A helicopter crash in a Kyiv suburb Wednesday killed 18 people, including Ukraine's interior minister and three children, Ukrainian authorities said.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, his deputy Yevhen Yenin and State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yurii Lubkovych were among those killed, according to Ihor Klymenko, chief of Ukraine's National Police. Monastyrskyi is the most senior Ukrainian official to have died since the start of the war with Russia almost 11 months ago.

Nine of those killed were aboard the emergency services helicopter that crashed in Brovary, an eastern suburb of the Ukrainian capital, Klymenko said.

Kyiv Regional Governor Oleksii Kuleba said three children were also killed. Earlier, officials and media reports said the helicopter crashed near a kindergarten.

There was no immediate word on whether the crash was an accident or a result of the war with Russia. No fighting has been reported recently in the Kyiv area.

A total of 29 people were injured, including 15 children, the regional governor said.

Ukraine first lady Olena Zelenska daubed teary eyes and pinched her nose in emotion minutes before attending a World Economic Forum session in Davos, Switzerland.

Forum President Borge Brende requested 15 seconds of silence after opening the session to honor the Ukrainian officials killed in the crash.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post 18 killed in Kyiv helicopter crash, including interior minister, 3 children appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan blasted Tuesday a letter signed by over 90 United Nations member states, demanding the "immediate" reversal of Israel's punitive measures against the Palestinian Authority.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

The UN General Assembly late last month approved a resolution initiated by Ramallah calling on the ICJ to "render urgently an advisory opinion" on what it called was Israel's "prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory."

The Israeli Diplomatic-Security Cabinet called the move ongoing "political and legal war" and decided, among other measures, to withhold taxes and tariffs collected on behalf of and transferred to the PA, in an amount equal to that which Ramallah paid to terrorists and their families in 2022 under its infamous "pay-for-slay" policy.

The letter was signed by representatives of the Arab and Islamic countries, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, along with Western and other nations such as Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Cyprus, Japan, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.

"Regardless of each country's position on the resolution, we reject punitive measures in response to a request for an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, and more broadly in response to a General Assembly resolution, and call for their immediate reversal," the letter states.

In parallel, a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he "notes with deep concern the recent Israeli measures against the Palestinian Authority," adding that there should "be no retaliation… in relation to the International Court of Justice."

In line with the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet decision, Jerusalem last week transferred 138.8 million shekels ($39.5 million) of revenues collected for the PA to Israeli victims of terrorism and their families.

At a press conference, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, "We promised to fix this, and today we are correcting an injustice. This is an important day for morality, for justice and for the fight against terrorism. There is no greater justice than offsetting the funds of the Authority, which acts to support terrorism, and transferring them to the families of the victims of terrorism."

For his part, PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the punitive measures would "promptly lead to [the PA's] collapse." In an interview with Haaretz, Shtayyeh described the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet decision as "another nail in the Palestinian Authority's coffin, unless there is immediate intervention by the international community, namely the [Biden] administration in Washington and Arab countries."

He added, "Previous Israeli governments worked to eliminate the two-state solution, and the current government is fighting the Palestinian Authority itself."

US State Department spokesman Ned Price described the step aimed at curbing and punishing Palestinian terrorism as a "unilateral move" that "exacerbates tensions."

The PA pays monthly stipends to Palestinians, and/or their families, for carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel. In 2021, the PA paid out an estimated 512 million shekels ($157 million) as part of this "pay for slay" policy.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Israel blasts UN demand to lift PA sanctions, restore terror funds appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Iran warned France on Wednesday it would respond to "insulting" cartoons depicting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

The weekly had published dozens of cartoons earlier that day ridiculing the highest religious and political figure in Iran, claiming they were part of a competition in support of the ongoing protests – triggered by the September death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian-Kurdish woman killed while in the custody of Tehran's so-called "morality" police for wearing her hijab "incorrectly."

"The insulting and indecent act of a French publication in publishing cartoons against the religious and political authority will not go without an effective and decisive response," Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian tweeted. "We will not allow the French government to go beyond its bounds. They have definitely chosen the wrong path."

Charlie Hebdo said the content aimed "to support the struggle of Iranians who are fighting for their freedom."

Hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested in protests  that Iran has blamed foreign powers for – including Israel, the United States, and France.

