By Kevin Liptak, CNN

West Palm Beach, Florida (CNN) — Repeatedly this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flown to the United States to praise President Donald Trump as Israel’s greatest champion — and to quietly press him on taking more aggressive action against Israel’s enemies.

On Monday, when Netanyahu meets Trump at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, the message will be similar: He is looking for a tougher approach to Hamas in Gaza, and is warning of new advancements in Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Yet the reception this time may be different. Trump, who promised he would act as a president of peace, has been wary of some Israeli actions in recent months, including strikes in Syria. He is mindful of American public sentiment, which hasn’t favored becoming mired in another Middle Eastern war.

A tenuous Gaza ceasefire that Trump proudly traveled to the region to finalize in October is being tested by continued deadly Israeli operations in the Palestinian enclave and a slow process to move to the second phase of the deal.

And despite many flashy demonstrations of friendship — including Trump’s extraordinary call for Israel’s president to pardon Netanyahu amid corruption charges — the relationship between the men has, at moments, become strained over differences in how they view foreign policy in the region.

“I think both both of these guys don’t trust one another. I’m not even sure they like one another. But the reality is they need one another. Trump needs Netanyahu to avoid his much-touted 28-point-plan in Gaza from cratering. And Netanyahu desperately needs the president of the United States, in order to manage growing calls for his resignation,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Mutual need creates a certain amount of dependency,” he said. “This may not be a great meeting, but it’s not going to crater.”

The Monday meeting at Mar-a-Lago marks the second day in a row Trump has hosted a foreign leader to discuss peace over his holiday vacation, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the estate Sunday.

More than two months after Trump traveled to Egypt to sign the Gaza peace agreement, crucial pieces of the deal remain undefined as Israel tightens its military grip on the battered enclave.

The second phase of the deal includes Hamas’ disarmament, the beginning of reconstruction, and the establishment of post-war governance. At the center of the new plan for administering Gaza is the creation of a “Board of Peace” to be led by Trump and other world leaders.

“It’ll be one of the most legendary boards ever. Everybody wants to be on it,” Trump said at the White House earlier this month.

The US is pushing to move quickly into the next phase, and wants to announce more specifics on the governance of Gaza and a new international stabilization force.

But Israel has been reluctant to further withdraw from Gaza without Hamas disarming. That has created tension with some White House advisers, who believe Netanyahu could be slow-walking the move to the next phase, according to people familiar with the matter.

“Israel has had no better friend in its history than President Trump,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement ahead of the meeting.

“We continue to work closely with our ally Israel to successful

By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN

New York (CNN) — Starbucks spent years trying to become an inescapable storefront on the streets of New York, Los Angeles and other big cities in America. Now that’s coming to an end.

Its expansion once seemed limitless. It was even a joke. In 1998, an Onion headline read “New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room Of Existing Starbucks.” A few years later, comedian Lewis Black riffed that he’d gone to the “end of the universe” in Houston, where he saw one Starbucks directly across the street from another.

But Starbucks is now struggling, and its strategy of saturating urban areas to draw coffee drinkers on their way to work in the morning has backfired amid competition, the rise of remote work and rising costs.

So CEO Brian Niccol, hired last year from Chipotle to revive Starbucks, no longer wants its stores to be right next to each other. Starbucks is closing roughly 400 stores nationwide that are concentrated in large metro areas as part of its $1 billion restructuring plan.

Starbucks closed 42 locations in New York, or 12% of its total in the city. It recently lost its top spot as the largest chain in Manhattan to Dunkin’, according to Center for an Urban Future, a New York City think tank that tracks chain openings and closings.

Starbucks also reportedly closed more than 20 locations in Los Angeles this year; 15 in Chicago; seven in San Francisco; six in Minneapolis; five in Baltimore; and dozens more in other cities.

Niccol is trying to reposition Starbucks again as a “third place” between home and work.

The chain reviewed its more than 18,000 stores in the United States and Canada, and “closed locations that were underperforming or unable to meet our brand standards,” a Starbucks spokesperson said in an email. The company plans to open stores and remodel others in 2026, including in major metros like New York and Los Angeles, “featuring refreshed designs and elevated experiences that reflect the Starbucks brand.”

Victim of its success

In many ways, Starbucks pioneered the business model that’s now responsible for its struggles.

Before Starbucks, people couldn’t fathom paying more than two bucks for a cup of coffee, let alone have any concept of a latte.

