The White House is so concerned about TikTok’s security risks that federal employees are not allowed to use the app on their government phones. Top Biden administration officials have even helped draft legislation that could ban TikTok in the United States.

But those concerns were put aside Thursday, on the evening of President Biden’s State of the Union address, when dozens of social media influencers — including many TikTok stars — were invited to the White House for a watch party.

The crowd took selfies in the State Dining Room, drank bubbly with the first lady and waved to Mr. Biden from the White House balcony as he left to deliver his speech to Congress.

“Don’t jump, I need you!” Mr Biden shouted at the young influencers filming from above, in a scene that was – of course – captured in a TikTok video, which was broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people.

Thursday’s party at the White House was an example of Mr. Biden’s political concerns colliding head-on with his national security concerns. Despite growing fears that ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, could breach Americans’ personal data or manipulate what they see, the president’s campaign is banking on the app to energize a frustrated bloc of young voters. in the run-up to the 2024 elections.

“From a national security perspective, the campaign joining TikTok definitely didn’t look good — it condoned the use of a platform that the administration and everyone in DC recognizes is a national problem,” said Lindsay Gorman, chief technology and geopolitics officer at the German Marshall Fund and a former technical advisor to the Biden administration.

TikTok is the most popular platform among American teenagers after YouTube, making it an attractive political tool. But concerns about the app’s structure have grown, and a House committee this week introduced a bill that would keep TikTok out of U.S. app stores unless the platform broke away from ByteDance.

When members of Congress talk about TikTok, they tend to focus on its privacy issues, and whether data about users is stored in China or accessible to Chinese officials who can demand the company turn over the information.

But national security officials have a deeper concern: The algorithms that determine what users see are now designed almost entirely in China. The key is to prevent Chinese engineers, perhaps under state influence, from using the code in ways that could censor or manipulate what American users see. TikTok has pushed back on such concerns, saying its opponents have not provided evidence to support these fears.

That’s especially important, officials say, as election season approaches. If Chinese officials wanted to influence the election, the app could provide a subtle way to do so. But even the legislation now being passed by Congress may not have an impact on that: it would not come into effect until five months after a law is signed. At most, that would be a month or so before Election Day.

The White House has supported the restrictions.

Mr. Biden’s National Security Council called the bill in the House of Representatives “an important and welcome step” and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it should be quickly sent to the president’s desk for his signature. While the legislation’s path in the Senate is unclear, Mr. Biden claimed on Friday that he had approved the package.

“If they approve it, I will sign it,” Mr. Biden said.

ByteDance has spent Mr. Biden’s term promoting a plan to address security concerns surrounding TikTok by storing its U.S. user data on Oracle servers in the United States. That plan formed the core of a 2022 draft agreement between ByteDance and government negotiators. But senior government officials at the time were concerned that the proposed deal did not go far enough to address their concerns.

Despite all those concerns, TikTok’s political benefits were clear this week.

Harry Sisson, a 21-year-old political commentator on TikTok, reached more than 800,000 followers from his perch in the White House as he and others watched Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday.

“He called the Supreme Court directly to their faces for overturning Roe v. Wade,” Mr. Sisson said in a message during the speech. “You have to see this, watch the clip.”

Later, in his fourth video during the speech, Mr. Sisson said of the president, “He came to talk to us about how content creation is super important in 2024 because, you know, the media landscape is changing.”

He added: “No one really watches cable news anymore.”

The Biden campaign declined to answer questions about the specific security protocols for posting TikToks or why the campaign embraced the platform before spinning it out of ByteDance. The White House has denied that Mr. Biden’s national security team wants to ban the app.

“We don’t see this as a ban on these apps – that’s not what this is – but by ensuring that their property does not end up in the hands of those who could harm us,” Ms Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday. “This is obviously about our national security, and this is what we are focused on here.”

The Biden campaign joined TikTok on the night of the Super Bowl.

Previously, the government had avoided opening its own TikTok accounts while tapping into the app’s audience by inviting social media stars to briefings on the Covid-19 vaccines and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But after rejecting the traditional presidential halftime interview on Super Bowl Sunday, the campaign arrived on TikTok with an inaugural post mocking a right-wing conspiracy theory claiming Biden rigged the game.