The French satirical magazine published caricatures in a special edition to mark the anniversary of a deadly attack on its Paris office on Jan. 7, 2015. The assailants said they were acting on behalf of Al Qaeda to avenge the magazine's decision to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post 'Insulting and indecent': Iran protests cartoons ridiculing supreme leader appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Britain will declare Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group in the coming weeks, The Telegraph reported Monday.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

As such, it will be illegal in Britain to be a member of the IRGC, display its symbols in public or attend any meetings.

Mi5 director Ken McCallum said in November that the group was behind 10 plots to kill or abduct people in Britain since January 2022. British Security Minister Ted Tugendhat said last month that, despite McCallum's announcement, Iran continued plotting against targets in Britain.

The IRGC was designated a terror organization by the US in April 2019 by then-President Donald Trump. Canada banned senior former and current members of the IRGC from entering the country last October.

The move comes as Western countries increase measures against Iran for its violent and deadly crackdown on protesters ever since mass demonstrations erupted in September after the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country's so-called "morality police."

Several of those arrested were dual British-Iranian nationals, further raising tensions between London and Tehran.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Britain to classify IRGC as terror group appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a Georgia runoff election Tuesday, ensuring Democrats an outright majority in the Senate for the rest of President Joe Biden's current term and capping an underwhelming midterm cycle for the GOP in the last major vote of the year.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

With Warnock's second runoff victory in as many years, Democrats will have a 51-49 Senate majority, gaining a seat from the current 50-50 split with John Fetterman's victory in Pennsylvania. There will be divided government, however, with Republicans having narrowly flipped House control.

"After a hard-fought campaign – or, should I say, campaigns – it is my honor to utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy: The people have spoken," Warnock, 53, told jubilant supporters who packed a downtown Atlanta hotel ballroom.

"I often say that a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and for our children," declared Warnock, a Baptist pastor and his state's first Black senator. "Georgia, you have been praying with your lips and your legs, your hands and your feet, your heads and your hearts. You have put in the hard work, and here we are standing together."

In last month's election, Warnock led Walker by 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast, but fell short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff. The senator appeared to be headed for a wider final margin in Tuesday's runoff, with Walker, a football legend at the University of Georgia and in the NFL, unable to overcome a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends' abortions despite supporting a national ban on the procedure.

"The numbers look like they're not going to add up," Walker, an ally and friend of former President Donald Trump, told supporters late Tuesday at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta. "There's no excuses in life, and I'm not going to make any excuses now because we put up one heck of a fight."

Democrats' Georgia victory solidifies the state's place as a Deep South battleground two years after Warnock and fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff won 2021 runoffs that gave the party Senate control just months after Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate in 30 years to win Georgia. Voters returned Warnock to the Senate in the same cycle they reelected Republican Gov. Brian Kemp by a comfortable margin and chose an all-GOP slate of statewide constitutional officers.

Walker's defeat bookends the GOP's struggles this year to win with flawed candidates cast from Trump's mold, a blow to the former president as he builds his third White House bid ahead of 2024.

Democrats' new outright majority in the Senate means the party will no longer have to negotiate a power-sharing deal with Republicans and won't have to rely on Vice President Kamala Harris to break as many tie votes.

National Democrats celebrated Tuesday, with Biden tweeting a photo of his congratulatory phone call to the senator. "Georgia voters stood up for our democracy, rejected Ultra MAGAism, and ... sent a good man back to the Senate," Biden tweeted, referencing Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.

About 1.9 million runoff votes were cast in Georgia by mail and during early voting. A robust Election Day turnout added about 1.4 million more, slightly more than the Election Day totals in November and in 2020.

Total turnout still trailed the 2021 runoff turnout of about 4.5 million. Voting rights groups pointed to changes made by state lawmakers after the 2020 election that shortened the period for runoffs, from nine weeks to four, as a reason for the decline in early and mail voting.

Warnock emphasized his willingness to work across the aisle and his personal values, buoyed by his status as senior pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.

Walker benefited during the campaign from nearly unmatched name recognition from his football career, yet was dogged by questions about his fitness for office.

A multimillionaire businessman, Walker faced questions about his past, including his exaggerations of his business achievements, academic credentials and philanthropic activities.

In his personal life, Walker faced new attention on his ex-wife's previous accounts of domestic violence, including details that he once held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. He has never denied those specifics and wrote of his violent tendencies in a 2008 memoir that attributed the behavior to mental illness.

As a candidate, he sometimes mangled policy discussions, attributing the climate crisis to China's "bad air" overtaking "good air" from the United States and arguing that diabetics could manage their health by "eating right," a practice that isn't enough for insulin-dependent diabetic patients.

