The Take: Can Trump strip Musk, Mamdani and others of their US citizenship?
In this episode:
Heba Gowayed (@hebagowayed) – Professor of sociology, CUNY Hunter College and Graduate Center
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Tracie Hunte, Tamara Khandaker and Diana Ferrero with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Kisaa Zehra, Melanie Marich, Sarí el-Khalili, and our host, Manuel Rapalo. It was edited by Kylene Kiang.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take's executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
Connect with us:
@AJEPodcasts on Instagram, X, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Qatar Tribune
5 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
China trade talks could include TikTok: Lutnick
Agencies TikTok may come up in trade talks with China next week, but if Beijing does not approve a divestment deal for Chinese owner ByteDance, the app will soon go dark in the United States, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Thursday. US President Donald Trump's administration will allow TikTok to remain in the US 'if it's in American control, and … China can have a little piece or ByteDance, the current owner, can keep a little piece', Lutnick said, speaking on CNBC. 'Americans will have control. Americans will own the technology, and Americans will control the algorithm. That's something Donald Trump is willing to do. If that deal gets approved then by the Chinese, then that deal will happen,' he said. 'If they don't approve it, then TikTok is going to go dark, and those decisions are coming very soon.' Asked whether an agreement over TikTok is part of current trade negotiations, Lutnick said 'yes and no'. 'It's not really part of the trade talks, but you can't really go meet somebody and not bring up the topics that are relevant,' he said. 'So … it's not officially part of it, but unofficially? Of course.' ByteDance is under pressure to divest the short-video app by September 17 or face a ban in the US. Last year, then-US President Joe Biden signed a sale-or-ban law, requiring that a 'foreign adversary' no longer control the app, defined as a 20 per cent stake, over national security concerns. Despite an original January deadline, Trump has repeatedly delayed enforcement of the law. The original deadline as set in law was January 19, with allowance for a one-time 90-day extension if progress towards a sale was evident. Trump had extended that deadline his first day in office via executive order, days after a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping during which TikTok was discussed. He has since extended it twice more. If the sale is approved, the app is expected to use an algorithm and data system separate from its global platform, Reuters reported this month. That would resolve years of debate over whether ByteDance would share what is considered TikTok's secret sauce – the recommendation algorithm – and mark a potential end to years of angst over the app's security concerns in Washington. A deal had reportedly been in the works earlier this year to spin off TikTok's US operations into a new US-based firm, majority-owned and operated by US investors. But the plan was put on hold after Beijing indicated it would not approve it after Trump's announcements of steep tariffs on Chinese imports, according to Bloomberg. Under current Chinese export controls, some technologies used by TikTok, including the recommendation algorithm, require Beijing's approval for export. The restriction was implemented by Beijing in 2020, killing a deal that had been under negotiation involving ByteDance, Oracle and Walmart during the first Trump administration. In the years since, Beijing had given little indication it would support a sale, urging the US to provide an 'open, fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment' for Chinese businesses. The law mandating the divestment, passed last year as part of a foreign aid package, reflects concern in Washington that TikTok's ownership makes it beholden to the Chinese government and that Beijing could use the app to spy on Americans or conduct influence operations. Free speech advocates have argued that a ban would unlawfully restrict Americans from obtaining access to foreign media in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Other critics, including some US lawmakers, have pointed to the lack of evidence of content manipulation by Beijing. The US Supreme Court upheld the forced divestment law in January. Over 60 per cent of American teens and about a third of US adults use TikTok, according to a Pew Research Centre study from last year.