Democrats say the embrace of social media platforms like TikTok is an effort to meet voters where they are.

“We have to deal with the cards we’ve been dealt,” said Quentin James, co-founder of Collective PAC, an organization that aims to elect Black officials. “If the tools are available, we should use them, even if there are international security problems. If the Biden campaign were to lose access to this and leave it to the Trump campaign and others to use it, that would be an extreme disadvantage.”

Former President Donald J. Trump attacked the administration for the possible ban on TikTok, saying it would only give Meta, Facebook’s parent company, more power.

Mr. Trump’s criticism of this effort was notable because he had worked to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations to Oracle during his time in office. Its CEO, Safra Catz, was a member of Trump’s 2016 transition team and a major supporter of the campaign.

As the campaign tries to use the platform to connect with younger voters, efforts by the White House and Congress to reform the company have enraged TikTok users. After the bill was introduced this week, TikTok took the unusually aggressive step of sending a pop-up message to US users on Thursday asking them to call their representatives and protest the bill. Some Capitol Hill offices said they were inundated with calls, including from teenagers. Lawmakers complained that TikTok misrepresented the bill by claiming it required an immediate ban on the platform.

Meanwhile, a video the Biden campaign posted about the North Carolina governor’s race quickly gathered responses asking Mr. Biden to halt a TikTok ban.

One user expressed his confusion in a comment that drew likes from others on the app: “Aren’t you about to ban TikTok? Why did your team make you an account in the first place?

David McCabe And David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.

Poor oversight and bureaucratic delays in New York state's gold standard program for treating mentally ill people at risk of becoming violent have led to preventable injuries and even deaths in recent years, according to a state audit made public Thursday .

The audit, conducted by the state comptroller, found that the program, known as Kendra's Law, sometimes struggled to connect people to psychiatric care. In one case, it took almost a month for a mental health provider to connect with a person in the program, even though such a connection would occur within a week. The provider did not schedule a mandatory follow-up interview and shortly thereafter the individual was arrested on murder charges.

The state Office of Mental Health, the agency charged with ensuring people in the program receive treatment, only learned of the delay when the local health department notified the office of the killing, the audit found.

Overall, the audit found that Kendra's Law worked effectively in many cases in connecting people to psychiatric care. Still, it noted that the program, which forces mentally ill people into court-ordered treatment, needed to be improved to reduce delays and communication breakdowns that have sometimes led to serious consequences.

“When mistakes occur,” said the auditor, Thomas P. DiNapoli, “the consequences can be fatal.”

Treatment providers and health officials are expected to regularly share information about how people in the program are doing so they can coordinate care, for example if people haven't taken their medications, threatened to hurt themselves or have been arrested. But in almost a quarter of the cases reviewed by the auditors, there were data entry errors when reporting these serious events.

The audit did not identify program participants by name, but the cases described were dire. One person in the program was hospitalized 33 times over a year and a half for suicidal thoughts, the audit found, but none of the hospital admissions were recorded as required. The day the person was discharged from the hospital for the last time, the person died by suicide.

The audit reflects the findings of a New York Times investigation that revealed serious flaws in Kendra's law. The program, launched in 1999 after a man with untreated schizophrenia fatally pushed a woman in front of a subway train, was intended to prevent similar attacks from happening again.

But The Times found that people under this most heightened form of surveillance were accused of committing more than 380 subway shoves, assaults, stabbings and other violent acts in the past five years alone. At least five people who were or were under Kendra's law orders pushed strangers onto the subway tracks. According to The Times, more than 90 people have committed suicide during the program in the past ten years.

A man diagnosed with schizophrenia was placed under a Kendra's Law order about three years ago, but the group responsible for coordinating his care missed signals that he was becoming unstable, records and interviews show. For weeks, beginning in the spring of 2023, he expressed violent delusions as his mother begged his health care providers to get him more psychiatric help. Weeks later, he attacked a state lawmaker in Connecticut. He is still in jail awaiting trial.

In another case identified by The Times, a man named Evan Guzman was under a Kendra's Law warrant after being released from prison in April 2021, according to his mother, Lisa Guzman. But weeks after his release, when he was scheduled to receive help for his schizoaffective disorder, he rarely saw his care team, did not meet with a psychiatrist or receive prescribed medications, and became unstable, his mother said.

