UN Security Council holds high-level meeting on Gaza before Trump's Board of Peace convenes

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council is holding a high-level meeting Wednesday on the Gaza ceasefire deal and Israel's efforts to expand control in the West Bank before world leaders head to Washington to discuss the future of the Palestinian territories at the first gathering of President Donald Trump's Board of Peace.

The U.N. session in New York was originally scheduled for Thursday but was moved up after Trump announced the board's meeting for that same date and it became clear that it would complicate travel plans for diplomats planning to attend both. It is a sign of the potential for overlapping and conflicting agendas between the United Nations’ most powerful body and Trump’s new initiative, whose broader ambitions to broker global conflicts have raised concerns in some countries that it may attempt to rival the U.N. Security Council.

Asked what he hopes to see from the back-to-back meetings this week, Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told reporters Tuesday, “We expect from the international community to stop Israel and end their illegal effort against annexation, whether in Washington or in New York.”

Ahead of the session, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused the Security Council of being “infected with an anti-Israeli obsession” and insisted that no nation has a stronger right than its “historical and documented right to the land of the Bible.”

In addition to Israel, the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Jordan, Egypt and Indonesia are in attendance at the monthly Mideast meeting of the 15-member council after many Arab and Islamic countries requested last week that it discuss Gaza and Israel's contentious West Bank settlement project before some of them head to Washington.

The board to be chaired by Trump was originally envisioned as a small group of world leaders overseeing his 20-point plan for Gaza’s future. But the Republican president's ambitious new vision for the board to be a mediator of worldwide conflicts has led to skepticism from major allies.

While more than 20 countries have so far accepted an invitation to join the board, close U.S. partners, including France, Germany and others, have opted not to join yet and renewed support for the U.N., which also is in the throes of major reforms and funding cuts.

During his statement Wednesday, Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., appeared to criticize countries that had not yet signed on to the Board of Peace, saying that unlike the Security Council, the board is “not talking, it is doing.”

“We are hearing the chattering class criticizing the structure of the board, that it's unconventional, that it's unprecedented,” Waltz said. “Again, the old ways were not working.”

The Security Council is meeting a day after nearly all of its 15 members — minus the United States — and dozens of other diplomats joined Palestinian ambassador Mansour as he read a statement on behalf of 80 countries and several organizations condemning Israel's latest actions in the West Bank, demanding an immediate reversal and underlining “strong opposition to any form of annexation.”

In the last several weeks, Israel has launched a contentious land regulation process that will deepen its control in the occupied West Bank. Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said it amounts to “de facto sovereignty” that will block the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Outraged Palestinians, Arab countries and human rights groups have called the moves an illegal annexation of the territory, home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state.

The U.N. meeting also is expected to delve into the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal that took effect Oct. 10 after more than two years of war between Israel and Hamas. Briefings by U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo and by Israeli and Palestinian civil society representatives were heard for the first time since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that launched the war.

DiCarlo said this is “a pivotal moment in the Middle East” that opens the possibility for the region to move in a new direction. “But that opening is neither assured nor indefinite,” she said, and whether it will be sustained depends on decisions in the coming weeks.

“Our collective efforts must now consolidate the ceasefire in Gaza and alleviate the suffering of the population,” she said. “We need concrete progress toward stabilization and recovery, consistent with international law, to lay the foundations for lasting peace. The Board of Peace meeting in Washington, D.C., tomorrow is an important step.”

Aspects of the ceasefire deal have moved forward, including Hamas releasing all the hostages it was holding and increased amounts of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza, though the U.N. says the level is insufficient. A new technocratic committee has been appointed to administer Gaza’s daily affairs.

But the most challenging steps lie ahead, including the deployment of an international security force, disarming Hamas and rebuilding Gaza.

Trump said this week that the Board of Peace members have pledged $5 billion toward Gaza reconstruction and will commit thousands of personnel to international stabilization and police forces for the territory. He didn't provide details. Indonesia’s military says up to 8,000 of its troops are expected to be ready by the end of June for a potential deployment to Gaza as part of a humanitarian and peace mission.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk on the South Lawn to the White House after arriving on Marine One Monday evening, Feb. 16, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

FILE - The symbol of the United Nations is displayed outside the Secretariat Building, Feb. 28, 2022, at United Nations Headquarters. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — As an attorney, Thomas Goldstein routinely argued cases before the Supreme Court and published a popular blog about the nation's highest court. Unbeknownst to friends and colleagues, Goldstein also became an ultra-high-stakes poker player who grossed tens of millions of dollars in winnings but racked up a staggering gambling debt.

