“A wave of Israeli strikes across Gaza on Sunday hit a hospital and other sites, killing at least 21 people, including children, as Israel vowed to expand its security presence in the small coastal strip.
The predawn strike on Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City was the latest of several attacks on northern Gaza’s last major hospital providing critical health care.”
“Authorities have detained a co-founder of Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union as he was completing the final steps toward gaining U.S. citizenship in what appears to be part of a widening crackdown on college activists by the Trump administration.
Mohsen Mahdawi, who had permanent U.S. residency, was taken into custody Monday in Vermont when he went to a federal office building for a naturalization appointment, according to a legal filing his attorney submitted to block his transfer to a detention facility out of state.”
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““As a result of his speech he’s being detained, I mean it’s outrageous,” said Luna Droubi, an attorney for Mahdawi, who was raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank but has lived in the U.S. for a decade.”
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“Mahdawi appeared on “60 Minutes” in 2023 and was active in the Palestinian student protest movement at Columbia but says he had no role in organizing the largest and most raucous of the demonstrations in the following spring, according to his lawyer’s court filing.
He had finished his studies at Columbia and was planning to graduate in May and then return to the campus in the fall for a master’s degree. Mahdawi is a Buddhist and “believes in non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion,” the court filing said.”
“Take Egypt: In 2016, facing fiscal pressure and public dissatisfaction, the government raised tariffs on hundreds of imported goods—everything from electronics to household furniture. The stated goal was to protect domestic industries and reduce reliance on foreign goods. The outcome? Inflation soared, local industries remained stagnant, and Egyptian consumers were left paying more for lower-quality products. The government hoped tariffs would nurture innovation; instead, they strangled competition and punished ordinary people.
In Iraq, where the state has tried to rebuild its shattered economy after years of conflict, officials implemented tariffs to supposedly boost “national production” and replenish government coffers. But in a country where corruption runs deep and borders are porous, the policy only incentivized smuggling and rent seeking. Goods flowed illegally across borders while customs officials took their cut. Meanwhile, consumers bore the cost, and genuine economic growth never came. Tariffs there didn’t protect industries—they protected the corrupt.”
“Although the United States has the power to seriously disrupt economic life in other countries, the book argues, the consequences don’t always serve American interests. Sanctions hurt the prosperity and political standing of Iran’s pro-American middle class the most. They also make the government more paranoid and remove important incentives to play nice. Everyone seems worse off.
The U.S. has tried to wash its hands of the policy’s consequences for ordinary Iranians, blaming their poverty on domestic “corruption and economic mismanagement” rather than on sanctions. But the data are clear. The Iranian economy was booming from 1988, the end of the country’s war with Iraq, to 2011, the beginning of former President Barack Obama’s intensified sanctions campaign.
Obama’s innovation was secondary sanctions. As the flow of direct American-Iranian trade shrunk, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control punished companies in other countries that dealt with Iran. The Iranian economy became more or less radioactive, as any bank in the world that handled Iranian money and any shipping company that handled Iranian oil risked the wrath of the U.S. government.
Then Obama made a deal, lifting the sanctions in 2015 in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Trade resumed and foreign investment flowed back in—until Trump reimposed sanctions in 2018. (Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, former President Joe Biden continued to enforce the same sanctions.) Iran has since come closer to building a nuclear bomb, and it has had more confrontations with the U.S. military.”
“President Donald Trump says he is determined to deport “terrorist sympathizers,” including legal permanent residents as well as foreigners with student visas. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the targets have a history of “tearing things up” on “our university campuses” by starting riots, taking over buildings, and harassing people.
While those descriptions seem accurate as applied to at least some of the foreign students whom Rubio wants to expel, they are less apt in other cases. Contrary to the way Trump and Rubio portray this initiative, neither rhetorical support for terrorism nor disruptive conduct is necessary to invoke the sweeping legal authority on which they are relying, which applies to any noncitizen whose “presence or activities” Rubio thinks could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
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That gloss rings true as applied to an activist like Taal, who went beyond praising Hamas (which on its own would be constitutionally protected speech) by engaging in conduct that interfered with other people’s use of Cornell facilities, to the point that he was banned from campus. But Rubio’s description is more than a little misleading as applied to a student like Ozturk, who seems to have done nothing more than express views that offend Rubio.”
““I think we are making a mistake,” Vance wrote in the Signal chat, later published by The Atlantic. Vance argued that although Trump wanted to send a message with the strikes, “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.” He did say, though, that he was “willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself,” but went on to say “there is a strong argument for delaying this a month.”
Minutes later, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller shut down the conversation, writing, “As I heard it, the president was clear.””
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“The senior Republican official added: “It’s one thing to have a healthy interagency debate before a decision is made. It’s another to try and undo a Commander-in-Chief decision once Trump gives the execute order. This is the latter, and it’s very [John] Bolton-esque.”
Some Republicans believe Vance raising questions about an action the president had already agreed to amounted to a form of obstruction, the same senior Republican official said.”