Donald Trump promised “HELL TO PAY” in the Middle East if hostages held by Hamas in Gaza aren’t released by his inauguration on January 20, 2025.

In a Truth Social post on Monday afternoon, Trump promised consequences “for those who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity,” saying “responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

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Trump’s comments came after Hamas issued a video statement saying 33 of its captives have been killed during Israel’s brutal war on Gaza dating back to October last year, when Hamas attacked Israel and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel has killed more than 44,000 people, including 17,492 children in its war on Gaza.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister and accused war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly promised Trump a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon before Trump’s inauguration. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire was agreed upon last week, although it is already showing signs of unraveling.

Now Trump seems to want the release of hostages before his presidency begins, but made no mention of a Gaza ceasefire as a prerequisite. The president-elect has remarked that Israel should “finish the job” in Gaza, basically endorsing the country’s yearlong campaign that has resulted in a humanitarian crisis and war crimes charges.

Trump’s latest comments raise the question of what “hell to pay” would mean for Gaza, whose infrastructure has been reduced to rubble. Is Trump threatening to use the U.S. military in airstrikes in the Middle East against Hamas’s allies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran? If so, that would very much set off the regional war that Trump has claimed he doesn’t want.

Elon Musk is butting his head into the auction of Alex Jones’s InfoWars.

Satirical outlet The Onion purchased InfoWars’ parent company last month for $1.75 million in conjunction with the families of children murdered during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, to whom Jones lost a $1.5 billion lawsuit for repeatedly claiming that the mass shooting was a hoax.

That sale included InfoWars’ websites, its studio equipment, its dietary supplements, its branding—as well as its heavily trafficked social media accounts.

The deal appeared to be cut-and-dry, but on Monday, Musk alerted the court that he would not accept the ownership transfer of InfoWars’ X accounts. In filings with a Texas bankruptcy court, X argued that the sale violated its terms of service, which prevent the sale of its accounts, writing that the company objects “to any proposed sale or other purported transfer of any account used by Jones or FSS that is maintained on the X platform (‘X’).”

“Elon Musk, hands down, is a hero,” Jones previously said in a video message posted to his account, praising the world’s richest man for lending him a hand in maintaining his connection to the brand.

It is, nonetheless, a stark reversal of how Musk felt about Jones’s social media presence in the wake of his court judgments. In 2022, shortly after Jones lost his lawsuit to the Sandy Hook families, Musk said he wouldn’t allow Jones back on his social media platform, paraphrasing the Bible in his explanation that Jones deserved “no mercy” for using the “deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”

Meanwhile, social media attorneys have been stunned by the intervention, noting that this appears to be the first instance in which a social media company has gotten involved in a legal dispute over account ownership.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a social media platform arguing to a court that no one can transfer ownership during a dispute over who owns an account because they will just switch it off,” Toby Butterfield, a professor of social media law at Columbia University Law School, told CNN.

Jones repeatedly claimed that the 2012 shooting that left 20 first graders and six teachers dead was a front to lure voters toward gun control policies.

In the run-up to the auction last month, Jones had appeared to be under the impression that “good guys” on the right would buy his fringe network, though he did not reveal who they were. Several groups expressed interest in InfoWars assets, including a coalition of liberal and anti-disinformation watchdog groups, according to The Daily Beast, as well as some of Jones’s own supporters, such as Donald Trump ally Roger Stone. The sale, however, has effectively crushed what was arguably Jones’s most successful endeavor while marking the beginning of his descent into irrelevancy.

Jones is currently working to appeal the sale.

Representative Jamie Raskin launched a campaign Monday to replace Representative Jerry Nadler as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

In a letter to his colleagues, the Maryland Democrat warned that they were in “the fight of our lives.” Raskin asked for the party to support his burgeoning bid, explaining that “the stakes have gone way up since the........

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