Former President Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is scheduled to check in Monday at a federal lockup in Otisville, NY, where he will begin serving a three-year stint for crimes including campaign finance violations tied to hush-money payments made on Trump’s behalf.
Cohen, 53, who once vowed to “take a bullet” for Trump, whom he now calls a “con man,” will step inside the medium-security Federal Correctional Facility Otisville, in the Catskills about 70 miles from Manhattan, by his 2 p.m. deadline.
Cohen will be housed in dorm-like accommodations at the camp, which prison consultants say has become a destination for Jewish inmates due to its proximity to the Big Apple’s Jewish and upstate’s Orthodox Jewish enclaves.

Last month, Beresheet, the first Israeli spacecraft, successfully orbited the moon but then crash-landed on the moon’s surface. However, that fact isn’t deterring the Israeli government from trying twice as hard the second time around.
Minister of Science, Technology and Space Ofir Akunis (Likud) announced on Sunday that the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) in the Ministry of Science will double its support for the Beresheet 2 project to NIS 20 million ($5.6 million), in comparison to the NIS 10 million it granted Beresheet 1.
Akunis also announced that the ISA has signed a contract with NASA to continue to assist SpaceIL (the Israeli nonprofit behind Beresheet) with its second launch.

President Donald Trump announced his choice to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Sunday, tapping a former FBI official who frequently appears on cable news advocating for the president’s immigration policies.
In a tweet, Trump called Mark Morgan, who briefly ran the U.S. Border Patrol under President Barack Obama, “a true believer and an American Patriot. He will do a great job!”
Trump, who has made tougher immigration enforcement a pillar of his presidential campaign and his administration, recently pulled the nomination of his previous choice to run ICE, saying he wanted to go in “a tougher direction.”

The United States is deploying a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in response to what it called “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran, national security adviser John Bolton announced on Sunday.
Bolton said in a statement that the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force would be deployed to a region overseen by the Pentagon’s U.S. Central Command, whose area of responsibility includes the Middle East.

Likud MK Gideon Saar attacked the ceasefire agreement with Hamas Monday morning, saying Israel failed to achieve any of its goals with the agreement, adding that the battle with the Gaza based terror group was not won, but merely delayed.
“The ceasefire, in the circumstances it was reached under, has no gains for Israel,” said Saar.
“The time between each round of violent attacks against Israel and its citizens is shrinking, and terror organizations in Gaza are strengthening. The fighting hasn’t been ended, just pushed off.”
Read more at Arutz Sheva.
{Matzav.com}

A special Rosh Chodesh prayer service organized by the Women of the Wall drew less than 20 people at the Kosel Monday morning, despite hopes by the Reform movement in Israel that hundreds would take part in the service.
Opponents of the group say the poor turnout at Monday’s event was likely the result of disappointment over last month’s event, when the group hoped to bring out 1,000 supporters, but instead drew only dozens.
Turnout at the Women of the Wall event was so low that mechitzas put up every month to separate the Orthodox tefillos in the Women’s section at the Kosel from the non-traditional services were not needed, freeing up more space at the Women’s section.

The Trump administration is reportedly expected to announce additional sanctions on Iran within the coming week.
The sanctions, which are slated to be announced Wednesday, will significantly impact a new sector of the Iranian economy, Axios reported Sunday, citing two senior administration officials.
The administration is attempting to limit the country’s possibility for growth by restricting economic diversification, officials told Axios.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}

President Trump sounded off on the most recent violence between Israeli and the Palestinians, putting the onus on Palestinians to “END the violence and work towards peace” in a Sunday night tweet.
“Once again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rocket attacks by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We support Israel 100% in its defense of its citizens,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “To the Gazan people — these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery. END the violence and work towards peace – it can happen!”
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}

On April 22, 2019, the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia (MAS Philly) uploaded a video of an “Ummah Day” celebration to its Facebook page in which young children wearing Palestinian scarves sang: “Glorious steeds call us and lead us [to] the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The blood of martyrs protects us … Take us, oh ships … until we reach our shores and crush the treacherous ones … Flow, oh rivers of martyrs!”

A ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza terror groups went into effect at 4:30 a.m. Monday, ending two days of intense fighting that saw more than 600 rockets fired at Israel and four Israeli civilians killed, according to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups.
The Israeli government refused to confirm the reported truce, apparently so as to avoid publicly acknowledging its negotiations with terrorist groups. However, the military announced that, as of 7 a.m., it was lifting all security restrictions that had been in place in the south during the fighting, and that schools would be allowed to open, indicating that a ceasefire had indeed been reached.