On Tuesday, Atlanta voter Tom Callaway praised the Republican Party's strength in Georgia and said he'd supported Kemp in the opening round of voting. But he said he cast his ballot for Warnock because he didn't think "Herschel Walker has the credentials to be a senator."

"I didn't believe he had a statement of what he really believed in or had a campaign that made sense," Callaway said.

Walker, meanwhile, sought to portray Warnock as a yes-man for Biden. He sometimes made the attack in especially personal terms, accusing Warnock of "being on his knees, begging" at the White House – a searing charge for a Black challenger to level against a Black senator about his relationship with a white president.

Warnock promoted his Senate accomplishments, touting a provision he sponsored to cap insulin costs for Medicare patients. He hailed deals on infrastructure and maternal health care forged with Republican senators, mentioning those GOP colleagues more than he did Biden or other Washington Democrats.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories! 

Warnock distanced himself from Biden, whose approval ratings have lagged as inflation remains high. After the general election, Biden promised to help Warnock in any way he could, even if it meant staying away from Georgia. Bypassing the president, Warnock decided instead to campaign with former President Barack Obama in the days before the runoff election.

Walker, meanwhile, avoided campaigning with Trump until the campaign's final day, when the pair conducted a conference call Monday with supporters.

Walker joins failed Senate nominees Dr. Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania, Blake Masters of Arizona, Adam Laxalt of Nevada and Don Bolduc of New Hampshire as Trump loyalists who ultimately lost races that Republicans once thought they would – or at least could – win.

The post Bad news for Trump: Democratic Sen. Warnock wins Georgia runoff appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid condemned Qatari news network Al Jazeera Tuesday after it filed a lawsuit at the International Criminal Court against Israeli forces over the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

"No one will interrogate IDF soldiers and no one will preach to us about morals of combat, certainly not the Al Jazeera network," Lapid said after the announcement.

Abu Akleh was killed on May 11 in an exchange of gunfire between Palestianina terorrists and IDF soldiers in Jenin, a known Islamic stronghold. The IDF conducted its own investigation, which said that the journalist might have been killed by an Israeli soldiers, albeit accidentally.

On May 11, Akleh, an American-Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist, was shot dead in the West Bank city of Jenin while covering an Israeli military operation in the area. Israeli authorities initially blamed Palestinian gunmen for the killing but then acknowledged that Israeli soldiers likely shot her, albeit accidentally.

.Al Jazeera said its legal team conducted its own "full and detailed investigation into the case" and claimed it unearthed new evidence that "clearly shows" that Akleh and her colleagues were fired at directly.

Last week, the news outlet aired a 38-minute-long documentary titled "The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh" that included the supposed new evidence and eyewitness accounts.

i24NEWS contributed to this report.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Israel slams Al Jazeera for taking Abu Akleh case to ICC appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Some of the components in the Iranian drones being supplied to Russia have Western components, a senior Kurdish figure told Israel Hayom in an interview that focused on the Kurdish plight for freedom from the yoke of the Iranian regime.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan's Deputy Head of Foreign Relations Hiwa Bahrami, whose party has been part of the long effort to "attain Kurdish national rights within a federal and democratic Iran", said that Kurds have been bombed by Iranians for the past 40 years.

"This is not just several months [referring to the war in Ukraine]; we have had to deal with this for 40 years, since the Islamic Revolution," he told Israel Hayom.

Bahrami added that the recent "Hijab protest" in Iran, which was sparked by the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini by police officers who said she did not cover her head properly, has had the Kurdish minority once again become an easy target.

He noted that almost half of the roughly 400 dead in the protests have been Kurds and Baluch, many of whom were killed by drones and missiles that Iran has fired recently on Kurdish areas.

"We managed to down some of the drones with our air defenses, and we even took some photos of the aircraft," he said. "These are the same models used by the Russian military in Ukraine. Some of the components there are from European manufacturers and even US companies," he noted.

He stressed that his party is not "involved in organizing the unrest" but said that "everyone wants to get rid of this regime and regain freedom, not just in Kurdistan; it's only natural that we would support the people in Iran."

He then implored Israel to show its solidarity. "We want support from all democratic states, including Israel. For the regime, Israel is the main enemy and they always try to attack it in every possible way. Now Israel and the Iranians have a common goal."

