President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that Linda McMahon, his transition co-chair, has been chosen to head the Department of Education. This selection comes as Trump and his allies reiterate their intention to dismantle the agency altogether.
McMahon, 76, previously led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. Before entering public service, she was the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, a company she co-founded with her husband, Vince McMahon.
“Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World,” Trump said in his announcement.

Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security advisor, said last week that the Biden administration “sent a signal” to President-elect Donald Trump’s team that it is prepared to coordinate on a hostage deal during the transition period prior to inauguration day on Jan. 20.
The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday in response to a JNS question that it is not clear that such a collaboration will occur.
“There’s a process that has to take place before we can, say for example, brief members of an incoming transition team on classified information,” Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, told JNS at the department’s press briefing.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that it is imposing new sanctions on Hamas leaders and financiers, including on a Lebanon-based leader of the terror group who called for the attacks undertaken in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, to be repeated until the Jewish state is annihilated.
Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman, said some of the officials sanctioned on Tuesday were involved in smuggling equipment and materials used to construct Hamas’s vast tunnel network in Gaza.
“There is no distinction between Hamas’s so-called military wing and its political leadership,” Miller said. “We will continue to use the tools at our disposal to target those who perpetuate Hamas’s destabilizing activities.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Tuesday tweeted praise for the European Union’s decision the previous day to slap sanctions on Iran for providing military assistance to Russia in its war against Ukraine and to Tehran’s regional terror proxies at war with Israel.
“I welcome the decision made yesterday by the E.U. foreign ministers to impose severe sanctions on the Iranian regime,” Sa’ar wrote.

Can an artificial intelligence chatbot help doctors better diagnose their patients?
Not really, according to new research.
The study, published last month in the journal JAMA Network Open, found that using ChatGPT, a chatbot created by OpenAI, did not significantly improve doctors’ diagnostic reasoning compared with doctors who used only traditional resources. The study also found that ChatGPT on its own performed better than either group of physicians.
The doctors that could use the software got a median score of 76 percent on making a diagnosis and explaining a reason for it, while the group that used only conventional resources had a median score of 74 percent. Run on its own, the software had a median score of roughly 90 percent.

Andrea Tenenti, a spokesman for the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, said on Tuesday that Argentina intends to withdraw its troops from UNIFIL, Reuters reported.
“Argentina has asked its officers to go back,” Tenenti said at a U.N. press briefing, per the news service. The statement appeared to confirm two-week-old reporting that Javier Milei, the Argentinian president, made the decision to exit UNIFIL on Nov. 1.
JNS sought comment from the Argentinian embassy in Washington.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has called on the United Nations Security Council to take “immediate action” against the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq launching drones and missiles at the Jewish state.
In a letter sent to the UNSC president for November, U.K. Ambassador Barbara Woodward, Sa’ar expressed “grave concern over the significant increase in the frequency and the intensity of attacks on Israel conducted by the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq” since September.

Agudath Israel of America is bewildered at the release of an audit report indicating that the East Ramapo Central School District (ERCSD) has a budgetary surplus of approximately $30 million. This finding, presented yesterday at the ERCSD Board meeting by independent auditing firm EFPR Group, LLP, diverges wildly from the $20-40 million deficit expected this summer by state-appointed monitors. The severe projected deficit had prompted the State Education Department (SED) to take the extraordinary step of substantially increasing and overriding the voted upon property tax levy on East Ramapo residents to generate needed funds. This move by SED — and specifically the communally divisive rhetoric used to justify it — was criticized by Agudath Israel and others at the time.

The leaders of the Knesset’s chareidi factions, Degel Hatorah and Agudas Yisrael, voiced their objections to Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s proposal to advance the judicial reform, according to a report by Kan Reshet Bet.
The judicial reform was a central element in the formation of the current government, sparking significant backlash from the center-left. These opponents, through judicial activism, have spent years trying to limit the powers of Netanyahu’s administrations. The reform, which led to widespread protests, was paused following the October 7 massacre as Israel shifted its attention to matters of self-defense, and the protesters redirected their focus to advocating for the release of hostages.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx) accused the Biden administration of trying to “undermine” the future Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress and Senate by proposing a draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council. This resolution, Cruz argues, demands that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) pull out of Gaza and calls for a ceasefire but does not simultaneously call for the release of 101 Israeli and foreign hostages that Hamas and other terrorists continue to hold.