Former congressman Mark Sanford said Tuesday that he is considering a presidential bid, making him potentially the second Republican to wage a primary challenge against President Donald Trump.
In an interview on CNN, Sanford, a former South Carolina governor who represented the state’s 1st Congressional District in the House until earlier this year, said he was motivated to consider a bid due to the lack of debate over the federal debt and deficit.
“The place where there is no discussion is the way in which, you know, interest is the largest growing expense in the federal government,” Sanford said.
The news of Sanford’s potential run was first reported Tuesday by the Charleston Post and Courier.

Lawyers acting for the family of a French Jewish widow murdered in her own home during a frenzied antisemitic assault have vowed to appeal the ruling of a Paris court that will potentially allow her accused killer to be released without trial.
Last Friday, the judges in charge of the preliminary investigation into the murder of Sarah Halimi — a 65-year-old former teacher who was severely beaten and then tossed from a third-floor window on April 4, 2017, by 27-year-old Kobili Traore, her neighbor in a Paris public housing project — ruled that Traore could not be held criminally responsible for his actions because he had been smoking marijuana heavily in the hours before the killing.

Speaking to Israel Radio on Tuesday, Israel’s Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis said that the Likud Party under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not lend a hand to turning Israel into a state governed by Jewish law.
“If there is a need, we will carry out [infrastructure] work on Shabbat,” said Akunis. “There will be work on Shabbat to avoid inconveniencing the tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians who need to use the trains. This is not a violation of the status quo.”

Daf Yomi will be celebrating the siyum of Maseches Arachim this coming Shabbos. “The SONG OF ARACHIN” reviews the highlights and main points of Eruchin, recapping the key klallim of the masechta – all in rhyme! By www.SONGSOFSHAS.com

Police in Italy recovered Nazi paraphernalia, guns and missile during a Monday operation that was part of a year-long investigation into “Italian fighters with extreme ideologies.”
One of the three suspects taken into custody had been flagged for trying to sell an air-to-air missile that was located in the northern Italian city of Pavia, authorities said in their announcement. The weapon did not have an explosive, police say, but was still usable. Authorities also found assault rifles, bayonets, pistols, and nearly a thousand cartridges and other weapons parts.

A United Arab Emirates oil tanker traveling through the Strait of Hormuz stopped in Iranian waters and switched off its transponder more than two days ago, according to shipping tracking data, amid heightened tensions over a spate of incidents involving commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf.
The Panama-flagged Riah stopped transmitting its position late Saturday and was last shown off the coast of Iran’s Qeshm island in the Strait of Hormuz. It was unclear Tuesday what happened to the tanker, which was on its way to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates before diverting sharply toward Iranian waters and slowing to a halt, tracking data showed.
A UAE government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

President Donald Trump’s close relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has  now been memorialized in the White House, where a photo of the two leaders now hangs in the West Wing.
Trump and Kim have met three times during Trump’s presidency. They gathered for a nuclear summit in Singapore in June 2018, a second summit in Hanoi, Vietnam this past February, and met at the de-militarized zone (or the DMZ) last month.
The photo in the White House, posted to Twitter by Bloomberg White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs, shows the two leaders at the DMZ, which Trump visited after the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
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{Matzav.com}

federal judge who has warned Roger Stone to stop criticizing the criminal case against him on social media finally banned him from the platforms outright.
Prosecutors have complained to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson that the longtime Republican party operative and former adviser to President Donald Trump has been using social media to assail the government’s case, in violation of her February ruling. Jackson read her ruling from the bench, following a 45-minute recess from a two-hour-long hearing.
“I’ve twice given you the benefit of the doubt,” she told Stone, saying he had forced his lawyers into contortions to contend he was in compliance with her directives.

JERUSALEM – Orthodox Union leaders from throughout the United States and Canada met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and discussed the need to increase and expand initiatives focused on Diaspora Jewish education and identity. The prime minister, while agreeing that more should be done, did tell the group of American Jewish leaders that he has had the Government of Israel invest tens of millions of dollars in these programs already, but he agreed this priority deserved more funding.
“It is time that instead of Israel receiving from the Diaspora, we are giving now. We are increasing tens of millions of dollars, but it is not enough, we need to do more,” said the prime minister.

George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, on Monday derided President Trump as a “racist president,” saying that his latest attacks against a group of minority congresswomen left no doubt that he is a bigot.
Conway added that “no matter how much I found [Trump] ultimately unfit, I still gave him the benefit of the doubt about being a racist.”
The statements from Conway came a day after Trump sparked an uproar by telling four female lawmakers of color to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” before speaking out about how the United States government should be run.