Qatar Tribune
5 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
So Trump-like: Relief but no surprise in Japan as US cuts tariffs
Agencies In the Japanese city of Seki, famed for its razor-sharp artisan knives, news that incoming US tariffs will be lowered is welcome but not entirely unexpected. Around 40 percent of kitchen blades produced in Seki, where knifemaking expertise dates back 700 years, are exported to the United States, local authorities say. The two countries announced Wednesday they had cut a deal to lower the 25-percent tariffs on Japanese goods threatened by US President Donald Trump -- starting on August 1 -- to 15 percent. 'Lower tariffs are better' but 'I'm not that surprised' at the trade deal, said Katsumi Sumikama, head of Sumikama Cutlery in Seki. 'I don't know what truly happened, but I feel like maybe Trump thought tariffs up to 15 percent were acceptable, and boldly proposed a higher tariff rate at first,' Sumikama told AFP. 'Then as the negotiations took shape, he tried to create a good impression in the public eye by lowering it from 25 percent. That kind of strategy would be so Trump-like.' The US leader, who hailed the Japan deal as 'massive', has vowed to hit dozens of countries with punitive tariffs if they do not hammer out a pact with Washington by the end of July. Japan is one of five nations to have signed an agreement -- along with Britain, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines -- after Trump said in April he would strike '90 deals in 90 days'. Headlines have focused on the impact of US tariffs on the likes of Toyota and others in Japan's huge auto industry, as well as trade in steel, rice and other key goods. But Japanese knives have in recent years become a luxury must-have in kitchens worldwide including the United States, partly fuelled by a pandemic-era home cooking boom. 'Weathered the storm' - Blademaking in Seki dates back to the 14th century, when the city in the mountains of Gifu region became a major producer of swords thanks to its rich natural environment.
Al Jazeera
9 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Analysis: ‘Bomb first' – Trump's approach to war-making in his second term
Washington, DC – During the first six months of his second term, Donald Trump pushed the limits of US presidential power while aiming to reorient US foreign policy to 'America First'. His first months in office have also offered a window into the future of his administration's approach to war-making, what analysts characterise as an at times contradictory tactic that oscillates between avowed anti-interventionism and quicksilver military attacks, justified as 'peace through strength'. While questions remain over whether Trump has indeed pursued a coherent strategy when it comes to direct US involvement in international conflict, one thing has been clear in the first portion of Trump's second four-year term: US air attacks, long Washington's tool of choice since launching the so-called 'war on terror' in the early 2000s, have again surged. According to a report released last week by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), since Trump's re-entry into office on January 20, the US has carried out 529 air attacks in 240 locations across the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. That figure, which accounts for just the first five months of Trump's four-year term as president, is already nearing the 555 attacks launched by the administration of US President Joe Biden over his whole term from 2021 to 2025. 'The most extreme tool at his disposal – targeted airstrikes – is being used not as a last resort, but as the first move,' Clionadh Raleigh, a professor of political geography and conflict and founder of ACLED, said in a statement accompanying the report. 'While Trump has repeatedly promised to end America's 'forever wars', he has rarely elaborated on how. These early months suggest the plan may be to use overwhelming firepower to end fights before they begin, or before they drag on.' A 'Trump Doctrine'? Trump's willingness to unleash lethal force abroad – and the inherent risk that the brazen approach carries of dragging the US into protracted conflict – has already roiled influential segments of the president's Make America Great Again (MAGA) base, coming to a head over Trump's six-week bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen and, more recently, his June decision to strike three nuclear facilities in Iran amid Israel's offensive on its neighbour. In turn, Trump's top officials have sought to bring coherence to the strategy, with Vice President JD Vance in late June offering the clearest vision yet of a Trump blueprint for foreign intervention. 'What I call the 'Trump Doctrine' is quite simple,' Vance said at the Ohio speech. 'Number one, you articulate a clear American interest, and that's in this case that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.' 'Number two, you try to aggressively diplomatically solve that problem,' he said. 'And number three, when you can't solve it diplomatically, you use overwhelming military power to solve it, and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict.' But the reality of Trump's early diplomatic and military adventures has not matched the vision outlined by Vance, according to Michael Wahid Hanna, the US Program Director at Crisis Group. He called the statement an attempt to 'retrofit coherence'. While Hanna cautioned against putting too much stock into a unified strategy, he did point to one 'consistent thread': a diplomatic approach that appears 'haphazard, not fully conceived, and characterised by impatience'. 