A newly announced agreement incentivizing CNN to operate in Qatar is raising questions among media observers about whether the network’s partnership could jeopardize its ability to report objectively on the Gulf state.

CNN said on Sunday it plans to launch a media operation in Qatar in the second half of 2025, as part of an ongoing effort to build its presence in the Middle East. The new studio will be based in Media City Qatar, which the emirate describes as “a global hub for media companies” and other businesses in the capital of Doha.

On the third day that President Donald Trump was back in office, former Fox News contributor Leo Terrell woke up and signed onto X. The civil rights lawyer and former-Democrat-turned-Trump-acolyte spent the morning in a very Trump-like manner: governing by tweet. 

Terrell was just beginning a new position at the Department of Justice as senior counsel to Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s as-yet-unconfirmed nominee to be assistant attorney general for civil rights, when he sent a series of tweets decrying allegations of antisemitism at Columbia University and pledging to take action against it. 

Some Senate Republicans expressed cautious interest in President Donald Trump’s plan for the U.S. to “take over” Gaza — at least as a negotiating gambit — after an initial wave of confusion and opposition. But other Republicans remained stridently opposed to the proposal and most opposed Trump’s calls for U.S. military intervention.

Some senators framed Trump’s proposal as a tool to reshape discussion and thinking in the Middle East about the path forward for Gaza.

A member of the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who failed to disclose to authorities his prior knowledge of the 2019 bombing that killed an Israeli teenager is scheduled to speak at a Georgetown University Law Students for Justice in Palestine event next week, Jewish Insider has learned.

LSJP is hosting a Feb. 11 discussion entitled “Palestinian Prisoners, an Evening with Ribhi Karajah, student activist and former political prisoner,” according to flyers posted on campus and the group’s social media.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will be an original co-sponsor of the Antisemitism Awareness Act when it is reintroduced in the Senate in the coming days, Schumer spokesperson Angelo Roefaro confirmed to Jewish Insider.

The move is a notable signal from Schumer of his support for the legislation after he fell short of his assurances last year to the Jewish community that he would pass the bill in the previous Congress. Some in the Jewish community, as well as congressional Republicans, blamed Schumer for the legislation’s failure.

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former senior advisor Jared Kushner suggested relocating Gaza’s population and remarked on the real estate potential of its beachfront property nearly a year before the president called on Tuesday for the U.S. to “take over the Gaza Strip” and “create an economic development area.” 

Kushner gave an interview to Harvard’s Middle East Initiative in March 2024, a time in which the IDF was operating in southern Gaza to reach the Philadelphi Corridor between Gaza and Egypt. 

Beyond the intensive policy discussions on the future of Gaza and the Iranian threat, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump had a very friendly meeting that continued until late Tuesday night.

An Israeli source in Washington traveling with Netanyahu confirmed that the prime minister gave Trump a symbolic golden beeper for display. He also gave Trump an actual pager of the kind Israel used in its operation against Hezbollah terrorists, in which the Mossad ran a front company for manufacturing pagers that they sold to the Lebanese terrorist group, and detonated hundreds of them simultaneously, killing 12 and injuring 3,000, according to reports.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, a Democratic candidate for governor of New Jersey, has been outspoken in his public career about his Jewish identity and — though he’s mostly stayed away from foreign affairs in his current role — has maintained a pro-Israel stance.

But Fulop has endorsed or been endorsed by multiple state officials and candidates who have expressed strident criticisms of Israel, reflecting the tricky Democratic primary politics that he and others in the gubernatorial primary are facing.