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Early exit polls from Israel's high-stakes election set off a wave of stunned reactions online, with observers zeroing in on one unexpected kingmaker.Israel's Channel 12 exit poll put the opposition bloc at 52 seats, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc at 50 and Arab parties at 18, CNN reported Tuesday."This is a DRAMATIC result," Omri Marian, an internationally recognized tax law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and an Israeli expat, wrote on Bluesky. "Palestinians with Israeli citizenship hold all the leverage."Marian then laid out four possible outcomes, including Jewish opposition parties breaking their campaign vow not to partner with Arab parties, another election, a unity government with Netanyahu's Likud party or a short-lived minority coalition. He feared the unity option, under which "Bibi goes free even though he is not PM." "I worry this is where we might end up," he wrote.UC Irvine political scientist Sara Wallace Goodman asked whether a caretaker government and another election were next. Marian agreed that a minority coalition would send Israel back to the polls "within a few months."William Adler, a professor of political science at Northeastern Illinois University, was skeptical the math would translate into power. "Seems like the only way to majority government is Arab parties and it won't happen," he wrote. Marian replied, "That's what I worry, but everyone saw it coming."George Pearkes, a markets strategist, noted that two networks showed Netanyahu's bloc trailing while a third, Channel 14, showed it ahead, adding that turnout two hours before polls closed was the highest since 1988. "Man this is going to be CHAOS," he wrote. Justin Joque, a University of Michigan media scholar, cast doubt on the outlier, noting that Channel 14's pre-election polls had Netanyahu winning even as other surveys moved the opposite way.Others urged caution. Eric Columbus, a Lawfare senior editor and former Justice Department official, shared a reminder from New York Times correspondent Yair Rosenberg that Israeli exit polls miss the final hours of voting, when the right has sometimes surged. "Too soon to pop any corks?" Columbus asked.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party alliance is narrowly trailing his top rival's coalition, exit polls of voters in the country's elections showed Tuesday.A poll from Israeli TV network Channel 12 projected Netanyahu's side winning 50 of the 120 seats in Israel's parliament, known as the Knesset, NBC News reported. Parties aligned with Netanyahu's rival, Gadi Eisenkot, a former head of Israel's military, would take 52. Neither side would reach the 61 seats needed to form a government.Turnout hit 74.3% by 8 p.m. local time, the highest for that hour since 1988, in Israel's first national election since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack sparked the war in Gaza.The polls closed at 10 p.m. local time, which is 4 p.m. ET.

A mystery is unfolding around a close ally of President Donald Trump who is reportedly headed to the United States after suffering a stunning election defeat in Brazil.Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who unexpectedly lost the presidential election to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is traveling to the U.S. after failing to surrender his passports as ordered by Brazil’s Supreme Court, two sources told CNN.CNN senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak described the development as a “strange story,” noting that Bolsonaro’s whereabouts had remained “a mystery” for several days.“He has been under investigation by the Supreme Court,” Liptak reported Tuesday. “The Supreme Court had asked him to turn in his passports by yesterday, so by Monday. He didn't do that.”Bolsonaro, who denies wrongdoing, reportedly feared arrest amid an investigation into alleged corruption, money laundering and currency evasion.Liptak raised questions about whether Trump, who has suggested Brazil’s election may have been rigged, could offer his political ally protection. “The real question now is whether Bolsonaro will be seeking some kind of asylum from the Trump administration,” Liptak said, also questioning whether the White House might have helped facilitate his departure. The reporter pointed to a striking family precedent involving Bolsonaro’s father, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who also traveled to the United States after losing an election to Lula.“Actually, while he was in the U.S., he was a guest at various points at Mar-a-Lago,” Liptak noted Tuesday.The elder Bolsonaro later returned to Brazil, where he was sentenced to 27 years in prison.“What happens next, I think, is a little unclear,” Liptak said.

