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Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump to California: Surrender
President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on Monday, June 9, 2025. Credit - Yuri Gripas—Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME's politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. President Donald Trump seems on the cusp of getting everything he appears to love out of the crisis in Los Angeles. An opportunity to stoke political divisions and suppress dissent. A showdown with a deep-blue state's Governor with White House ambitions. A chance to nurse grievances dear to his base and largely ungrounded in reality. And an opposition party left unsure of how to navigate a minefield of Trump's making. Taken together, the blend of circumstances seems trending in Trump's gleeful direction. The President on Monday told reporters on the White House' South Lawn that he would be fine arresting California Gov. Gavin Newsom, called protesters against his mass immigration raids 'insurrectionists,' and blamed the unrest on professional agitators. He said the United States cannot accept any disrespect for law enforcement. And he seemed on the edge of invoking a 19th Century law that could be used to quash civic protest and sidestep basic constitutional rights. 'Order will be restored, illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free,' Trump posted on social media. Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta responded with a suit against Trump for overstepping his power in sending 2,000 troops into Los Angeles to quell protests against federal immigration raids. The escalating situation seems destined to set up a clash that has no apparent off-ramp, winners, or remedies. It's quite the split screen for a President who, just four years ago, unleashed a violent mob on the U.S. Capitol after he lost his re-election bid in 2020. Whereas Trump gave a blanket pardon for those accused of the Jan. 6 insurrection against Congress that left 138 police injured, he is now professing fealty to the uniform. While insisting he is steadying security for borders, Trump is at the same time launching the West Coast's population center into a freefall of uncertainty. And even as he casts the liberal elite as out-of-touch with so-called American values, he is threatening a core of U.S. character: immigration. 'They spit, we hit,' Trump said, suggesting protests against his raids were insulting police and necessitating a violent response. It has more than a few echoes to his impertinent reaction to the Black Lives Matter activism that marked the final year of his first term. These days, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been wading more aggressively into workplaces and courthouses as part of Trump's promised crackdown on those in the country without proper papers. Officers are operating in overdrive as they try to hit White House-prescribed quotas for deportations. In response, protests have broken out as activists see the efforts as capricious and mean-spirited. L.A. police have said the protests there were mostly peaceful, although things in the nation's second-largest city did escalate over the weekend, with some of that spurred by the guardsmens' arrival. While arrests reached double digits, the situation was nowhere near the crisis White House aides tried to suggest. Rather than letting this play out, the White House has exacerbated tensions and the city has responded by declaring downtown an illegal demonstration. While making clear he's prepared to fight back, Newsom has tried to de-escalate the situation: 'Don't take the bait,' he told Californians. 'Never use violence or harm law enforcement.' Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass likened it to 'intentional chaos.' Democratic lawmakers in Congress are similarly casting this as a mess of Trump's making, not one rooted in reality. But here's the thing: once the kindling is lit, it may be impossible to stop it—especially if the country's top leader is keen to watch it spread. 'We're going to have troops everywhere,' Trump said Sunday. And Trump's top White House aides suggested the snowballing situation was exactly what they had in mind. 'This is a fight to save civilization,' posted White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump's hardline anti-immigrant policies. This is a moment of political testing unseen since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed the National Guard without a Governor's request to protect civil rights demonstrators. No White House since then has dared to go around a state chief to activate domestic troops, and the seeming trigger for a careening upswing is an 1807 law that allows the military to be used to quash a domestic uprising. At the same time, the Pentagon has put Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton on high alert and ready to mobilize if things escalate. The fast-moving clash between a Republican President and the nation's largest Democratic-led state has left insiders on both sides of the aisle craning for answers. Los Angeles, a city rooted as much in Hollywood as its rich immigrant communities, is not one to be idle as Washington takes a heavy hand. And Washington, a company town driven by ego more than anything, is flexing its muscle over its West Coast power rival. The fight seems to be on the upswing, not a descent. Trump is spoiling for the battle and Newsom is laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential bid. Put all of this together and it's a big ol' mess primed to spiral in ways that are hard to predict, but destined to define this part of Trump's legacy. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter. Write to Philip Elliott at
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New U.S. Visa Restrictions Target Social Media 'Censorship'
Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday, April 7, 2025. Credit - Yuri Gripas–Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Trump Administration on Wednesday announced new visa restrictions against foreign officials who it says are 'complicit' in censoring Americans on digital platforms, the latest escalation in its challenge to international regulations it sees as infringing on American free speech. Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the restrictions as a defense of American sovereignty and a rebuke against foreign governments that he accused of attempting to police U.S.-based speech. 'For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights,' Rubio wrote on X. 'Free speech is essential to the American way of life — a birthright over which foreign governments have no authority.' 'Foreigners who work to undermine the rights of Americans should not enjoy the privilege of traveling to our country,' Rubio added. 'Whether in Latin America, Europe, or elsewhere, the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans are over.' Rubio did not name specific individuals or instances of censorship, but said the restrictions will apply to those 'complicit in censoring Americans.' The White House has made criticism of European content moderation a centerpiece of its foreign policy messaging. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vice President J.D. Vance blasted European leaders for suppressing dissenting opinions by categorizing those views as misinformation. "What I worry about is the threat from within—the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values," Vance said at the time. The Administration's new policy also comes amid a flurry of right-wing criticism of Europe's Digital Services Act (DSA), a 2023 law aimed at curbing disinformation and hate speech online. The law requires tech companies—including American giants like Meta and X—to remove illegal content and provide transparency about their content moderation. While the DSA is not explicitly cited in the announcement, Rubio's rhetoric—and the State Department's Substack, where senior advisor Samuel Samson labeled the DSA 'Orwellian'—indicate the law is a target. 'It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on U.S. citizens or U.S. residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on U.S. soil,' Rubio said in a statement. 'It is similarly unacceptable for foreign officials to demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies or engage in censorship activity that reaches beyond their authority and into the United States.' Critics say the State Department's defense of speech rights abroad stands in tension with its crackdown on certain forms of speech at home, where the Trump Administration has targeted international students in connection with campus protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. Rubio has defended such moves as part of an effort to combat on-campus antisemitism, though civil liberties groups have warned of politically motivated suppression. The Secretary of State said last week that 'thousands' of visas have likely been revoked since President Trump took office. The Trump Administration has since then moved to block Harvard University's ability to enroll international students in an escalation of its battle with the school, and Rubio suspended new student visa appointments at U.S. embassies around the world on Tuesday pending tighter scrutiny of social media posts by applicants. House Judiciary Committee Republicans praised Rubio's move to bar foreign officials over censorship in a post on X on Wednesday. 'Excellent news!' the Judiciary Committee wrote. 'We've been exposing foreign censorship efforts over the past year. Now, those who want to silence your speech are being held accountable.' Write to Nik Popli at
The Intercept
07-05-2025
- General
- The Intercept
Famine Haunts the People of Gaza. Israel Is Trying to Convince You It's Fake.
Palestinians line up for a meal in Beit Lahia in the Gaza Strip on April 24, 2025. Photo: Ramez Habboub/Abaca/Sipa USA via AP Images As a survivor of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, it breaks me to watch my people struggle to find something to fill their stomachs. Israel's deliberate policy of starvation continues to tighten its grip on the enclave. Humanitarian organizations have sounded the alarm, warning that Gaza is on the verge of full-scale famine. Since Israel shattered the ceasefire on March 18 and sealed its blockade, 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza have been cut off from essential food and aid. As the World Food Programme and UNRWA have recently announced that their stocks of flour and food are depleted, the risk of widespread starvation grows with each passing day. I lived through the first wave of starvation in Gaza in the early months of 2024, a time when Israeli-imposed aid restrictions drove hunger to catastrophic levels. Everyone across the Strip experienced severe food shortages, with empty plates becoming a daily scene. I was forced to leave Gaza alone in February 2024 and flee to Egypt, after nearly five months of relentless bombardment and siege. At the height of the famine, I lost 16 kilograms. Since then, I have devoted myself to fighting against Israeli propaganda, narratives that distort the truth, downplay Palestinian suffering, and mock the agony Gazans endure. While I investigate Israeli disinformation, I carry the emotional weight of seeing the pain of my family still trapped in Gaza. Like nearly every household there, my family is running out of food and flour. Each video call painfully reveals their shrinking bodies, thinned by hunger. A study conducted in late December 2024 found that the average person in Gaza has lost around 18 kilograms due to severe food insecurity during the war. The situation has only worsened since. The Israeli blockade that began on March 2 has driven food prices beyond reach. My father told me last week that a 25-kilogram bag of flour now costs around 200 U.S. dollars. This week, the price has climbed to $470. I have seen videos of families grinding pasta and lentils to make makeshift bread for their starving children after running out of flour. For many, lentil bread is not a choice but a last resort under a starvation diet imposed by the Israeli occupation. After my family returned to our bombed-out home in the northern Gaza Strip in January of this year, my brother Fahmy built a makeshift oven fueled by firewood to bake bread for our family and neighbors. With all major bakeries shut down due to the flour shortage, his small act of resistance became a vital lifeline. Fahmy has been baking for over a month, helping those around him. He told me last week, 'Fewer people come because flour is no longer available. Those who still do often bring bug-infested flour, the only thing they have left to feed their children.' With food increasingly scarce in Gaza, much of the population now depends on tekias — community kitchens — for a single daily meal. These tekias, often limited to serving plain lentils, pasta, or rice, have had to reduce portions due to Israel's blockade on food and cooking gas. Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network, has warned that many tekias are on the brink of shutting down as food supplies dwindle. I watch daily footage of people queuing and stampeding, and children crying, to receive a small meal. These heartbreaking scenes are undeniable evidence of Israel's weaponization of starvation. Even these few vital tekias have not been spared from Israeli attacks. Gaza's Government Media Office reported that the Israeli military has targeted and bombed 29 tekias since the war began. Many Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to eat any animal they can find to get some protein. Shocking videos, verified by myself and my colleagues in the press, show people consuming sea turtles, horses, and even hedgehogs to survive. A story that deeply moved me was that of a child, Omar Qannan, who said he had eaten turtle meat despite his love for Raphael, the superhero from 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.' It is devastating to imagine how Omar will ever watch his favorite cartoon character again without remembering that hunger once forced him to eat an animal he saw as a heroic friend. Israeli trolls have waged an intensive hasbara, or propaganda, campaign to deny the famine ravaging Gaza, even at its peak in February 2024. These denials persist, despite repeated warnings from international organizations that Gaza is edging closer to famine and the evidence in front of our eyes. On April 20, an X user, notorious for spreading Israeli propaganda, posted a video of a man sitting by the beach in Gaza, alleging he was enjoying a 'large kebab meal' during the crisis. The user intentionally skipped the fact that the man was eating horse meat. Another post stunned me: It came from 'Gazawood,' a systematic campaign aiming to mock, discredit, and deny Palestinian suffering. The video showed a woman in Gaza grinding pasta to bake bread for her children. The Israeli propagandist accused the woman of staging her story for the camera instead of trying to feed her starving family. On May 12, 2024, I debunked a viral video intending to discredit the case of Fadi al-Zant, a child from Gaza who was suffering from malnutrition before fleeing the Strip for urgent medical treatment. Trolls cruelly accused his mother of deliberately starving him to stage a 'Pallywood' scene. Some atrocity denials weaponized her appearance to cast doubt on her child's suffering. These malicious insinuations ignore the basic truth that children are especially vulnerable during famine. Their bodies weaken more rapidly and face a significantly higher risk of death in hunger crises, as stated by the International Rescue Committee. The United Nations reported nearly 3,700 children were diagnosed with severe malnutrition last month alone, an 82 percent rise since February. Recent videos of severely malnourished children, like baby Siwar Ashour and 12-year-old Rahaf Ayad, continue to haunt me. Without urgent medical evacuation, these children may not survive. Without immediate and sustained delivery of food and aid, more children will fall victim to hunger and face the lifelong health consequences of starvation. Israeli officials are lying to our faces. On July 24, 2024, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood before the U.S. Congress and refuted Israel's role in obstructing humanitarian aid to Gaza. Despite being riddled with misleading claims, his speech drew applause from U.S. lawmakers who chose to overlook the catastrophic humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. I have tracked several organizations affiliated with the Israeli government that have actively spread fake news and hate speech during the war. Among them is HonestReporting, a hasbara group claiming to be a media watchdog exposing anti-Israel bias. The group worked to deny the famine in Gaza and undermine the credibility of independent experts. It dismissed the findings of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report, which warned that famine in Gaza was imminent by mid-March 2024. Rather than presenting the evidence, HonestReporting relied on cherry-picked evidence to discredit the report's conclusions. Israeli extremist officials have consistently denied the existence of famine among Palestinians in Gaza, while simultaneously pushing for harsher measures to block food and aid from reaching the besieged population. Although international organizations have repeatedly warned about the imminent threat of famine, these officials have not stopped inciting hate speech and ignoring the suffering of Gaza's population. Israeli officials frame starvation and the blockade as strategic necessities. Using soft language, Israeli officials frame starvation and the blockade as strategic necessities. On April 16, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz stated, 'No humanitarian aid to enter Gaza,' to pressure ceasefire negotiations. Around the same time, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, 'Not a single grain of wheat will enter Gaza.' National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir went even further, recently calling for the Israeli forces to bomb food storage facilities in Gaza. Read our complete coverage
Axios
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
How to celebrate mom this Mother's Day in San Francisco
Mother's Day is around the corner and we've got a few ideas on how to celebrate mom: 🚶♀️Spend some quality time together on an urban hike through Lands End, Mount Sutro or Glen Canyon. 🍽️ Treat her to a splurgy brunch at Octavia, Frances or Abaca. 👗 Attend a fashion show at Union Square, featuring live music, small bites and cocktails. From 1-4pm at 333 Post Street. 🍵 Sip on some tea at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. 🪴 Pick up a new plant at the Gardeneur Plant Market at the Ferry Building. From 10am-4pm.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Could Trump Accidentally End Greenwashing?
