“Huge numbers of Palestinians need something to eat. Can Israel do more to get them some food?
“It’s as if anything that doesn’t qualify as famine isn’t a problem,” one humanitarian organization official told me. A second aid official said the Israelis in particular talk about such hunger crises as if “it’s a binary — on, off — rather than a sliding scale. It’s a sliding scale.”
Words are among the many tools being weaponized by multiple sides in several ongoing global conflicts. “Famine,” “genocide,” “terrorism,” “antisemitism,” “occupation” and “apartheid” are just some of the terms whose definitions inspire public relations, legal and policy fights.
The war of words is increasingly exhausting and alarming to policymakers and others who deal with humanitarian issues. Several told me they worry the semantics — especially in a conflict such as Gaza — could hurt efforts to save lives or forge peace, including by hardening the positions of people accused of wrongdoing.
…
Activists who push to use the term “genocide” often seem to suggest that if any label short of that is used, it means that a group’s suffering doesn’t matter.
This is unfortunate, Malinowski and others say, because other legal terms that could apply, such as “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity,” are still very grave offenses whose perpetrators should be held accountable.
A government’s decision to accuse another country of genocide often comes down to politics.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/29/gaza-war-words-political-tools-00481466
“A Georgia man who opened fire on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters, shooting dozens of rounds into the sprawling complex and killing a police officer, had blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Saturday.
…
“Kennedy is directly responsible for the villainization of CDC’s workforce through his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety, which have fueled a climate of hostility and mistrust,” said Fired But Fighting, a group of laid-off employees opposing changes to the CDC by President Donald Trump’s administration.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/georgia-authorities-identify-suspect-cdc-133247085.html
It’s important to have in-country experts who can see and feel the changes afoot in a foreign country.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/06/washington-ignored-his-warnings-about-iran-then-he-was-taken-hostage-00495072
“Vivergo’s plant is now at risk of closure due to the U.K.-U.S. trade deal, which allows 1.4 billion liters of tariff-free American ethanol into the British market. It’s a volume Vivergo’s managing director Ben Hackett says is equivalent to the entire U.K. bioethanol market.
Unless ministers intervene, 160 staff at Vivergo — one of only two major bioethanol producers in the U.K. — will lose their jobs from Aug. 18. Thousands more in farming and haulage will also feel the impact.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-trade-deal-us-uk-wheat-farming-ethanol-market/
RFK canceling MRNA vaccine research even though such research could save many many lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuoGAWOkPEM
“The Trump administration is now struggling to reconcile its mass deportation efforts with the need to keep farm production going. Huerta is not optimistic about how it will all play out, though she was able to poke at Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ recent suggestion that automation will soon replace human laborers. “I guess I could just wait until they get enough robots to do the farm work,” Huerta joked.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/08/02/dolores-huerta-farm-raids-immigration-labor-interview-00489203
“The Trump administration is escalating its efforts to punish lawyers whom it sees as obstacles to the president’s agenda.
The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to impose “substantial monetary sanctions” on a California lawyer who briefly halted but ultimately failed to block the deportation of an immigrant from Laos who pleaded guilty to attempted murder in the 1990s.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/06/justice-department-sanctions-immigration-lawyer-00496886
“Big American companies are also reporting growing tariff expenses.
Ford said last week it paid $800 million in tariffs in the second quarter and could shell out as much as $3 billion this year. General Motors reported a $1.1 billion tariff hit in the second quarter and said trade friction could cost the automaker $4 billion to $5 billion in 2025.
Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar warned this week that rising tariffs could cost it $1.5 billion this year. And Apple CEO Tim Cook – who was at the White House on Wednesday to announce an additional $100 billion investment in the U.S. — said the company paid $800 million in tariffs in its most recent quarter and faced another $1.1 billion this quarter.
The White House has pointed to the more than $136 billion it has already collected in tariff revenue, as well as agreements from a number of trading partners to lower tariff barriers and invest billions in the U.S., as a sign that Trump’s approach is working.
However, nearly seven months after he took office, there has been no uptick in manufacturing employment, which remains flat at 12.7 million workers. The increased tariff revenue also amounts to slightly more than 7 percent of the $1.9 trillion federal government budget deficit projected in fiscal 2025.
A survey released this week by the National Foreign Trade Council, a business group, found that companies have been increasingly forced to delay or reduce their product and service offerings due to rising costs and sourcing challenges.
The administration has also shown little sympathy for companies complaining of higher tariff costs and supply chain disruptions.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/07/trumps-trade-escalates-global-tariffs-kick-in-00496457
“The census is a constitutionally mandated count of every person in the United States every 10 years, which was last conducted in 2020. A full census has never been conducted mid-decade in this manner, nor has one ever excluded noncitizens from the count.
Censuses are immensely important in American governance; each count determines how many House seats every state gets through a process called apportionment, and the results of the census help direct billions of dollars in federal, state and local funding.
Trump has been trying to include a citizenship question on the census since his first term, though the Supreme Court struck the effort down on procedural grounds in 2019. Apportionment numbers have also historically included people residing in the United States regardless of their immigration status.
A 2020 Pew Research Center report indicated removing noncitizens could cost multiple states House seats, including California and Texas.
Any attempt to do a mid-decade census would likely result in a flurry of legal and logistical challenges. Preparing for the decennial count takes multiple years, and planning for the 2030 census is already well underway.
It is unclear how the Trump administration plans to exclude undocumented people from the count, or if the president intended to just remove them from apportionment totals, which would also face legal hurdles.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/07/trump-new-census-00497025
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/06/california-solar-funding-trump-00496922