A new report from The Wall Street Journal reveals the promised International Stabilization Force (ISF) for Gaza is currently struggling to deploy an initial group of just 10 to 20 troops. The force was originally envisioned as a 20,000-strong multinational peacekeeping presence tasked with securing Gaza and preventing the terrorist group Hamas from rebuilding its military. Instead, regional instability has severely hampered recruitment. The deployment shortfall comes amid deep skepticism over political developments within Gaza. On Monday, Hamas announced that its governing body would step down and transfer administrative authority to a United Nations-backed Palestinian technocratic council. Here’s the catch: Hamas conspicuously refused to commit to disarming its military wing. Critics argue that Hamas is attempting to replicate the “Hezbollah model”—allowing a civilian administration to handle municipal duties like garbage collection while the terrorists maintain real power through their arsenal. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar strongly condemned the move, writing: Hamas’s trick is simple. Hamas’s apparent willingness to “make room” for a technocratic government is designed to prevent its own disarmament. Hamas seeks to replicate the “Hezbollah model” in Gaza: a technocratic administration would be responsible for garbage collection and other municipal services, while Hamas would remain the dominant military force. As long as Hamas retains its weapons, any civilian government will of course operate as Hamas dictates. This would allow Hamas to continue oppressing the Palestinian people in Gaza, while pursuing its jihadist war against Israel. Israel insists on the full implementation of the Trump plan, with its core principles being the disarmament of Hamas and all other terrorist organizations, and the complete demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. Hamas’s trick is simple. Hamas’s apparent willingness to “make room” for a technocratic government is designed to prevent its own disarmament. Hamas seeks to replicate the “Hezbollah model” in Gaza: a technocratic administration would be responsible for garbage collection and… — Gideon Sa'ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) July 6, 2026   The ISF’s current troop shortage underscores the massive hurdles facing the broader peace plan. A small contingent of Moroccan soldiers, originally scheduled to arrive in June, is now delayed by several months. Once they arrive, they will not enter Gaza immediately; instead, they will base themselves at a newly constructed logistics hub in Israel near the border to conduct training and limited reconnaissance operations. Broader recruitment efforts have collapsed due to conflicts involving Iran and Lebanon. Indonesia—which had previously floated a commitment of thousands of peacekeepers—placed its participation on hold after four of its UN peacekeepers were killed during clashes between Israel and Hezbollah. Until Hamas fully disarms, the civilian power transfer will remain entirely symbolic.

Republicans are suddenly within striking distance of flipping one of America’s bluest states after a new poll showed GOP gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan narrowly leading incumbent Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek. Public Opinion Strategies found Drazan leading Kotek 48% to 44%, though the poll’s four-point margin of error means the race remains statistically close. Six percent of voters were undecided.  The survey comes as multiple nonpartisan election forecasters have shifted Oregon’s gubernatorial race in Republicans’ favor. The Cook Political Report downgraded the race from “Solid Democratic” to “Likely Democratic” on Friday, while Inside Elections moved it to “Lean Democratic,” citing Kotek’s weak standing with voters. “Kotek is unpopular and voters may be open to change after decades of Democratic control,” the analysis firm wrote last month. Kotek has consistently ranked among the nation’s least popular governors. A recent Morning Consult survey found that just 48% of Oregonians approve of her job performance, while 42% disapprove, placing her near the bottom among Democratic governors nationwide. Her political struggles have mounted after a series of high-profile controversies during her first term. Kotek has drawn criticism for her handling of Oregon’s transportation funding crisis, where lawmakers failed to pass a long-term funding package during the regular legislative session. After negotiations collapsed, Kotek called a special session to push through a scaled-back tax package, only to later urge lawmakers to repeal parts of the legislation amid fears it would trigger an anti-tax backlash. Transportation funding, however, has never ranked among voters’ top concerns. Instead, the episode reinforced a broader perception that Kotek has struggled to manage the legislature effectively, despite having previously served for years as Speaker of the Oregon House. Meanwhile, many of the priorities Kotek campaigned on in 2022 have shown little measurable progress. The governor pledged to dramatically increase housing production to address Oregon’s affordability crisis, setting a goal of building 36,000 new housing units annually. The state has instead continued to fall well short of that benchmark, while housing costs remain among voters’ top concerns. Education has likewise remained a political vulnerability, as Oregon continues to post among the nation’s weakest academic outcomes despite years of Democratic control. Kotek also faced intense scrutiny earlier in her term after internal emails revealed she had quietly explored creating a formal Office of the First Spouse that would have expanded the official role of her wife, Aimee Kotek Wilson. The documents showed senior staff repeatedly warned the governor about ethical concerns surrounding the proposal before Kotek ultimately abandoned the effort amid public backlash. The controversy also coincided with the departures of several senior aides from the governor’s office. While Democrats continue attempting to nationalize the race by tying Drazan to President Donald Trump, Republicans argue Oregon voters are focused primarily on affordability, homelessness, public safety, and dissatisfaction with Democratic governance after decades of one-party control. Drazan has largely centered her campaign on economic issues, promising to lower taxes, reduce the cost of living, improve schools, restore public safety, and address homelessness. While the Republican remains firmly conservative on social issues, her campaign messaging has focused overwhelmingly on affordability and government competence rather than divisive cultural debates. Kotek’s campaign has dismissed Republican optimism, arguing Oregon voters will ultimately reject a Republican governor in a state that has not elected one since the early 1980s. “Christine Drazan is desperate to show that she has a shot, but the reality is she is out of step with Oregon values,” Kotek campaign spokesman Federico Araujo said. Political analysts caution that Oregon has produced misleadingly competitive polling before. In both 2018 and 2022, Republican gubernatorial candidates appeared within striking distance before ultimately falling short on Election Day. Still, the latest polling underscores an uncomfortable reality for Democrats: even in one of America’s most reliably blue states, growing dissatisfaction with Kotek’s leadership has created what Republicans view as their best opportunity in decades to recapture Oregon’s governor’s office.