The post Senior Kurdish figure sounds alarm on Iranian drones appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump's account on Twitter on Saturday, reversing a ban that has kept the former president off the social media site since a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was poised to certify Joe Biden's election victory.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Musk made the announcement in the evening after holding a poll that asked Twitter users to click "yes" or "no" on whether Trump's account should be restored. The "yes" vote won, with 51.8%. Previously, Musk had said Twitter would establish new procedures and a "content moderation council" before making decisions to restore suspended accounts.

"The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei," Musk tweeted, using a Latin phrase meaning "the voice of the people, the voice of God."

Shortly afterward Trump's account, which had earlier appeared as suspended, reappeared on the platform complete with his former tweets, more than 59,000 of them. His followers were gone, at least initially, but he quickly began regaining them. There were no new tweets from the account as of late Saturday, however.

Musk restored the account less than a month after the Tesla CEO took control of Twitter and four days after Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race.

It is not clear whether Trump would actually return to Twitter. An irrepressible tweeter before he was banned, Trump has said in the past that he would not rejoin even if his account was reinstated. He has been relying on his own, much smaller social media site, Truth Social, which he launched after being blocked from Twitter.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories! 

The post 'The people have spoken': Musk restores Trump's Twitter account after online poll appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Residents in Ukraine's southern city of Kherson call the two-storey police station "The Hole". Vitalii Serdiuk, a pensioner, said he was lucky to make it out alive.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

"I hung on," the retired medical equipment repairman said as he recounted his ordeal in Russian detention two blocks from where he and his wife live in a tiny Soviet-era apartment.

The green-roofed police building at No. 3, Energy Workers' Street, was the most notorious of several sites where, according to more than half a dozen locals in the recently recaptured city, people were interrogated and tortured during Russia's nine-month occupation. Another was a large prison.

Two residents living in an apartment block overlooking the police station courtyard said they saw bodies wrapped in white sheets being carried from the building, stored in a garage and later tossed into refuse trucks to be taken away.

The Kremlin and Russia's Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to questions about Serdiuk's account or that of others Reuters spoke to in Kherson. Moscow has rejected allegations of abuse against civilians and soldiers and has accused Ukraine of staging such abuses in places like Bucha.

On Tuesday, the UN human rights office said it had found evidence that both sides had tortured prisoners of war, which is classified as a war crime by the International Criminal Court. Russian abuse was "fairly systematic", a UN official said.

As Russian security forces retreat from large swathes of territory in the north, east and south, evidence of abuses is mounting.

Those held in Kherson included people who voiced opposition to Russia's occupation, residents, like Serdiuk, believed to have information about enemy soldiers' positions, as well as suspected underground resistance fighters and their associates.

Serdiuk said he was beaten on his legs, back and torso with a truncheon and shocked with electrodes wired to his scrotum by a Russian official demanding to know the whereabouts and unit of his son, a soldier in the Ukrainian army.

"I didn't tell him anything. 'I don't know' was my only answer," the 65-year-old said in his apartment, which was lit by a single candle. "'Remember! Remember! Remember!' was the constant response."

Grim recollections of life under occupation in Kherson have followed the unbridled joy and relief when Ukrainian soldiers retook the city on Friday after Russian troops withdrew across the Dnipro River.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said two days later that investigators had uncovered more than 400 Russian war crimes and found the bodies of both servicemen and civilians in areas of Kherson region freed from Russian occupation.

"I personally saw five bodies taken out," said Oleh, 20, who lives in an apartment block overlooking the police station, declining to give his last name. "We could see hands hanging from the sheets and we understood these to be corpses."

Speaking separately, Svytlana Bestanik, 41, who lives in the same block and works at a small store between the building and the station, also recalled seeing prisoners carrying out bodies.

"They would carry dead people out and would throw them in a truck with the garbage," she said, describing the stench of decomposing bodies in the air. "We were witnessing sadism in its purest form."

Reuters journalists visited the police station on Tuesday but were prohibited from going beyond the courtyard, rimmed by a razor wire-topped wall, by armed police officers and a soldier who said that investigators were inside collecting evidence.

One officer, who declined to give his name, said that up to 12 detainees were kept in tiny cages, an account corroborated by Serdiuk.

Neighbours recounted hearing screams of men and women coming from the station and said that whenever the Russians emerged, they wore balaclavas concealing all but their eyes.

"They came in the shop every day," said Bestanik. "I decided not to talk to them. I was too afraid of them."

Aliona Lapchuk said she and her eldest son fled Kherson in April after a terrifying ordeal at the hands of Russian security personnel on March 27, the last time she saw her husband Vitaliy.