Doug Burgum, secretary of the interior, and President Donald Trump after signing an executive order about deregulation in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025. Credit - Yuri Gripas/Abaca—Bloomberg/Getty Images Following the election of President Donald Trump, U.S. multinationals wasted little time in purging mentions of the climate from their websites. Breakthrough Energy, a joint venture between Bill Gates and a handful of other climate-conscious billionaires, recently laid off a significant portion of its staff. Some $4 billion in U.S. pledges for the U.N. Climate Fund has been rescinded. The response to all of this has been virtually unanimous: Trump is bad—very bad, in fact—for the climate. To be sure, the second Trump administration has already rolled back a number of significant environmental regulations, increased logging in national forests, ramped up oil and gas production, and made sweeping cuts to the EPA. But love him or loathe him, Trump is not the only problem. He is a symptom of voter frustration and disillusionment. We must accept that for years, global multilateral climate policy has been marked more by talking the talk than walking the walk. Indeed, you could be forgiven for growing slightly cynical of the big pledges, glossy roadmaps, endless subsidy schemes, and constant climate conferences. Whatever Trump believes personally about the climate crisis, he could unintentionally be part of the solution to it, as a force of Schumpeterian 'creative destruction'. His election may have sounded the death knell for performative, feel-good, socially acceptable climate policies and created an opportunity for pragmatic, climate-conscious people to design something much more effective at both the domestic and the global levels. Such an approach could entail less greenwashing and less bureaucracy and a much greater emphasis on results. It could entail more independent control of companies' actual impact. For instance, we can appeal to companies' self-interest to use new technologies that accurately measure emissions. The new approach to climate policy can, and should be: What here, in this market, with these tools, would deliver the fastest, biggest, cheapest gains? For instance, the Connecticut-based insurance company AXA XL, is using satellite technology to predict, and through early warnings, mitigate the climate, human, and financial impacts of natural disasters like wildfires. The biggest risk isn't Trump alone but continuing to throw money at technology that doesn't scale, or only works in certain places, while ignoring the smarter, leaner, data-backed options to address the most pressing issue of our time. Take electric vehicles (EVs). They matter, but rolling them out en masse is no silver bullet. The climate impact of EVs depends on how they're powered, how batteries are made, and what alternatives exist. EVs when deployed in low carbon power environments do lower emissions, and have other benefits. But rethinking transport altogether could bring even bigger gains. Trump is unlikely to provide the leadership or investment needed to make this happen, but when we step away from incremental progress and greenwashing, we are able to imagine new, bigger, better, and more sustainable solutions. On the flip side, consider methane. It's one of the easiest climate wins available to us, and yet few have taken advantage of this opportunity. Granted, the Biden administration came close with the methane fee—a data-backed piece of regulation recently scrapped by Congress. But even that policy was unnecessarily convoluted, and in any case, oil and gas companies were reluctant to be transparent. Satellite imagery, made intelligible and actionable with AI, lets us track leaks almost in real time. Data shows that half of all methane cuts in oil and gas could be made at little or no cost, for the simple reason that stopping leaks increases revenue through the sale of the non-burnt gas. Truly smart regulation could include something like a methane speeding ticket slapped on those who are spewing the gas too freely into the atmosphere and have the financial means and moral obligation to eliminate externalities. If Trump blocks progress domestically, other major trading partners (like the EU, Korea, an Japan) could impose climate-friendly trade rules, like carbon border adjustments or import standards. That could nudge the U.S. market to comply indirectly, even under the current administration. Meanwhile, private capital is chasing decarbonisation like never before. One investor recently called decarbonization efforts in Europe 'a bigger opportunity than the internet.' Businesses in the U.S., Canada, and Europe are harnessing AI and satellite data to monitor emissions more accurately. They're also investing in cutting-edge low-carbon innovations, such as advanced battery storage, small modular reactors, and next-gen carbon capture technologies. With the decreasing cost of clean technologies like wind, solar, and battery and growing consumer demand for sustainability, companies that don't embrace these changes risk falling behind. It's worth remembering that many of the biggest breakthroughs of the last two decades came not from government edicts, but from private actors moving fast in the right conditions: the switch from coal to cheap gas through fracking, the fall in the price of solar panels, and real-time monitoring of wildfires and deforestation, for instance. A second Trump administration doesn't mean we should give up on climate goals, but rather that we must move past wishful thinking and embrace realism. This means foreign powers should focus on making polluters pay in ways that are straightforward and enforceable. This means investing in breakthrough technologies that cut emissions and benefit businesses. Indeed, long-term investors know that natural disasters are bad for business—and that they can't stop hurricanes at the border. This means prioritizing effective solutions over idealistic ones. And it means discarding policies that frustrate consumers, burden businesses, and make little impact on the climate. People are done with slogans, they want results. And those results won't come from crossing our fingers or making five-year plans. They will come from doing what works. And that is the task for those pragmatic, climate-conscious people keen to make sure that environmental action happens—no matter who is in office. Contact us at letters@