A Texas ICE facility got hit with an armed ANTIFA cell numbering in the dozens on the Fourth of July, the latest instance in a wave of Left-wing violence that includes the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO and Charlie Kirk, whose assassin engraved his bullet casings with ANTIFA slogans. The Left’s premiere non-Wordle newspaper doesn’t care about that. This week, three Washington Post reporters spent hundreds of words arguing that nobody can quite figure out what “left-wing terrorism” even means, calling it “difficult to categorize.” The piece — ostensibly about Secretary of State Marco Rubio inviting representatives from 60 nations to discuss the “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism” — is petulant drivel. Rubio isn’t overreaching. He’s the first secretary of state in a generation willing to say the quiet part out loud. That’s not politicization, that’s catching up. This makes the Post’s framing all the more absurd. The piece leans hard on the idea that quantifying Left-wing violence is some unsolvable epistemological puzzle — going so far as to platform “analysts” who wonder aloud whether gunning down an insurance executive on the street even counts as a “‘left-wing’ act.” The same paper that spent 2020 calling arson and Molotov cocktails “mostly peaceful” now wants us to believe that a coordinated cell of nine defendants — convicted on federal terrorism, explosives, and attempted murder charges for storming an ICE facility with over 50 firearms between them — is too nebulous a phenomenon to name. Left-wing violence isn’t hard to quantify; it’s just hard for the Post to admit. It’s so hard, in fact, that the authors attempt to pretend ANTIFA doesn’t exist while simultaneously citing the group’s operations in Europe. One European diplomat is quoted as insisting, with a straight face, “We don’t have ANTIFA.” Some anonymous ally, off to protect their diplomatic backside, tells the Post their country has no earthly reason to show up to Rubio’s summit. Then, further down the article, written by the very same three bylines, the Post casually mentions that the State Department designated ANTIFA OST, a militant group in Germany (along with two more cells in Greece and one in Italy), as a foreign terrorist organization back in November. So, which is it? Does Europe have ANTIFA or doesn’t it? The Post can’t even keep its own reporting straight for six paragraphs, and they want us to trust their skepticism about the threat’s existence. As for all this European “consternation,” I’d humbly suggest the diplomats waving off Rubio’s invitation aren’t worried about being lectured on domestic politics. I think several of them are worried about something considerably less comfortable: what happens when American intelligence-sharing starts asking pointed questions about who’s actually funding and organizing these “loosely knit” networks in their own countries — and how many of those funding trails lead back to Beijing’s Belt and Road partners and CCP-linked NGOs quietly propping up far-Left instability across Europe and Latin America? Must we again reference Beijing’s Neville Roy Singham and the groups he funds to foment illegal blockade running in the Caribbean? No administration wants to be the government that has to explain why their “spontaneous” anarchist movement keeps showing up with professional-grade logistics and foreign wire transfers. We’ve already watched what happens once voters get a look under that hood — ask Javier Milei’s Argentina, Bukele’s El Salvador, or Colombia’s electorate this year. The hard-Left establishment gets tossed out the window once the receipts come out. That’s the real fear rattling around these foreign ministries, and it has nothing to do with Rubio’s invitation list being too “vague.” None of this is to say every element of the administration’s approach is airtight — designating a movement with no central command as a foreign terrorist organization is a genuine legal stretch, and reasonable conservatives can debate the mechanics. But the Post didn’t publish a piece raising careful legal questions. It published 2,000 words insisting the entire premise is manufactured, while a decentralized movement racks up a body count that includes a Fortune 500 CEO, an ICE detainee, and the most prominent conservative activist of his generation. If the Washington Post can’t see the pattern, it isn’t because the pattern is invisible. It’s because that would mean admitting that six years of “mostly peaceful” was always a lie. *** Tony Kinnett is the host of The Tony Kinnett Cast at The Daily Signal. Connect with him on X: @TheTonus.