Vitaliy had been an underground resistance fighter since Russian troops seized Kherson on March 2, according to Lapchuk, and she became worried when he did not answer her phone calls.

Soon after, she said, three cars with the Russian "Z" sign painted on them pulled up at her mother's home where they were living. They brought Vitaliy, who was badly beaten.

The soldiers, who identified themselves as Russian troops, threatened to smash out her teeth when she tried to berate them. They confiscated their mobile phones and laptops, she said, and then discovered weapons in the basement.

They beat her husband in the basement savagely before dragging him out.

"He didn't walk out of the basement; they dragged him out. They broke through his cheek bone," she said, sobbing, in the village of Krasne, some 100 km (60 miles) west of Kherson.

Lapchuk and her eldest son, Andriy, were hooded and taken to the police station at 4, Lutheran Street, in Kherson where she could hear her husband being interrogated through a wall, she said. She and Andriy were later released.

After leaving Kherson, Lapchuk wrote to everyone she could think of to try and find her husband.

On June 9, she said she got a message from a pathologist who told her to call the next day. She knew immediately Vitaliy was dead.

His body had been found floating in a river, she said, showing photographs taken by a pathologist in which a birth mark on his shoulder could be seen.

Lapchuk said she paid for Vitaliy to be buried and has yet to see the grave.

She is convinced her husband was betrayed to the Russians by someone very close to them.

Ruslan, 52, who runs a beer store opposite the police station where Serdiuk was held, said that at the beginning of the occupation, Russian-made Ural trucks would pull up daily before the grey front door.

Detainees, he said, would be hurled from the back, their hands bound and heads covered by bags.

"This place was called 'Yama' [The Hole]," he said.

Serhii Polako, 48, a trader who lives across the street from the station, echoed Ruslan's account.

He said that several weeks into the occupation, Russian national guard troops deployed at the site were replaced by men driving vehicles embossed with the letter "V", and that was when the screams started.

"If there is a hell on earth, it was there," he said.

About two weeks ago, he said, the Russians freed those being kept in the station in apparent preparation for their withdrawal.

"All of a sudden, they emptied the place, and we understood something was happening," he told Reuters.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

Serdiuk believes he was betrayed by an informant as the father of a Ukrainian serviceman. He said Russian security personnel handcuffed him, put a bag over his head, forced him to bend at the waist and frog-marched him into a vehicle.

At the station, he was put in a cell so cramped that the occupants could not move while lying down. On some days, prisoners received only one meal. The following day, he was hooded, his hands bound, and taken down to a cellar room. The interrogation and torture lasted about 90 minutes, he said.

His Russian interrogator knew all of his details and those of his family, and said that unless he cooperated, he would have his wife arrested and telephone his son so he could hear both of them screaming under torture, Serdiuk said. Two days later, he was released without explanation. His wife found him outside the shop in which Bestanik works, virtually unable to walk.

The post 'Hell on earth': Ukrainians describe Russian occupation of Kherson appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday launched his third campaign for the White House just one week after a disappointing midterm showing for Republicans, forcing the party to again decide whether to embrace a candidate whose refusal to accept defeat in 2020 sparked an insurrection and pushed American democracy to the brink.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

"In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States," Trump said before an audience of several hundred supporters in a chandeliered ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago club, where he stood flanked by American flags and banners bearing his "Make America Great Again" slogan.

"America's comeback starts right now," he said, formally beginning the 2024 Republican primary.

Another campaign is a remarkable turn for any former president, much less one who made history as the first to be impeached twice and whose term ended with his supporters violently storming the Capitol in a deadly bid to halt the peaceful transition of power on Jan. 6, 2021.

Video: Reuters

Trump also enters the race in a moment of deep political vulnerability. He hoped to launch his campaign in the wake of resounding GOP midterm victories, fueled by candidates he elevated during this year's primaries. Instead, many of those candidates lost, allowing Democrats to keep the Senate and leaving the GOP with a path to only a bare majority in the House.

Trump has been blamed for the losses by many in his party, including a growing number who say the results make clear it's time for the GOP to move past him and look to the future, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis emerging from last week's elections as an early favorite.