The secretive side of Goldstein's life has been the focus of a six-week trial in Maryland for a tax-evasion case against the SCOTUSblog co-founder. His indictment a year ago sent shockwaves through the legal community in the nation's capital, where Goldstein argued more than 40 cases before the Supreme Court before retiring in 2023.

As the trial drew to a close on Wednesday, Justice Department prosecutor Sean Beaty told jurors that Goldstein is one of the smartest and most accomplished attorneys ever to argue a case before the high court.

“He's not a dummy. He's a willful tax cheat,” Beaty said during the trial's closing arguments.

Defense attorney Jonathan Kravis said the government, in a rush to judgment, “blindly” accepted an accountant's “made-up story” about Goldstein's gambling activities and failed to adequately investigate the case.

“Not even close,” Kravis told jurors. “Tom Goldstein is innocent.”

The trial, which started on Jan. 12, included testimony by “Spider-Man” star Tobey Maguire, an avid poker player who enlisted Goldstein’s help in recovering a gambling debt from a billionaire. Goldstein also took the stand and testified in his own defense.

Goldstein is charged with 16 counts, including charges of tax evasion and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns. Prosecutors say he failed to pay taxes on millions of dollars in gambling income; diverted money from his law firm, Goldstein & Russell, to pay gambling debts; and falsely deducted gambling debts as business expenses.

“It was a textbook tax-evasion scheme,” Beaty said. “And Mr. Goldstein executed that nearly flawlessly.”

Goldstein has denied any wrongdoing and says he repeatedly instructed his law firm’s staff and accountants to correctly characterize his personal expenses. In a 2014 email, he told a firm employee that “we always play completely by the rules.”

Goldstein knows he should have paid closer attention to his firm’s finances and admits he made “innocent mistakes” on his tax returns, his attorney said. But he didn't cheat on his taxes or knowingly make false statements on his tax returns, Kravis told jurors.

“A mistake is not a crime,” he said.

Goldstein also is accused of lying to IRS agents and hiding his gambling debts from his accountants, employees and mortgage lenders. He omitted a $15 million gambling debt from mortgage loan applications while looking for a new home in Washington, D.C., with his wife in 2021, his indictment alleges.

Goldstein raked in approximately $50 million in poker winnings in 2016, including roughly $22 million that he won playing in Asia, according to Beaty. The prosecutor said the tax evasion scheme “fell apart” when another gambler, feeling cheated by Goldstein, notified the IRS about a 2016 debt owed to the attorney.

The indictment also accuses Goldstein of using his law firm to improperly pay salaries and provide health insurance to four women with whom he was having or pursuing romantic relationships between 2016 and 2022. He met three of the women on a “sugar daddy” dating website connecting men with young women looking for financial support. He met the fourth at a poker game where she was hired to work as a server and masseuse.

Prosecutors said the women had sham jobs and performed little or no work for Goldstein’s firm. The indictment claims he evaded taxes by treating the women’s salaries and health care premiums as business expenses.

Goldstein’s attorneys accused prosecutors of improperly presenting “lurid” evidence about his romantic relationships with the women to grand jurors. Several days before Goldstein’s indictment last January, his attorneys accused Justice Department officials of rushing to bring a case against him before the change in presidential administrations.

“This roving search for a crime appears to be motivated in large part by personal animus towards Mr. Goldstein,” defense attorneys wrote in a letter dated 10 days before his initial indictment.

Goldstein was part of the legal team that represented Democrat Al Gore in the Supreme Court litigation over the 2000 election ultimately won by Republican President George W. Bush. In November 2024, after learning he was under investigation but before he was charged, Goldstein wrote a guest essay for The New York Times in which he advocated for ending the criminal cases against Republican President Donald Trump.

"Although this idea will pain my fellow Democrats, all of the cases should be abandoned," he wrote after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

Prosecutors wanted jurors to hear some of what Goldstein recently told The New York Times Magazine about his own criminal case. Goldstein said his wife, who co-founded SCOTUSblog with him, didn't know anything about his gambling or relationships with other women.

“I just had this entirely separate life,” he told journalist Jeffrey Toobin.

The Supreme Court is photographed, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

FILE - Tom Goldstein, who writes SCOTUSblog.com, poses for a photograph in front of the Supreme Court, Oct. 31, 2013, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, file)