But now Starbucks is closing urban locations in part because it’s been swamped by competition from niche coffee shops, smaller chains such as Gregory’s and Joe’s Coffee, and a wave of smoothie, bubble tea and other beverage shops.

“Urban America has seen a dramatic increase in competitive coffee shop openings that eat away at the store’s volume,” said Arthur Rubinfeld, the mastermind of Starbucks’ real estate and design strategies alongside CEO Howard Schultz during the 1990s and again from 20

By Joan Biskupic, CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst

(CNN) — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has a remarkable record of transforming his old dissenting opinions into the new majority view and setting the direction of the law in America.

Yet the more he wins, the testier he gets.

His most obvious coup came with his 2022 opinion reversing abortion rights. This month’s decision siding with Republicans in the Texas redistricting fight offered a new reminder that Alito in 2024 seized the majority in claims of racial gerrymanders – after being on the losing side a few years earlier.

Still, even on the dominant side of the court, Alito is easily irritated. He lodged a separate, last-minute broadside against liberal dissenters in the Texas dispute over a map alleged to discriminate against Black and Latino voters.

Alito’s aggravation is regularly on display in the courtroom, too.

In a major campaign finance case this month, he reached back nearly 16 years to cite a case in which he voted to reverse precedent on the regulation of corporate money in elections: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. He was in the majority but still feels wronged.

Alito suddenly brought up “our much maligned, I think unfairly maligned, decision in Citizens United.” The decision struck down certain federal limits on corporate and labor union political spending as a violation of the First Amendment.

Alito’s reference to the case could not help but recall his televised reaction at the 2010 State of the Union address after then-President Barack Obama criticized, with some exaggeration, the opinion, saying it “reversed a century of law” and would open the “floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.” Alito mouthed “not true” at the hyperbole, and the moment captured on camera went viral.

In the courtroom, even the little things can visibly irk Alito. He often grimaces and rolls his eyes. During a death-penalty dispute this month, Alito began offering a hypothetical example to the lawyer at the lectern. The lawyer responded, “may I just finish my sentence?” and then kept talking.

When Alito was able to resume, he laid bare his impatience, saying, “On that hypothetical, three or four sentences later ….”

Other justices laughed. They appear accustomed to his unguarded irritability.

This is the paradoxical byproduct of a justice who has become one of the most consequential members of the bench.

From the start of his high court tenure, 20 years ago this January, Alito made the difference as he succeeded centrist Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and began casting the decisive conservative vote in a series of cases. As the years wore on, Alito authored many closely fought decisions on abortion, voting rights and religion.

His views could shape decisions in pending cases this session on transgender rights, religious freedom and executive power.

In 2026, Alito will also likely be the most-watched justice for anyone wondering if President Donald Trump will soon get another vacancy to fill

By Kati Chitrakorn, CNN

(CNN) — When New York-based model and influencer Wisdom Kaye went shopping at the Italian fashion label Miu Miu and returned home with a haul of clothes he says he spent $18,000 on, he didn’t expect some of the items would fall apart in front of his eyes.

In now-viral videos posted to his TikTok account, where he counts over 13 million followers, Kaye can be seen unveiling his purchases from the brand. In the first clip, posted to the social media platform in early September, he calls himself a “big Miu Miu fan” before launching into a scathing blow-by-blow of how some of his new purchases fell apart as he was unpacking them, saying: “As soon as I get home, everything broke.”

Among the garments he had purchased that day, one of the gold buttons on a denim vest jacket “came off the instant I opened it,” he said on the video, demonstrating how he had unbuttoned the sleeveless garment. “I just opened it normally,” said Kaye.

He then held up a brown sweater, also by Miu Miu, with a visibly broken silver zip. Kaye said he had “never gone and gotten multiple pieces from a place and things are just breaking as soon as I get home. This is genuinely f**king abysmal.”

Three days later, Kaye popped up on TikTok feeds again. Miu Miu had offered him the choice of a refund or replacement of the broken items, he explained in the new video, noting that he chose the latter and wanted to unveil the new garments to his fans. However, as he began to undo the buttons of his vest, a button fell off once again. His mouth was wide in disbelief before exclaiming: “There’s no way! This is unbelievable.”