Ms. Guzman begged officials in Monroe County, N.Y., to provide him with more intensive help before it was too late.

“He is falling through the cracks again,” she wrote in emails to officials at the state Office of Mental Health, reviewed by The Times. “If the lack of care he receives through his current health care providers continues, he will end up back in prison or worse.”

Two months later, in July 2021, Mr. Guzman was accused of knocking on a 52-year-old man's door and stabbing him to death. He was charged with murder and is awaiting trial.

New York State spends about $29 million annually on the court-ordered treatment program, formally known as assisted outpatient treatment, or AOT, for about 3,800 people. Studies have shown the program to be largely effective at reducing incarceration rates and emergency room visits, and officials consider it the best way to get the small subset of mentally ill people considered dangerous to psychiatric treatment undergo.

But the program is underfunded and practitioners and health officials are often understaffed, The Times notes. It can take months or years for health officials to vet mentally ill people — who must either have a recent history of violence or repeated psychiatric hospitalizations — before admitting them into the program, the auditors noted.

In about half of the cases studied, it took six months to more than two years for local mental health officials to screen people for admission to the program – despite the requirement that the screenings be conducted in a “timely” manner. In the meantime, people have hurt themselves or others, the audit showed.

In one case, it took health officials about two years to evaluate a person for the program, during which time the person was hospitalized five times, including after assaulting someone.

Another person was referred to the program after threatening a family member with a knife while hallucinating, the audit found. But the local mental health agency took nearly two years to determine the person's eligibility for the program and made no progress after requesting the person's medical records to complete the process. Despite the person's psychiatric history, the person was never placed under a Kendra's Law order, the audit found.

State mental health officials said they largely agreed with the auditors' findings and were working on ways to improve monitoring. They said some of the delays in getting people involved in the program stemmed from a 2011 court decision that makes it harder to obtain the necessary medical records to force people into treatment if people don't agree to receive them. to share. Health officials said most people don't give consent, so officials have to file subpoenas for records, significantly slowing the process.

Auditors also accused local health officials of failing to take the necessary steps to renew the public's Kendra's Law orders, leading to avoidable deficiencies in care. Treatment orders typically expire after one year but can be extended, and studies have shown that longer monitoring periods increase treatment compliance and lead to better outcomes.

Auditors reviewed 37 cases and found that in more than 60 percent of them, health officials did not conduct the required review of the case before the people's court-ordered treatment would expire. In one case, a person in the program showed signs of being delusional and had become aggressive toward hospital staff, but local health officials did not attempt to renew the treatment order. In another case, health officials let a person's treatment order lapse, and soon after, the person tested positive for drugs and was kicked out of a homeless shelter.

The Times uncovered other cases in which Kendra's law enforcement orders were not renewed — with disastrous consequences.

Luis Rodriguez was placed under Kendra's Law Order in 2015 after attacking his family members while in the grip of a paranoid delusion, records show. During the program, he received monthly injections of an antipsychotic drug and showed such improvement that health officials decided his treatment should not be extended.

But without court-ordered supervision, he fell apart over the next eighteen months. He barricaded himself in his room and insisted ghosts were haunting his television before grabbing a kitchen knife, storming into the hallway of his mother's apartment building and stabbing two of her neighbors, records show.

Mr. Rodriguez pleaded guilty to attempted murder in 2022 and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

New York City can move forward with an agreement to overhaul how police handle demonstrations, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, rejecting arguments from the police officers' union that the changes would endanger officers and the public.

The judge, Colleen McMahon of the US District Court in Manhattan, said in her ruling that the union, the Police Benevolent Association, had failed to show that safety would be jeopardized by the agreement, which calls for a gradual response to demonstrations rather than immediate action. show of strength.

“There is simply no evidence, let alone substantial evidence, that the public interest would be harmed if the settlement were approved,” she said.

Judge McMahon said the methods the union proposed – quickly responding to protests with escalated violence – would most likely be “counterproductive.”

The judge's decision came as the city was engulfed in a new round of protests. There have been hundreds since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, and on Wednesday authorities prepared for disruptions to President Biden's visit to New York.

