Israel’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a unanimous decision that ultra-Orthodox men must be drafted for military service.

The court said without a law that distinguishes between Jewish seminary students and other draftees, Israel’s compulsory military service system applies to the ultra-Orthodox, as it does with other citizens, according to The Associated Press.

Ultra-Orthodox men have long been exempt from the draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish men and women. 

The exemptions have sparked anger among the secular public and led to more division amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas terrorists, as the military has called up tens of thousands of soldiers for its conflict in Gaza. More than 600 soldiers have been killed in the eight-month-long war.

Politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties, which are key partners in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, do not support any change to the current system. If the exemptions end, the governing coalition could collapse and prompt new elections.

Government lawyers told the court that forcing ultra-Orthodox men to enlist in the military would ‘tear Israeli society apart.’

The court said the state was carrying out ‘invalid selective enforcement, which represents a serious violation of the rule of law, and the principle according to which all individuals are equal before the law.’

Ultra-Orthodox men attend special seminaries that center on religious studies, while they largely refrain from secular topics like math, English or science. Critics have said these men are not prepared to serve in the military or enter the secular work force.

Cabinet minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, who heads one of the ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition, said on X that the ruling is ‘very unfortunate and disappointing.’

‘The state of Israel was established in order to be a home for the Jewish people whose Torah is the bedrock of its existence,’ he wrote. ‘The Holy Torah will prevail.’

Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers are now expected to face intense pressure from religious leaders and their constituents, and may have to decide whether it is worth it to remain in the government.

The exemptions have faced years of legal challenges, and several court decisions have found the system unjust. Israeli leaders, however, have repeatedly stalled amid pressure from ultra-Orthodox parties.

It remains unclear whether Netanyahu will be able to continue to stall.

Netanyahu has attempted to follow the court’s rulings while at the same time making efforts to preserve his coalition. Now with a slim majority of 64 seats in the 120-member parliament, Netanyahu is often beholden to the issues of smaller parties.

The ultra-Orthodox view their full-time religious studies as doing their part in protecting Israel.

Netanyahu has been pushing a bill tabled by a previous government in 2022 that attempted to address the issue of ultra-Orthodox enlistment.

Critics, however, say the bill was proposed before the war and does not do enough to address the shortage of forces as the army attempts to maintain its troops in the Gaza Strip while also preparing for potential war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The ultra-Orthodox community is the fastest-growing segment of the population. Each year, about 13,000 ultra-Orthodox males reach the conscription age of 18, although less than 10% enlist, according to the Israeli parliament’s State Control Committee.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

When you strip away the hype, blather and speculation surrounding Thursday’s presidential debate, the core narrative is this: Can Joe Biden get it done?

In other words, can the 81-year-old president, beset by doubts about his stamina and sharpness, be sufficiently cogent and aggressive in a way that transforms the campaign narrative? 

But I would suggest that may be the wrong question.

There’s no way that the president, if he doesn’t wander into the curtains, doesn’t turn in a reasonably strong performance after a week of prep at Camp David. Sure, he could stumble, mix things up or just look frail.

But Biden will clear the absurdly low bar that Donald Trump, Republican allies and conservative commentators have set for him. Dazed, confused, senile, doesn’t know where he is, can’t string two sentences together.

That portrayal is so deeply embedded that Trump’s last-minute effort at course correction – suddenly Biden is a ‘worthy’ debater who ‘destroyed’ Paul Ryan in 2012 – is a drop in the bucket.

And if Biden just holds his own, most of the media will declare him the winner and insist he shattered expectations.

In my view, the larger question of the CNN debate is focused on Donald Trump.

There’s now a concerted effort by the anti-Trump media to hammer home the message that the former president is losing it.

Trump rambles quite a bit at his rallies. In his view, he’s entertaining the crowd with yarns that are often semi-facetious or even self-deprecating.

But as his critics see it, Trump, 78, is showing his age through stream-of-consciousness digressions and detours.

So with his weekend appearances in Philadelphia, Trump told the tale of a boat owner telling him they can’t switch to electric because the batteries are so large they sink the boats (the conversation may have been real, but the reality is not).