TV writer Rebecca Sonnenshine recently defended making her latest project, a reboot of the beloved series “Little House on the Prairie,” a lot more woke. At this point, it would be more surprising if she had left politics out of it. And to hear her tell it, the word “woke” has lost its meaning anyway. But Sonnenshine did go on record defending the aspect of the new storyline which conservatives are most likely to take issue with, namely, making a local Native American family a key feature of the show despite them not being featured prominently in the best-selling books. While Laura Ingalls and her family are still main characters, much attention is paid to the mixed-race Osage family, the Mitchells, as Variety noted in an interview with the showrunner. “As an adult, everything is different. Especially ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ it’s all about the Osage,” Sonnenshine says. “The Osage are all over that book, but we don’t know them at all. And I thought, well, we have to know them. I have to figure out a way that we can know them, and how do you do that? Trying to create a family that parallels the Ingalls. I had to do a lot of research to figure out how to do that, and I did and we worked with a story consultant named Robert Warrior,” Sonnenshine told the outlet.  “I’m not even sure what ‘woke’ means to people anymore, to be honest,” she went on. “I know what I think it means, which is the definition of it being aware and alert to social injustice and prejudice, in particular racial prejudice. So, when people say, ‘I hope it’s not woke,’ I think, ‘Really? Oh, that’s interesting.’ But I don’t think people are using it in that manner; I think it’s just become a catch-all word for things that I don’t quite understand. If I had to sum it up, what people are afraid of is that something from their childhood will be portrayed in a way that scares them.” Sonnenshine reiterated what she’s “been saying from the beginning,” which is, “I feel like people are worried for no reason.” A Slate reviewer agreed that the “Little House” reboot has indeed been altered to suit progressive sensibilities.  “There’s no other way for me to put this: Netflix did indeed woke-ify Little House on the Prairie,” wrote Rebecca Onion. “This new version makes a deep bow to contemporary concerns about the politics of the source material. Some of the Ingalls family’s closest new friends on the show are an Osage couple, a black doctor and black storekeeper, and a French Canadian woman who wears trousers and practices free love.” She also notes a new antagonist in the form of a stodgy, traditionalist family.  “Netflix’s Ingalls family are good people, even by 2026 standards, and you can see it in contrast with the Jameses,” she writes. “The Jameses are town-dwelling rich folk who don’t appear in the Little House books but seem to be an adaptation of the Oleson family … The Jameses’ vision for Independence — hierarchy,  respectability, a church, a school — first seduces, then repels, the more gentle-minded Ingallses, Ma and Mary. The James matriarch, Jemma, played by Mary Holland, brings a welcome comedic hateability to this sunny show.”  Prominent conservatives predicted this long before it happened. Podcast host Megyn Kelly posted on X in January, “Netflix, if you woke-ify ‘Little House on the Prairie’ I will make it my singular mission to absolutely ruin your project.”  This prompted actress Melissa Gilbert, who starred on the original “Little House” series for nine seasons between 1974 and 1982, to reply, “Ummm…watch the original again. TV doesn’t get too much more ‘woke’ than we did. We tackled: racism, addiction, nativism, antisemitism, misogyny, rape, spousal abuse, and every other ‘woke ‘ topic you can think of. Thank you very much.” Gilbert has been making headlines lately as she defends her husband, Timothy Busfield, amid allegations of child sexual abuse.  The new Little House on the Prairie adaptation debuted all 8 episodes of its first season on Netflix on July 9. The show has been officially renewed for a second season.

Graham Platner, the scandal-ridden Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, officially withdrew from the race Friday, days after suspending his campaign amid mounting allegations of rape, sexual misconduct, and scrutiny over a Nazi tattoo. Platner submitted a formal withdrawal letter to the Maine Department of the Secretary of State, ending his candidacy after initially resisting calls from Democratic leaders to step aside. “Please consider this notice as my official withdrawal from consideration for this office,” Platner wrote. The letter closes with a political message reading, “F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts. Solidarity forever.” “Up the Hearts” appears to reference Portland Hearts of Pine, Maine’s first professional soccer club. Platner framed his withdrawal as an effort to preserve the political movement that propelled him to the Democratic nomination last month. “On June 9th, 156,084 Mainers voted for a new kind of politics,” he wrote, adding that voters supported “Medicare for All,” banning billionaires from influencing elections, ending “taxpayer-funded genocide and forever wars,” strengthening unions, and expanding affordable housing. “My name may have been on the ballot, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine,” he added. pic.twitter.com/gQzOXBJHJz — Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 10, 2026 His departure leaves Democrats scrambling to choose a new nominee to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races of the election cycle. Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, a Platner ally who publicly urged him to withdraw, has emerged as a potential replacement after launching an exploratory committee. The race remains a top Democratic pickup opportunity as the party attempts to regain control of the Senate in November.