled. 

The pope briefly spoke from a microphone, acknowledging a woman in the crowd holding up yellow flowers for him. Doctors have said his voice has been weakened by his illness. 

The Holy Father gave a thumbs up and made the sign of the cross to the crowd. Francis was subsequently discharged from the hospital and will return to the Vatican to begin at least two months of rest, rehabilitation and convalescence. 

His discharge comes after 38 days of medical ups and downs that raised the prospect of a papal resignation or funeral. 

Francis began his written message by telling the faithful that the parable in this Sunday’s Gospel “tells us about the patience of God, who urges us to make our life a time of conversion.” 

“Jesus uses the image of a baron victory which has not born the anticipated fruit and which nevertheless the farmer does not want to cut down. He wants to fertilize it again in that it may bear fruit in the future, and this patient farmer is the Lord who works the soil of our lives with care and waits confidently for our return to Him,” the pope wrote. “In this long period of my hospitalization, I’ve had the opportunity to experience the Lord’s patience, which I also see reflected in the tireless care of the doctors and healthcare workers, as well as in the care and hopes of the relatives of the sick. This trusted patience anchored in God’s unfailing love is indeed necessary in our lives, especially when facing the most difficult and painful situations.” 

Doctors, who announced his planned release at a Saturday evening news conference, have said the Holy Father should refrain from meeting with big groups of people or exerting himself, but that eventually he should be able to resume all his normal activities. It was Francis’ longest hospitalization of his 12-year papacy and the second-longest in recent papal history. 

KING CHARLES III TO MEET POPE FRANCIS DURING VISIT TO VATICAN NEXT MONTH

At the Vatican, on the third Sunday of the Lenten season awaiting Easter, pilgrims flocked as they have all year to St. Peter’s Basilica to participate in the 2025 Holy Year. They swarmed St. Peter’s Square and progressed through the Holy Door in groups, while big TV screens in the square were turned on to broadcast Francis’ hospital greeting live. 

No special arrangements have been made at the Domus Santa Marta, the Vatican hotel next to the basilica, where Francis lives in a two-room suite on the second floor, according to the AP. Francis will have access to supplemental oxygen and 24-hour medical care as needed, though his personal physician, Dr. Luigi Carbone, said he hoped Francis would progressively need less and less assistance breathing as his lungs recover.

While the pneumonia infection has been successfully treated, Francis will continue to take oral medication for quite some time to treat the fungal infection in his lungs and continue his respiratory and physical physiotherapy.

“For three or four days he’s been asking when he can go home, so he’s very happy,” Carbone said.

Dr. Sergio Alfieri, the medical and surgical chief at Gemelli who coordinated Francis’ medical team, stressed that not all patients who develop such a severe case of double pneumonia survive, much less are released from the hospital. He said Francis’ life was at risk twice, during the two acute respiratory crises, and that the pope at the time understandably lost his typical good sense of humor. 

“But one morning we went to listen to his lungs and we asked him how he was doing. When he replied, ‘I’m still alive,’ we knew he was OK and had gotten his good humor back,” he said.

Faithful and pilgrims gather in St. Peter’s Square at The Vatican to follow on giant screens a live broadcast from Rome’s Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic, Sunday, March 23, 2025, where Pope Francis made his first public appearance since Feb. 14.  (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The Holy Father was never intubated and never lost consciousness, Alfieri said.

Alfieri confirmed that Francis was still having trouble speaking due to the damage to his lungs and respiratory muscles. But he said such problems were normal, especially in older patients, and predicted his voice would eventually return to normal.

The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, declined to confirm any upcoming events, including a scheduled audience on April 8 with King Charles III or Francis’ participation in Easter services at the end of the month. But Carbone said he hoped Francis might be well enough to travel to Turkey at the end of May to participate in an important ecumenical anniversary.

Francis is also returning to the Vatican in the throes of a Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration scheduled to draw more than 30 million pilgrims to Rome this year. The pope has already missed several Jubilee audiences and will presumably miss several more, but Vatican officials say his absence hasn’t significantly impacted the numbers of expected pilgrims arriving.

Only St. John Paul II recorded a longer hospitalization in 1981, when he spent 55 days at Gemelli for minor surgery and treatment of an infection.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.