President Donald Trump is hosting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday at the White House, marking the first time MBS has visited Washington since 2018. 

Trump plans to roll out the red carpet for the visit, which includes a welcome ceremony, bilateral meeting in the Oval Office and a black-tie dinner in the evening. Tiger Woods and Elon Musk are expected to be in attendance at the dinner, among other high-profile attendees. “We’re more than meeting,” Trump said late Friday. “We’re honoring Saudi Arabia, the crown prince.” 

The Lebanese Armed Forces is facing pushback from two U.S. lawmakers over a statement it posted to social media on Sunday blaming Israel for flare-ups with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. 

The LAF wrote in a post on X, “The Israeli enemy persists in its violations of Lebanese sovereignty, causing instability in Lebanon, obstructing the completion of the army’s deployment in the south.”

“The latest of these condemned aggressions was its targeting of a patrol of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon” on Sunday, the post added.

House Republicans sounded largely supportive of President Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday that he plans to sign a deal to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, despite an apparent lack of progress toward normalization of relations between Riyadh and Israel.

The deal was previously seen as linked to Saudi Arabia’s normalization of relations with Israel — a prospect that seems less viable following the war in Gaza. The Trump administration is pushing ahead nonetheless.

Israel petitioned the International Criminal Court on Monday to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan from its case, saying he pursued charges against Israeli leaders to distract from sexual harassment accusations lodged against him.

Israel also asked the court to cancel its arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over Khan’s allegations that they perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.”

The U.N. Security Council adopted a U.S.-led resolution on Monday backing President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, including the creation of an international security force, in a move that could boost efforts to advance into the next phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. 

“Congratulations to the World on the incredible Vote of the United Nations Security Council, just moments ago, acknowledging and endorsing the BOARD OF PEACE,” Trump posted to Truth Social following the vote. “This will go down as one of the biggest approvals in the History of the United Nations.”

A producer for former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) weeknight show on the right-wing One America News Network has reportedly been fired after he shared a vehemently antisemitic social media post depicting Jews as cockroaches.

Vish Burra, who was a booker and script writer for Gaetz, had drawn widespread backlash for posting an AI-generated animated video last week showing him entering a “scheming room” with Stars of David on the door to find a group of cockroaches counting money, who scurry away upon his arrival. The post has since been deleted.

Robert George, a prominent board member of the Heritage Foundation, said on Monday that he was resigning from the conservative think tank, in the latest sign of continued fallout over its president’s controversial defense of Tucker Carlson after his friendly interview last month with a neo-Nazi influencer.

“I could not remain without a full retraction of the video released by Kevin Roberts, speaking for and in the name of Heritage, on October 30th,” George said in a Facebook post Monday morning, referring to the group’s president. “Although Kevin publicly apologized for some of what he said in the video, he could not offer a full retraction of its content. So, we reached an impasse.”

The members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition spent much of the weekend arguing over something on which they all ostensibly agree — opposition to a Palestinian state. 

They may have been expressing their long and openly held opinions, but the timing could be damaging, coming days before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is set to visit the White House. In the meeting, slated for Tuesday, President Donald Trump is expected to push for normalization between Riyadh and Jerusalem — something the Saudis have long conditioned on tangible steps towards a Palestinian state.