In addition to trying to blunt his potential rivals' rise, Trump's decision to launch his candidacy before the 2022 election had been fully decided also comes as he faces a series of escalating criminal investigations, including several that could lead to indictments. They include the probe into hundreds of documents with classified markings that were seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago and ongoing state and federal inquiries into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

As Trump has spent the last months teasing his return, aides have been sketching out the contours of a campaign that is being modeled on his 2016 operation, when Trump and a small clutch of aides defied the odds and defeated far better-funded and more experienced rivals by tapping into deep political fault lines and using shocking statements to drive relentless media attention.

Trump returned to that dark rhetoric in his speech Tuesday, painting the country under President Joe Biden in apocalyptic terms, describing "blood-soaked streets" in "cesspool cities" and an "invasion" at the border and earning cheers as he vowed to execute those convicted of selling drugs.

"We are a nation in decline," he said. "We are here tonight to declare that it does not have to be this way."

Trump notably avoided much talk of the 2020 election, eschewing the extreme conspiracy theories that often dominate his rallies. Still, the speech included numerous exaggerations and deflections as he cast himself as "a victim" of wayward prosecutors and the "festering, rot and corruption of Washington."

While Trump spoke before a crowd of several hundred, notably missing were many longtime supporters including previous campaign managers, aides and his daughter Ivanka, who released a statement saying that she does not plan to be involved in his campaign.

"While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena," she said in statement.

Even after the GOP's midterm losses, Trump remains the most powerful force in his party thanks to the loyalty of his base. For years he has consistently topped his fellow Republican contenders by wide margins in hypothetical head-to-head matchups. And even out of office, he consistently attracts thousands to his rallies and remains his party's most prolific fundraiser, raising hundreds of millions of dollars.

But Trump is also a deeply polarizing figure. Fifty-four percent of voters in last week's midterm elections viewed him very or somewhat unfavorably, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide. And an October AP-NORC poll found even Republicans have their reservations about him remaining the party's standard-bearer, with 43% saying they don't want to see him run for president in 2024.

Trump's candidacy poses profound questions about America's democratic future. The final days of his presidency were consumed by a desperate effort to stay in power, undermining the centuries-old tradition of a peaceful transfer. And in the two years since he lost, Trump's persistent – and baseless – lies about widespread election fraud have eroded confidence in the nation's political process. By late January 2021, about two-thirds of Republicans said they did not believe Biden was legitimately elected in 2020, an AP-NORC poll found.

VoteCast showed roughly as many Republican voters in the midterm elections continued to hold that belief.

Federal and state election officials and Trump's own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the 2020 election was tainted. The former president's allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by numerous courts, including by judges Trump appointed.

While some Republicans with presidential ambitions have long ruled out running against Trump, others, including Vice President Mike Pence, have been taking increasingly public steps toward campaigns of their own, raising the prospect of a crowded GOP primary.

That could ultimately play to Trump's advantage, as it did in 2016, when he prevailed over more than a dozen other candidates who splintered the anti-Trump vote.

Trump's decision also paves the way for a potential rematch with Biden, who has said he intends to run for reelection despite concerns from some in his party over his age and low approval ratings. The two men were already the oldest presidential nominees ever when they ran in 2020. Trump, who is 76, would be 82 at the end of a second term in 2029. Biden, who is about to turn 80, would be 86.

If he is ultimately successful, Trump would be just the second US president in history to serve two nonconsecutive terms, following Grover Cleveland's wins in 1884 and 1892.

But Trump enters the race facing enormous challenges beyond his party's growing trepidations. The former president is the subject of numerous investigations, including the monthslong probe into the hundreds of documents with classified markings found at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump is also facing Justice Department scrutiny over efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating what she alleges was "a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign" to influence the 2020 results.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

Some in Trump's orbit believe that running will help shield him against potential indictment, but there is no legal statute that would prevent the Justice Department from moving forward – or prevent Trump from continuing to run if he is charged.

Still, Trump's campaign will further complicate what is already a fraught decision by the Biden Justice Department, which will have to decide not only whether it believes Trump broke the law, but will face enormous political pressure for indicting the man who is now the sitting president's chief political rival. Already Trump has cast the probe as a politically motivated effort to derail his candidacy.

Aides who had succeeded in persuading Trump to delay his announcement until after the midterms had also urged him to wait until after next month's Senate runoff in Georgia. But Trump chose to ignore the advice.

It wasn't any secret what he had been planning.

At a White House Christmas party in December 2020, Trump told guests it had "been an amazing four years."

"We are trying to do another four years," he said. "Otherwise, I'll see you in four years."

The post 'America's comeback starts now': Trump announces 2024 White House bid appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.