Republicans in Congress are taking further steps to ignore Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and start referring to the territory by Israel’s name “Judea and Samaria.”

Senator Tom Cotton proposed a Senate bill Thursday that would eliminate federal use of the term “West Bank,” removing it from all official U.S. government documents. His measure matches a bill that was filed in the House in February by Republican Representatives Claudia Tenney, Randy Weber, and Anthony D’Esposito.

Cotton claims that Judea and Samaria is the historically accurate name for the territory, and asserts Israel’s claims over what is internationally recognized as occupied territory.

“The Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria goes back thousands of years. The U.S. should stop using the politically charged term West Bank to refer to the biblical heartland of Israel,” Cotton said in a statement.

“Politically charged” is quite the exaggeration from Cotton. The International Court of Justice ruled in July that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law, calling into question their terminology for the territory. Since Israel began its occupation of Palestine in 1967 following the Six-Day War, Israel has built 160 settlements that house close to 700,000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Republican-sponsored bills seem to confirm speculation that Israel plans to annex the West Bank with U.S. support. Israel has embarked on a military campaign in the territory, killing nearly 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since 2022. Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinian residents in addition to Israeli military raids, and those assaults have increased since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Prior to Israel’s war on Gaza over the past year, which has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, 2023 was considered the deadliest year ever for Palestinian children, according to human rights groups, and that was due to violence in the West Bank. Republican pro-Israel megadonor Miriam Adelson reportedly donated more than $100 million to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign so that the president-elect would recognize Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

The Adelson family has long donated to Republicans, and Cotton has been a pro-Israel hawk for many years. The Arkansas senator is poised to take over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship with his colleague Marco Rubio’s nomination for secretary of state. With Trump making no secret of his support for Israel, coupled with this proposed bill by Cotton, U.S. policy for the next four years appears to be unconditional support for Israel’s efforts to squash Palestinian self-determination.

Donald Trump is willing to go to absurd, cruel lengths to accomplish his sweeping deportation goals—even if it means sending immigrants back to random countries.

Trump and his circle have already begun a list of countries to deport immigrants to if their home countries refuse to accept them, including Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Panama, and Grenada, among others, NBC reported Thursday.

This means that thousands of people could be permanently displaced if the president-elect is able to go through with his “largest deportation operation in American history,” leaving immigrants in unfamiliar countries with uncertain futures. Trump also wants Mexico to accept non-Mexican immigrants.

Groups such as the ACLU fought Trump on this issue in his first term, and they are prepared to do so again. “We sued over this type of policy during the first Trump administration because it was illegal and put asylum-seekers at grave risk,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt told NBC.

Spokespeople for Turks and Caicos, Grenada, and Mexico did not respond to NBC, while a spokesperson for Panama told the network, “The Panamanian government does not respond to assumptions and rumors. We cannot not speculate in this regard.”

The Bahamas, however, has already “reviewed and firmly rejected the plan,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement. This raises a key question: What will Trump do if none of his chosen countries agree to cooperate?

Regardless, the Trump team is determined to carry out this chaotic policy. “President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to stop the invasion of illegal immigrants, secure the border, and deport dangerous criminals and terrorists that make our communities less safe,” said spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. “He will deliver.”

Tulsi Gabbard’s ex-aides say that the former congresswoman, whom Donald Trump has nominated as the next director of national intelligence, used to regularly consume Russian state media.

ABC News, citing interviews with three of her former staffers, reported Thursday that Gabbard regularly read and shared articles from RT (formerly Russia Today), a state-run media outlet, even after being advised that RT wasn’t a credible source.

Gabbard has defended Russia at least since she represented Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district. In 2017, she sent a memo to her staff with her views on foreign policy, blaming the U.S. and NATO for provoking Russia and complaining about America’s “hostility........

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