And then there was his familiar lament about showers.

Trump talked about how much he likes to lather up his beautiful hair because that makes it thicker, and then the water comes out drip drip drip. (I’d wager that the showers at Mar-a-Lago, Bedminister and Trump Tower, at least, provide plenty of pressure.)

Still, Trump knows the difference between doing shtick for adoring crowds and handling a debate. He’ll obviously come on strong, as no one questions his energy level. 

But what most people are missing here is his level of discipline. Trump is perfectly capable of turning it on for as long as necessary.

I speak from personal experience. When I interviewed the former president for an hour at Mar-a-Lago some weeks ago, he was sharp and substantive.

Knowing full well that my audience is more independent, Trump easily fielded questions on abortion, immigration, Israel, indictments, Tik Tok, retribution, law enforcement and other topics–a couple of which had just broken hours earlier. While he got in a few zingers, especially about the 2020 election, he didn’t miss a beat, even about something he’d done in 1985. He acknowledged sometimes using inflammatory language to drive the news cycle.

Now I wasn’t under any illusion that he had morphed into a different candidate. Within a couple of days he was dropping hand grenades again. The risk for Trump this week is that he gets irked and hits Biden with below-the-belt shots. But no one thinks he won’t come out swinging.

Here’s how I see it unfolding: Biden and Trump both perform fairly strongly. And since the president is the one who’s been pilloried as a doddering old fool, the media, as I said, declare him victorious.  

But the bigger surprise in the Atlanta studio will be the more disciplined Trump. And he’ll be aided by the lack of an audience and the muted-mic rule, which will keep him from the constant interruptions that marred his first debate in 2020.

Oh, Trump seems pretty serious. You know, this is not the Trump I remember. He looks more presidential. That may be the reaction among Republicans or independents who were leaning against Trump but might like the more restrained version.

Of course, debates are unpredictable and I could be wrong. But it’s not just Joe Biden who has the ability to present a different persona. 

: Both presidents will be rusty, since neither has debated in four years. But Trump has an edge here because he’s constantly doing TV, radio and podcast interviews, enabling him to refine his answers. The incumbent, by largely avoiding journalists and being terse with shouted questions, is unaccustomed to such sparring.

An antisemitism watchdog group is calling for the Biden administration to fire a recently promoted White House official whose anti-Israel social media posts resurfaced this week.

StopAntisemitism said Tyler Cherry, who was promoted earlier this month as an associate communications director at the White House, called for the elimination of Israel and promoted anti-Israel viewpoints on social media going back years, as well as anti-police commentary.

‘We’re hoping this is the quickest hire and fire scenario in President Biden’s administration to date,’ Stop Antisemitism founder Liora Rez told Fox News Digital. ‘For the Biden administration to either A, not vet properly, or B, to vet and then approve an inner circle appointee like this… is just horrifying.’

Cherry, who spent three years at the Department of Interior working for Secretary Deb Haaland, deleted almost 2,500 posts on X between Sunday night and Monday morning, according to the Social Blade analytics website.

White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital on Thursday that the White House was ‘very proud to have Tyler on the team.’ Fox News Digital reached out to the White House again on Monday. 

On Sunday, Cherry responded to the backlash following his promotion and his past tweets. 

‘Past social media posts from when I was younger do not reflect my current views,’ Cherry, who was in his 20s when he made the posts, wrote on X. ‘Period. I support this Administration’s agenda – and will continue my communications work focused on our climate and environmental policies.’

Some of his social media posts include a 2014 anti-Israel post that went viral and echoes a lot of the rhetoric currently heard on college campuses.

‘Cheersing in bars to ending the occupation of Palestine – no shame and f— your glares #ISupportGaza #FreePalestine,’ Cherry wrote on July 25, 2014.

‘Praying for #Baltimore, but praying even harder for an end to a capitalistic police state motivated by explicit and implicit racial biases,’ Cherry posted in 2015 amid riots that were sparked following the death of Freddie Gray, a Black man, in police custody in Baltimore.