A recent “political earthquake” just shattered the hopes of those seeking to make a quiet fortune with Donald Trump’s help — and yes, they include the president’s family, political experts contend. The official ouster of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić by a group of politicized students foretells dark times ahead for developers in Trump’s orbit, Professor Vesko Garčević, a former ambassador from Montenegro in the Balkans, told Raw Story. “An autocratic leader is toppled,” Garčević, who wrote a book called Montenegro and Serbia: A Velvet Divorce?, said. “This is a blow for people who wanted to make a profit.”Vučić, the increasingly authoritarian leader of the Serbian Progressive Party, has been fighting for control of his country since 2024, when protests erupted over the deaths of 16 people in a concrete canopy collapse at the Novi Sad railway station.The government’s violent attacks on protesters only fueled the flames of resistance from Serbians who demanded accountability and an end to political corruption. Finally, on Oct. 25, The Student List, a progressive movement of academics and public figures that led the charge, won an electoral victory that saw them claim 141 of the 250 seats in the Serbian parliament. Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party won just 103. It remains unclear who will step forward to lead the party. Potential candidates include Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist; Dejan Šoškić, a former central bank governor; and Radomir Saičić, a Belgrade University chemistry professor. But Garčević, now a Boston University professor of international relations, predicts a positive shift for the people of Serbia, the Balkans, and the European Union. “The political earthquake in Serbia will reshape political dynamics among Serbs across the region,” Garčević wrote in a private social media post shared with Raw Story. “It could weaken hard-core nationalists and might create space for more moderate voices and ideas to gain ground.” In conversation with Raw Story, Garčević initially contended the election results were good news “for everyone,” then adjusted his comment to make an exclusion: Jared Kushner. Without Vučić’s support, the future looks dark for the $500 million hotel Kushner hoped to build on the site of Belgrade’s historic General Staff building, Garčević argued. Recent reporting from The Guardian revealed Vučić himself — as he appeared on podcasts with Donald Trump Jr. and made offerings of suckling pig — pressured his government in February 2024 to break the law for Ivanka’s husband and strip the General Staff building of its landmark protections. Protests erupted once again when details leaked to the public, and abuse of power charges against Serbian officials involved were brought last December. Vučić denied wrongdoing and Kushner’s company announced the project would not proceed “at this time,” according to The Guardian. Garčević said Tuesday the odds are now very slim that the Student List will ever allow Kushner's time to come. “Given what got them to power, an agenda that is very tough on murky projects like that one, it would be against their own interests,” Garčević said. “It is highly unlikely the project will be continued.”But the General Staff building does not represent the Trump family's lone investment in the Balkans by a long shot, Garčević noted.Those investments include plans to pump American fuel in pipelines that once carried Russian energy, the subject of an international scandal that contributed to former Greece Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle — and Trump Jr.’s ex-fiancée — stepping down, as recent Wall Street Journal reporting has revealed. “Using a pretext to diversify energy supply to the region, which by itself is a good [thing], this administration promotes the interests of particular people,” Garčević said. “Those are billion-dollar projects — you can imagine how much one might profit out of it.”They also include Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s plans to build luxury developments on protected grounds in Albania, where protesters in the Flamingo Revolution are now demanding Prime Minister Edi Rama resign. Now, with Vučić’s fall, Balkan power brokers will be left wondering if selling off swaths of territory to Trumps is worth the political price, according to Walter Russell Meade, the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal. “Vucic stood out in Europe for his interest in using economic incentives to build ties with the Trump inner circle,” Meade wrote. “Like [Hungary's former Prime Minister] Viktor Orbán last spring, Mr. Vucic, who conceded Sunday, learned that warm relations with Mr. Trump’s White House don’t always impress the voters at home.”Garčević told Raw Story such leaders' gambits fail for a simple reason, and noted that before the Novi Sad railway collapse riots spurred the collapse of Vučić’s government, Serbians had united in protests against lithium mining in Serbia's Jadar Valley.“For them it was their home,” Garčević said. “They didn’t want their home to get spoiled for somebody’s profit.”

A geopolitical expert warned Sunday that President Donald Trump is facing a trap in Iran, one that created one of the most dangerous windows in the war's timeline. Robert Pape, a political scientist who teaches at the University of Chicago, wrote in a new Substack essay that Iran's pathway to winning the war against the U.S. is by creating excruciating economic pressure on the Trump administration. Pape predicted that the Trump administration is likely to respond to such pressure with a limited ground operation in Iran after the midterms are over. This could cause a spiral of repeating escalations that drag the U.S. further into the war. "This is the Escalation Trap in its purest form," Pape wrote. Pape argued that the two months after the midterm elections in November will be the "most dangerous" part of the war. For starters, Pape noted that the lame-duck Congress will have little incentive to prevent Trump from acting on his worst impulses, especially if the Democrats trounce Republicans, as some polls have suggested. He also noted that Trump will have the fewest domestic constraints of his second term after the midterms, which could cause Trump to deal with the ongoing economic pressure in a concerning way. "Pressure on Hormuz and Gulf oil leaves Washington two choices: make the sweeping concessions an increasingly ambitious Iran demands, which carry a heavy price at home, or climb the next rung," Pape wrote. The stakes are even greater because of the looming elections in Israel, he added. There is a chance Netanyahu becomes a "caretaker" Prime Minister after the election, which could cause him to act erratically as well.