The police union reacted angrily to the decision to go ahead with the settlement. “The next time a peaceful protest is hijacked by rioters, the next time our roads, bridges or subways are shut down by troublemakers, New Yorkers should remember that their city has chosen to encourage these disruptions by joining this misleading scheme,” said Patrick Hendry. , president of the PBA, in a statement.

Judge McMahon had approved the agreement last September after more than a year and a half of negotiations between the city and the office of Letitia James, New York's attorney general. Ms. James had sued the department in January 2021 after an investigation found widespread abuse during Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in the summer of 2020.

But Judge McMahon revoked the approval at the request of the police union, which had asked for a chance to argue against the agreement in court. The union, which was not charged in the case but intervened in the lawsuit, said it had “veto power” over the settlement because of its “interest in officer safety.”

The union's action had threatened to nullify the agreement reached by the city, Ms. James' office, two other police unions, the protesters who sued the department, the Legal Aid Society and the New York Civil Liberties Union. The latter two groups also filed lawsuits against the department after more than 2,000 protesters were arrested during the 2020 protests, most while demonstrating peacefully.

The images of violent clashes stunned residents and municipal leaders, who called for dramatic changes in the way the department responds to peaceful demonstrations.

In September, Mayor Eric Adams and Edward Caban, the police commissioner, issued a press release supporting the agreement. Mr. Adams called it “the result of a collaborative process that aims to build consensus, balance safety and justice, and protect protesters, bystanders and law enforcement personnel.”

But the PBA objected to the deal's four-stage de-escalation system, which would prevent officers from being deployed immediately.

In December, Mr. Adams withdrew his support. “As soon as I read the settlement, I said, 'This is a problem.'” Mr Adams said this during a press conference.

The deal moving forward would end the tactic of boxing protesters and then arresting them, a practice known as “kettling” that has produced images of officers locking protesters in tight spaces and then rushing at them or hit with clubs.

It also provides for a four-stage response to protests. First, for peaceful protests, community affairs unit officers would be dispatched to communicate directly with leaders and explain to them what action might be taken.

The response will intensify in cases where officers believe illegal activity will take place or when the protest would block “critical infrastructure.” It would be increased even further if crimes were likely committed.

The fourth phase, in which police would move in to end the protest, would be triggered if demonstrators tried to enter or block access to “sensitive locations” such as a precinct, courthouse or hospital, or when crimes were so widespread that de-escalation or “targeted enforcement has not worked or cannot work.” Commanders on site would have to obtain permission from a supervisor to deploy officers.

The system is cumbersome and would prevent officers from responding quickly, the union said in court filings. It ignores how quickly a protest can “rapidly and unpredictably degenerate into a violent encounter or riot,” union lawyers said in the letter, referring to the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.

At a hearing in federal court on Jan. 29, attorneys for the city and civil liberties groups said the union misrepresented the plan.

Police will have the discretion to deploy officers if they determine a protest has become dangerous, Corey Stoughton, a Legal Aid attorney, told Judge McMahon.

The union has made so many incorrect statements about the agreement, “to be honest, it often feels like they haven't read it” said Ms. Stoughton, who now works for Selendy Gay in Manhattan.

The brightly colored packaging is a slick mix of ombré pink and lime green. The nicotine inside is coated with a “strawberry-kiwi” flavor.

Increasingly, single-use plastic vapes like these are ending up in the hands of children, with one in five young people in Britain between the ages of 11 and 17 trying to vape last year, according to Action on Smoking and Health, an independent public health charity.

They will soon be banned in Britain, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced on Monday, as he unveiled a package of measures to ban single-use vapes, limit flavors and regulate packaging and displays.

Britain follows several other countries, and some US states, that have already taken steps to restrict underage vaping, as the colorful and trendy packaging and fruit or candy flavors have proven attractive to teenagers and children.

Mr Sunak said the ban, which is part of legislation yet to be passed by Parliament, was aimed at halting “one of the most worrying trends of the moment” before it becomes “endemic”.

“The long-term effects of vaping are unknown and the nicotine it contains can be highly addictive. “So while vaping can be a useful tool to help smokers quit, marketing vapes to children is not acceptable,” he said in a statement.