'For all of the talk about being a peacemaker and wanting to see quick deals, Trump has a particularly unrealistic view of the ways in which diplomacy can work,' he told Al Jazeera. The US president had vowed to transform peace efforts in the Russia-Ukraine war, but an earlier pressure campaign against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has since seen Trump circle back to the Biden administration's hardline approach to Russia, with little progress made in between. After an initial ceasefire in Gaza, Trump officials have failed to make meaningful progress in reigning in Israel's war, leaving the threat of knock-on conflicts, including with Iran and the Houthis in Yemen, unanswered. Earlier diplomatic overtures to address Iran's nuclear programme stalled as Trump took a maximalist approach seeking to block any uranium enrichment. The effort dissolved after the US failed to constrain Israel's military campaign against Tehran, as the US continues to provide billions in military funding to the 'ironclad ally'. 'It's hard to argue, as Vance did, that the United States has really pushed as hard as they can on diplomacy,' Hanna told Al Jazeera. Under Vance's logic, he added, 'that leaves them with no other means than to respond militarily'. 'Bomb first and ask questions later'? The early emphasis on air attacks has been accompanied by vows by Trump and his Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth to restore a 'warrior ethos' within the US military. Indeed, Trump has appeared to relish the military actions, posting a video of the attack on an ISIL (ISIS) affiliated target in Somalia on February 1, just 10 days after taking office. He made a point to draw a comparison to Biden, who tightened rules of engagement policies Trump had loosened during his first term and entered office vowing to severely limit the reliance on US strikes. Trump wrote that 'Biden and his cronies wouldn't act quickly enough to get the job done'. 'I did! The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that 'WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!' All told since taking office six months ago, Trump has carried out at least 44 air strikes in Somalia, where the US has long targeted both a local ISIL offshoot and al-Shabab, according to ACLED data. The Biden administration carried out just over 60 such strikes during his entire four years in office. The US president has posted similarly boastful messages about strikes in Yemen, where his administration conducted a bombing campaign from March to May, accounting for the vast majority of overall strikes during his second term, as well as US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, which Trump declared were 'obliterated like nobody's ever seen before', long before any in-depth assessment had been made. Raleigh, who is also a professor of political geography and conflict at the University of Sussex, said the increase could possibly be attributed to Trump's pivot away from the soft-power policy of Biden, which has included shearing down the US State Department and dismantling the US foreign aid apparatus. That could further be viewed as an effort by Trump to place the US as a 'player in a new internationalised conflict environment', where overall violence by state actors on foreign soil has increased steadily in recent years, currently accounting for 30 percent of all violent events ACLED tracks globally. 'But I would say there's still no clear Trump doctrine, as much as Vance wants to claim that there is,' Raleigh told Al Jazeera. 'And at the moment, it's looking a little bit like 'bomb first and ask questions later.'' That approach has proven to have particularly deadly consequences, according to Emily Tripp, the director of Airwars. She drew a parallel to Trump's first term, when he also surged air strikes, outpacing those of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, who himself oversaw an expansion of drone warfare abroad. The monitor has tracked 224 reported civilian casualties in Yemen from US strikes under Trump in 2025, nearly totaling the 258 reported civilian casualties from US actions in the country during the 23 years prior. The administration has also used particularly powerful – and expensive – munitions in its strikes, which Airwars has assessed as appearing to have been deployed against a broader set of targets than under Biden. Two of the Trump administration's strikes on Yemen, one on Ras Isa Port and another on a migrant detention centre in Saada, have been deemed possible war crimes by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. 'That's not typical, or necessarily something you'd expect in a campaign whose remit, as defined by Trump, Hegseth, and [US Central Command], is on largely economic targets,' Tripp told Al Jazeera. 'There's really no reason for there to be such high levels of civilian harm,' she said. Tripp added she was still waiting to assess how the Pentagon approaches civilian casualty investigations and transparency under Trump's second term. Questions over efficacy It remains unclear whether the administration's reliance on swift and powerful military strikes will actually prove effective in keeping the US troops out of protracted conflict. While a tenuous ceasefire continues to hold with the Houthis, the results of the US bombing campaign 'have been pretty underwhelming', the Crisis Group's Hanna said, noting that few underlying conditions have changed. The group has continued to strike vessels in the Red Sea and to launch missiles at Israel in opposition to the war in Gaza. An attack in early July prompted State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce to warn the US 'will continue to take necessary action to protect freedom of navigation and commercial shipping'. The jury also remains out on whether Trump's strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities will lead to a diplomatic breakthrough on Iran's nuclear programme, as the White House has maintained. Little progress has been made since a ceasefire was reached shortly after Tehran launched retaliatory strikes on a US base in Qatar. Crisis Group's Hanna assessed that Trump has relied on air strikes in part because they have become somewhat 'antiseptic' in US society, with their toll 'shielded from a lot of public scrutiny'. But, he added: 'There are limits in terms of what air power alone can do…That's just the reality.'