In 2018, Cherry called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be abolished. 

Anti-Israel rhetoric has increased following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists on Israeli communities. The Biden administration has supplied Israel with military aid but has also been criticized for trying to dictate its military response in Gaza. 

‘The Biden administration is forgetting that it took 10 years for us to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden, so it is highly, highly unappealing and misfortunate that President Biden is pressuring Israel after just nine months to get out of Gaza and stop Israel’s attempt to remove Hamas terrorists from power,’ Rez said. ‘Talk about not being proportional. Ten years, we took our sweet time versus nine months. It doesn’t make sense to us.’

Rez noted that the Biden administration has appointed people with anti-Israel views to prominent positions. She cited Maher Bitar, who serves as the special assistant to the senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council (NSC). 

Bitar has been accused of spreading hatred of Israel in the past and promoting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

‘We’re kind of moving from the point of scratching our heads and asking ‘What’s going on?’ to asking if this is a deliberate attempt to give antisemites a seat at the White House table,’ she said. 

Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report. 

Rep. Earl ‘Buddy’ Carter, R-Ga., wrote a letter to the White House on Monday calling on President Biden to take a cognitive assessment over concerns about his ‘fragile mental state’ and ability to uphold his duties.

In a letter obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital, Carter, who is also a pharmacist, wrote to White House chief of staff Jeff Zients expressing ‘serious concern’ with Biden’s cognitive state and ‘ability to execute the duties of the Presidency.’

‘After numerous examples of the President’s declining mental acuity, it is imperative that the White House remains transparent about the President of the United States’ honest ability to uphold the duties of the office to which he swore an oath,’ Carter wrote.

This comes after a recent report from The Wall Street Journal stating that the 81-year-old president was showing signs of poor cognitive performance in private meetings with congressional lawmakers, including by closing his eyes for extended periods, speaking so softly at times that people struggled to hear him and forgetting details about his own energy policy.

In January, Biden mixed up the names of his two Hispanic cabinet secretaries – Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, according to the report. During a meeting that month with congressional leaders, the president also reportedly moved slowly around the room and started the meeting by reading from notes to make broad points about the need to provide Ukraine with additional aid despite the lawmakers in the room already supporting more funding for the country.

Biden also claimed in February that he spoke at the 2021 G-7 Summit with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, and former French President François Mitterrand, who died in 1996.

The president has also appeared to stumble – on multiple occasions – as he attempted to board Air Force One.

‘As a consultant pharmacist for several decades, I have treated patients in nursing homes and recognize the signs of cognitive decline,’ Carter wrote in his letter. ‘The patients I treated slowly experienced mental decline and forgetfulness. This includes repeatedly forgetting names and confusing prior experiences with current events – the same behaviors that the American public and congressional lawmakers have witnessed from the President of the United States.’

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment on Carter’s letter.

The White House has previously pushed back on criticisms of Biden’s mental acuity as politically motivated.

‘Congressional Republicans, foreign leaders and nonpartisan national-security experts have made clear in their own words that President Biden is a savvy and effective leader who has a deep record of legislative accomplishment,’ White House spokesman Andrew Bates told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. ‘Now, in 2024, House Republicans are making false claims as a political tactic that flatly contradict previous statements made by themselves and their colleagues.’

Carter wrote that Biden, as president, must possess a strong cognitive ability when carrying out the domestic and international duties he was elected to do, noting that Americans are concerned about his mental fitness.

‘The President of the United States is a position which requires strong mental awareness to protect the interests of the American people,’ Carter wrote. ‘Throughout recent domestic and international crises, Americans are rightly concerned that the President’s fragile mental state is creating a leadership vacuum in a position that demands utmost competence.’

Several Republicans have placed increased pressure on the president this year over his age and mental acuity ahead of November’s presidential election between Biden and former President Trump.

Trump, 78, has been criticized by Democrats for his mental acuity after also showing signs of poor memory, giving inaccurate facts and slipping up in public remarks. 