President Donald Trump's administration is plotting one of the "most serious attempts to undermine international law" in modern history, according to one expert. Stephen Zunes, a politics professor at the University of San Francisco, detailed a resolution that the Trump administration plans to submit to the United Nations Security Council regarding Morocco's annexation of the Western Sahara territory. Zunes noted that the resolution includes some significant policy proposals that, taken together, amount to "a gift to Netanyahu, Putin, and any other leader seeking to expand territory by force." "This is one of the most serious attempts to undermine international law since the founding of the United Nations," Zunes posted on X. Morocco has been attempting to annex Western Sahara since the late 1970s. The country currently controls about 80% of the territory, although international bodies don't recognize Morocco's annexation. The Trump administration's proposal would remove longstanding requirements for U.N. peacekeeping forces to oversee a referendum about Morocco's annexation, which Zunes said would negate the "right of self-determination that has long been the basis of decolonization under international law."The resolution also falsely claims that there is a growing consensus about Morocco's annexation, when Zunes noted that only two far-right governments — Israel and Colombia — have recognized the move. Zunes described the argument as a "legal fiction.""There will certainly be objections from Pakistan, China, Russia, and perhaps some other countries which could result in changes in the language before it is put to a formal vote," Zunes added. "However, with Washington’s history of running roughshod over international legal precedent and the failure of even democratic nations to consistently stand up to Trump’s bullying (particularly on what are considered less-consequential issues), it is hard to predict." "Even if the full text isn’t accepted, the Trump administration may succeed in its primary goal: to make Morocco’s autonomy proposal, which falls way short of the international definition of autonomy and would rule out the option of independence, which is required for real decolonization, recognized by the United Nations as the only basis of future negotiations," he continued.

Kim Aris tells the Guardian chance to speak with detained Nobel laureate was ‘public relations’ move from military leadersMyanmar’s former democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be in good physical and mental health but is living in near-complete isolation, her son has said after the first call with his 81-year-old mother in more than five years.“She still sounds certainly all there mentally, and physically she sounds strong,” Kim Aris said. “I don’t think she has anybody outside of the military or the police around her, so essentially she’s been held in solitary confinement from what I gather.” Continue reading...

Elon Musk acknowledged that SpaceX changed how Ukraine's military can use Starlink and followed it with a stark warning about the war.In a lengthy post on X Saturday, the billionaire accused Ukrainian forces of violating Starlink's terms of service by using the satellite internet system "for offensive drone strikes to kill people" before announcing, "That loophole was closed last week."Musk then made clear how much rides on the service. "Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately," he wrote. "This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact."He argued Starlink "remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now," and credited it with "preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war." "SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR," Musk wrote.Musk drew a distinction between Starlink, which he called "a civilian commercial service," and Starshield, "a different system" that he said is controlled by the U.S. government. "What they decide to do is up to them," he wrote.Then he turned on his critics. "I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict," Musk wrote. "May you burn in hell. End of story."The post, which racked up more than 1.5 million views, came in response to an account insisting Starlink is not a weapons system.Ukrainian activist Serhii Sternenko pushed back hard on Musk's version of events. "As someone who was inside the process at the Ministry of Defense, I can say with certainty that this is not true," he wrote, noting that "whitelists were introduced" in February.Others piled on. The account for MeidasTouch called it "a deranged post" in which Musk "openly acknowledges that SpaceX recently restricted Ukraine's ability to use Starlink." Shaun Pinner, a British veteran who fought for Ukraine and was held captive by Russian forces, replied simply, "What absolute crap."Singer Marco Foster, an executive producer at Really American who posts political clips on his popular X account, turned Musk's words around by suggesting the "warmongers" jab was "obviously referring to genocidal b— Vladimir Putin."