Andrea Leadsom, Britain's health secretary, said the measures were aimed at ensuring vaping was targeted at adults who quit smoking, rather than children.

“Nicotine is highly addictive – which is why it is completely unacceptable for children to get their hands on these products, many of which are undeniably designed to appeal to young people,” she said in a statement.

Recent surveys indicate a sharp increase in the number of young people vaping in Britain. In 2023, 20.5 percent of children aged 11 to 17 had tried it, compared to 15.8 percent in 2022 and 13.9 percent in 2020. according to data from Action on Smoking and Health, an independent public health charity.

The charity said the vast majority used single-use disposable vapes, and the most popular brand was Elf Bar, with the fruit or soft drink flavors most commonly used by that age group.

Disposable vapes, which contain lithium batteries, are also estimated to damage the environment five million According to government statistics, waste was thrown away every week in Britain in 2023, up from 1.3 million a year earlier.

Last week Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said he was concerned about the growing use of vaping among young people and urged member states to “take swift action to address this emerging threat.”

At a meeting of public health officials in Geneva on Wednesday, Dr. Tedros that although the tobacco industry presented vaping as harmless, “it is fraught with harm and even hurts children.”

“If you hook them with this, they'll think it's smart, fashionable and cool,” he said of vape companies' efforts to market to young people: “And then they'll be lifelong customers of the being a tobacco industry, that's what happens.”

He likened it to “history repeating itself, but in a different form, the same nicotine in a different package,” drawing parallels between the early days of marketing cigarettes to youth.

While it is not illegal for people under the age of 18 to smoke or vape in Britain, it is illegal to sell those products to them. By banning single-use vapes and limiting the flavors and packaging of refillable vapes, the government hopes to make it much less likely that young people will experiment with e-cigarettes.

The measures announced on Monday are part of a broader government strategy to reduce overall tobacco use. Last year, Mr Sunak announced plans to make it illegal to sell cigarettes to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, so that those who turn 15 or younger this year will never be able to buy them legally.

Other countries are trying to curb vaping's appeal to young people. Australia introduced sweeping legislation late last year banning all vaping without a prescription. French lawmakers have backed a proposal to ban single-use vapes. And New Zealand has done that too has introduced regulations for the marketing of vapors to children.

Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday overturned a law limiting its powers, a momentous step in the legal and political crisis that gripped the country before the war with Hamas, pitting the court against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government.

The court’s 8-7 ruling has the potential to throw into disarray Israel’s emergency national government formed after the October 7 attacks and stem serious domestic unrest that began a year ago over the Netanyahu judicial review plan government to reignite. Mass protests brought the country to a near standstill at times, during one of the deepest political upheavals Israel had faced in its 75 years, and led to warnings of a possible civil war.

The court, which met with a full panel of all 15 judges for the first time in its history, rejected the law passed by parliament in July that banned judges from using a certain legal standard to overrule ministers’ decisions.

The decision comes at a precarious time for Israel, which is deeply embroiled in a brutal war in Gaza and under almost daily rocket fire from Iranian-backed militants along its northern border. The country is trying to convey a strong image of its enemies, but is shaken by the October 7 Hamas-led surprise attack, by a shrinking economy and by the alarm and pressure from its closest allies over the deaths of thousands of civilians in the country . Gaza.

The long-awaited decision did not come as a total surprise to the Israelis. A television station reported last week on a leaked draft of the ruling. But it heralds a potential confrontation that could fundamentally reshape Israeli democracy, pitting the power of the government against that of the judiciary.

The division over the law is part of a broader ideological and cultural impasse.

Netanyahu’s political allies and their supporters want to turn Israel into a more religious and nationalist state. Their opponents, who harbor a more secular and pluralistic vision of the country, accused the government of undermining democracy by lowering barriers for a majority to do as it pleases.

The ruling was quickly denounced by Netanyahu’s allies, who in late 2022 formed the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in Israel’s history. The prime minister’s Likud party said the decision was “contrary to the nation’s desire for unity, especially in times of war.” In a statement, the Court denounced the ruling on the issue of when Israeli soldiers “fight and endanger themselves in battle.”