Earlier this month at a Turning Point Action event in Detroit, he called on Biden to take the same cognitive test he ‘aced’ while confusing the name of Texas GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson, who served as his White House physician and medical adviser, and instead referred to him as ‘Ronny Johnson,’ The Associated Press reported.

Jackson said Sunday on Fox News’ ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ that he has sent multiple letters to the White House asking Biden to take a cognitive test, and that he will now be demanding drug tests from the president before and after the upcoming debate with Trump, citing this year’s State of the Union Address in which Biden appeared sharper than his other public appearances.

‘The American people deserve to know that the President can perform the duties of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief, and they deserve full transparency on the mental capabilities of their highest elected leader,’ Carter wrote in his letter.

‘That is why I encourage the President to perform a cognitive test immediately,’ the letter continued. ‘I implore you to then publish the test results, so the American people know the full mental and intellectual health of their President. The American people can no longer be left to wonder about their safety and security because of the President’s deteriorating mental state.’

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., is planning to force a vote on directing the House Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest Attorney General Merrick Garland sometime this week.

Luna is sending a letter around to fellow House Republicans on Monday arguing that the Department of Justice (DOJ) undermined Congress by refusing to act on the contempt resolution passed by the GOP majority earlier this month.

‘The only option to ensure compliance with our subpoena is to use our constitutional authority of inherent contempt,’ Luna said. ‘In the next few days, I will call up my resolution holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in inherent contempt of Congress, and I look forward to each of you voting in favor of it.’

‘Our ability to legislate effectively and fulfill our constitutional duties is at stake. We must act now to protect the integrity and independence of the legislative branch.’

Inherent contempt differs from the criminal contempt resolution passed on June 12. The latter referred Garland to his own department for criminal charges. However, inherent contempt, if passed, could force Garland to stand trial before the House of Representatives and, if found guilty, would lead to his detention by the House Sergeant-at-Arms.

‘This is a broad power that courts have recognized as necessary for Congress to fulfill its legislative functions. Under inherent contempt, the individual is brought before the bar of the House by the Sergeant at Arms, tried by the body, and can then be detained either in the Capitol or in D.C.,’ Luna wrote. 

She said it ‘demonstrates the seriousness with which Congress views non-compliance and the potential consequences for those who refuse to cooperate.’

House Republican leaders moved to hold Garland in contempt for refusing to turn over audio recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Biden, despite a congressional subpoena.

Republicans seeking the audio recording argued it would provide critical context about Biden’s state of mind. Democrats, meanwhile, have dismissed the request as a partisan attempt to politicize the DOJ.

The DOJ said it would not prosecute Garland because he was acting on Biden’s own executive privilege claims over the interview tapes.

‘The Department of Justice and the attorney general cannot be the ultimate deciders of whether or not a congressional subpoena is enforced. If Congress allows this to happen, we risk being subordinated to the attorney general and being completely neutered in our ability to legislate,’ Luna argued. ‘Why would anyone from the executive branch comply with our demands for information if the enforcement of those demands relies on the actions of another department in its own branch?’

Congress has not invoked its inherent contempt power since 1934, when it resulted in Washington lawyer William MacCracken getting a 10-day jail sentence for not sufficiently complying with a Senate subpoena. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which backed Congress’ right to exercise its inherent contempt powers in its February 1935 decision in Jurney v. MacCracken. 

To force a vote on her resolution, Luna will have to deem it ‘privileged’ – meaning House leaders will have two legislative days to act on it. 

It is not immediately clear if the effort will succeed, however. The resolution will likely get no support from Democrats, and only a few Republicans would need to vote to table the measure, which would kill it before a House-wide vote. 

The House-wide vote on holding Garland in contempt got support from every Republican save Rep. David Joyce, R-Ohio, who opposed it over concerns it would politicize the justice system.

Inherent contempt has never been used on a Cabinet official nor on a matter over which the president has exerted executive privilege. There are also some questions about logistics, with no formal roadmap for inherent contempt proceedings and Garland having his own FBI security detail.

The DOJ declined to comment on Luna’s letter.