Kaye is not the only one taking their concerns to social media. In October, US-based dental hygienist Tiffany Kim shared a video on Instagram of a gray fleece jacket by Miu Miu and indicated that a drawstring had popped out of one of its sleeves. Some onlookers might immediately assume that it was natural wear-and-tear, but Kim said that she had only purchased it a month prior. While Miu Miu offers a repair service for its products, some store locations require customers to pay a fee. “It’s not even about the fee. I can pay the fee,” said Kim. “I don’t want to pay the fee because I literally paid $2,000 for this jacket and I only wore it twice.”

Elsewhere, on X, a video posted by Elena Qiu in November shows the Seattle-based designer attempting to squeeze various objects into the heel of her leather split-toe tabi boots, to demonstrate its surprisingly hollow interior. The shoe, by Maison Margiela, is one of the French avant-garde label’s most recognizable styles. In the caption, Qiu said she had purchased the shoes for $1,000 and expressed disappointment that the heel wasn’t made of “stacked leather” but “hollow with plastic.”

“I felt so sad and disappointed when the shoe cap came off,” Qiu later told CNN over email. “As a fashion designer myself, I understand how laborious artisanal craft is, and I don’t expect fashion to stay pristine after excessive wear, but these shoes were not worn excessively. I had worn them less than once a month, mostly for special occasions.” Asked what she ended up doing with the shoes, Qiu said she took them to a cobbler to get the heel cap replaced, but has since become more cautious about wearing them regularly and creating further damage — “which defeats the purpose of why I bought them in the first place,” she said.

These widely circulated videos have since sparked outrage among social media users, with some questioning the value of high-end goods, especially as Read more

By CNN Meteorologist Briana Waxman

(CNN) — A powerful, rapidly intensifying winter storm sweeping across the central and eastern US is bringing a messy mix of blizzard conditions, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and a sharp reality check to winter-like cold, snarling travel during one of the busiest stretches of the holiday season.

More than 30 million people are under winter weather alerts from the Midwest into the Northeast. In the Upper Midwest, blizzard warnings cover parts of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, where wind gusts of 40 to 60 mph are whipping heavy snow into whiteout conditions.

Long stretches of Interstate 35 – a major highway stretching from Texas to Minnesota – have been closed or deemed unsafe to travel, and more than 115,000 customers were without power late Sunday, nearly half of them in Michigan, according to PowerOutage.US.

Air travel has also taken a hit with thousands of flights delayed or canceled Sunday, including disruptions at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, where thunderstorms prompted a temporary ground stop.

Parts of Michigan have received close to a foot of snow. Marquette, Michigan shattered its previous daily snowfall record of 8.5 inches, picking up 11.5 inches and counting as of late Sunday night.

Farther south and east, the storm’s cold front sparked a line of severe thunderstorms Sunday afternoon and evening, with damaging winds and a few tornadoes reported in parts of Illinois.

The storms developed along the sharp boundary separating unseasonably warm air from a frigid Arctic air mass moving in behind it. In Springfield, Illinois, temperatures dropped from the 70s into the 40s in just a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, Missouri, the high Sunday afternoon was 77 degrees. As the front passed through the city, the National Weather Service reported a 10 degree temperature drop in about 10 minutes. Eight hours later, St. Louis was experiencing snow and temperatures in the low 20s.

The worst winter weather impacts across the Midwest continue overnight Sunday with dangerous travel lingering into early Monday. Officials urged people to avoid unnecessary travel, especially in areas under blizzard warnings where visibility may remain near zero at times.

As the system pushes east Monday into Tuesday, the wintry side will shift north and east while much of the Ohio Valley and I-95 corridor will receive mainly rain.

Parts of New England could deal with freezing rain late Sunday into Monday, raising the risk for icy roads and power outages. The National Weather Service warns that ice could build up at a rate of .06 inches per hour.

Several spots in Michigan and northern New York have already reported ice accumulations of up to a half-inch.

Behind the storm, a dramatic temperature swing arrives quickly. Much of the central and southern US will go from 20 to 30 degrees above average this weekend to 10 to 15 degrees below average by Monday and Tuesday, marking a return to colder, more seasonable conditions after the recent stretch of springlike warmth.

Dangerous wind chills, as low as minus 30 degrees, across parts of North Dakota and Minnesota early Monday will make frostbite a real threat.

The storm adds to an already challenging travel period, with more than 100 million people expected to drive for end-of-year trips. While conditions improve later in the week, the reset to colder air will keep winter hazards in play as the holiday travel rush continues.

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