Yariv Levin, the Israeli justice minister widely seen as the architect of the judicial review, vowed to resume efforts to pass the package of controversial bills that included the recently quashed measure. He accused the Supreme Court of sowing division at a time when the nation is in danger.

“The Supreme Court justices’ decision to release their ruling in the middle of a war is the opposite of the spirit of unity we need today so that our troops on the frontlines can succeed,” Mr. Levin said.

Critics of Mr. Netanyahu and his allies have argued that the government’s fixation on weakening the independence of the judiciary actually contributed to Israel being blindsided by the October 7 Hamas attack that launched the war and killed 1,200 people and, according to authorities, more than 240 hostages were seized.

Yair Lapid, the parliamentary opposition leader, praised the court for “faithfully fulfilling its duty to protect the people of Israel.”

Hours before the court made its decision public, the Israeli army said it would begin withdrawing several thousand troops from Gaza. Citing the mounting toll on Israel’s economy after nearly three months of wartime mobilization, Israel will send home reservists from at least two brigades this week; three other brigades will be taken back for training, potentially removing thousands of soldiers from the war effort.

At the same time, the army said it was preparing for “prolonged fighting.” Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said on New Year’s Eve that he expected the war in Gaza to last “the entire next year.”

Members of Netanyahu’s coalition immediately seized on the argument that the court ruling would damage the country’s ability to prosecute the war in Gaza.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right ultranationalist who is Israel’s minister of national security, said the decision was illegal and “a dangerous, antidemocratic episode – and above all a statement that harms Israel’s war effort against its enemies. ”

For opponents of the overhaul, it was a long-awaited victory – albeit one that raised fears that the country could now slide from wartime unity to gaping internal divisions. Thousands of military reservists who said during the protests that they would refuse service if the law were passed cast aside that vow and enlisted after the war began.

Opponents of the judicial review feared that it would greatly reduce the court’s ability to prevent government overreach, and also make it much easier for the government to prosecute Mr Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges , to end.

Kaplan Force, one of the activist groups that organized protests against the judicial review, welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision and called on all parties to obey it. “Today ended a chapter in the fight to protect democracy – in a victory for the citizens of Israel,” the group said in a statement.

Brothers in Arms, an anti-revision group formed by reserve soldiers, warned of the risks of national division and also called on the nation to respect the ruling.

“We support the independence of the Supreme Court,” the group said.

The court’s decision focused in large part on the concept of “reasonableness,” a legal standard used by many legal systems, including in Australia, Britain and Canada. A government action is considered unreasonable if a court finds that it was taken without considering all relevant factors, without giving relevant weight to each factor, or by giving too much weight to irrelevant factors.

The prime minister’s political allies argue that reasonableness is too vague a concept, that it has never been codified in Israeli law and that judges apply it in subjective ways.

Netanyahu’s overhaul stripped the Supreme Court of the right to use the standard to overturn decisions by lawmakers and ministers. It was the first step in a government plan to limit the authority of the country’s most powerful court.

The Supreme Court angered the government when some of its judges cited the reasonableness standard to ban Aryeh Deri, a veteran ultra-Orthodox politician, from serving in Netanyahu’s cabinet. Judges said it was unreasonable to appoint Mr Deri because he had recently been convicted of tax fraud.

The bill limiting the court’s powers amended one of Israel’s basic laws, which have quasi-constitutional status. The government argued that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to rule on a basic law. But on Monday, the court ruled by twelve to three votes that it did have that power, and then decided by eight to seven to strike down the amendment.

Israeli analysts say the Supreme Court has never before intervened in or overturned a basic law. The Supreme Court had discussed such laws in the past but never ruled on them.

In response to charges that the Supreme Court is overreaching, many defenders of Israel’s liberal democracy say that in a country that has one parliament building, no formal written constitution and a largely ceremonial president, the highest court is the only bulwark against the power of the government. And the standard of reasonableness, they argue, is one of the most important tools available to judges.

Members of Netanyahu’s coalition say the court is thwarting popular rule. Some had urged the court to delay its decision until after the war in Gaza is over.

The timing of the decision was crucial: two retiring judges would have been ineligible to participate in the decision if it had been handed down after mid-January. Legal analysts have calculated that without these judges, the court would have decided to uphold the law, 7-6.