The Israeli military said it hit more than 1,600 Hezbollah-terrorist-group targets in Lebanon on Monday, killing 492 people, and raising the specter of an expanding regional conflict. More than 1,600 people were wounded in the strikes and thousands have fled, with the main highway out of the southern port city of Sidon jammed with cars heading toward Beirut.

At a Sept. 23 cabinet meeting, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, called the barrage a “genocide in every sense of the word.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that his nation faces “complicated days” ahead and called for citizens to stay united as the campaign continues.

Earlier, the IDF urged residents of southern Lebanon, which borders northern Israel, to evacuate homes and other buildings where Hezbollah stores weapons, as Israel said it was set to carry out “extensive strikes” against the terrorist group. Read the full story here›

Nebraska state Sen. Mike McDonnell, a Democrat-turned-Republican, said he won’t support switching the state’s electoral vote process to winner-take-all, denying a critical vote needed to implement the change. McDonnell said he clarified his stance to Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen. He also suggested that the Republicans pursuing the change go for a referendum as a proposed constitutional amendment, so voters can decide the issue “once and for all” on the ballot.

Nebraska and Maine are the only states that do not use a winner-take-all system for electoral votes. In Nebraska, two of the five electoral votes go to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote, while the remaining three are awarded to the winners of each of the state’s three congressional districts.

Maine Democrats had threatened to switch to winner-take-all if Nebraska went through with the change. But they ran past a deadline to implement a counter-move earlier this month. Read the full story here›

America’s leadership has been willfully blind to the true nature of the Chinese communist threat, and the most important battleground isn’t the military front—It’s ideological, says John Lenczowski, the founder and chancellor of The Institute of World Politics.

“The Chinese have 600 front organizations operating in the United States today trying to influence all sorts of segments of our society,” Lenczowski told our colleague Jan Jekielek, in a recent American Thought Leaders episode.

America needs to counterattack. Lenczowski, the principal Soviet affairs advisor to President Ronald Reagan, argues America should set up a Manhattan Project-type effort to break down China’s internet blockade, restrict the entry of Chinese intelligence collectors into the United States, and support Chinese dissident movements. Watch the full interview here›

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