Israel to annex West Bank – Seymour Hersh

The move will be aimed at preventing a two-state solution, according to the US investigative journalist

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government intends to announce the formal annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks, a source has told the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh.

According to Hersh, Israel has been “fortified by bombs and funding” from Washington and is ramping up the expulsion of Palestinians from northern Gaza to the south of the enclave. Meanwhile, the religious parties that “dominate” Netanyahu’s cabinet are demanding full control over both occupied Palestinian territories.

“I was told this week by a well-informed Washington official that the Israeli leadership will formally annex the West Bank in the very near future – perhaps in two weeks – in the hope that the decisive step will end, once and for all, any talk of a two-state solution and will convince some in the skeptical Arab world to reconsider financing the planned reconstruction of Gaza,” Hersh wrote in an article on his Substack on Wednesday.

https://www.rt.com/news/607943-israel-west-band-annex-hersh/

[I don't think we have to worry about a lot of the money Biden has tried to expend. Trump can get a lot of it back.]

=The President’s Constitutional Power of Impoundment==

by Mark Paoletta, Daniel Shapiro

September 10, 2024

I. The President’s Article II Impoundment Authority.

A. Article II vests the power of impoundment in the President.

Article II of the “Constitution vests the entirety of the executive power in the President” of the United States.1 “This grant of authority establishes the President as the chief constitutional officer of the Executive Branch, entrusted with supervisory and policy responsibilities of utmost discretion and sensitivity.”2 “The President’s duties are of ‘unrivaled gravity and breadth.’”3 The President “must ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ and he bears responsibility for the actions of the many departments and agencies within the Executive Branch.”4 The President exercises many authorities that are derived “from the Constitution itself.”5 When he exercises such powers, his authority is “conclusive and preclusive,” meaning that “he may act even when the measures he takes are ‘incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress.’”6 “Congress cannot act on, and courts cannot examine, the President’s actions on subjects within his “conclusive and preclusive” constitutional authority.”7

The power of impoundment is one such executive power vested in the President alone by Article II of the Constitution. As discussed below, this power stems from the President’s conclusive and preclusive authorities the Court sets out in the Trump v. United States opinion. Through impoundment, the President can decline to spend the entire amount of an appropriation. Just as the President has discretion to not enforce every criminal law to the fullest extent,8 the President may make judgments on the extent to which to expend appropriations. Impoundment is simply another word for the President’s Article II authority to implement spending measures enacted by Congress in a responsible manner. As explained at length elsewhere,9 this power has long been understood to inhere in the executive power vested by Article II, and therefore, it is not constitutionally proper for Congress to seek to abridge this constitutionally vested authority under the Necessary and Proper Clause. The impoundment power is committed to the President’s discretion by the Constitution.

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https://americarenewing.com/the-presidents-constitutional-power-of-impoundment/