Trump Says U.S. Will Take Over the Gaza Strip After the War
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Tariff Battle: The 25% tariff on goods imported from Canada and Mexico has been halted for 30 days. President Trump said they were halted because discussions with the two countries produced a plan to address the flow of fentanyl, other drugs, and illegal immigrants into the U.S. The 30-day window will serve as a test period to see if the measures are effective. In a press release, Trump said, “Access to the American market is a privilege … tariffs are a powerful, proven source of leverage for protecting the national interest.” Reducing the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., which is typically trafficked by drug cartels with precursors originating in China, is a priority for Trump. About 75,000 people die annually in the U.S. from fentanyl overdoses.
More: Meanwhile, the 10% tariff levied against China remains in effect.
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More: In quantum mechanical terms, the study said, “Our measurements reveal that dense crowds can self-organize into macroscopic chiral oscillators, coordinating the orbital motion of hundreds of individuals without external guidance.”
D.C. Plane Crash: The Black Hawk helicopter, which crashed into an American Airlines jet last week, is suspected to have been flying at about 300 feet at the time of the collision, higher than the FAA restriction of 200 feet. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is leading the investigation, however, said additional information is needed to confirm the altitude divergence. Crews continue to pull wreckage of the two aircraft which landed in the Potomac River. A preliminary report on the incident is expected within 30 days.
ChatGPT Gov: OpenAI announced ChatGPT Gov, a specific version of its AI model tailored for use by government agencies (read the announcement).
Transgender sports ban: President Trump signed the “No Men in Women's Sports Executive Order”. (video) “We will defend the proud tradition of female athletes and we will not allow men to beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls,” Trump told the hundreds of women standing behind him of all ages. Just one day after the order, the NCAA banned transgender people from competing in college sports. Their website reads: “The new policy limits competition in women's sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only.”
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Trump Says U.S. Will Take Over the Gaza Strip After the War
"The U.S., working with great development teams from all over the World, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth." - President Trump
What happened?
President Trump shocked the world this week when he said the U.S. would “take over” the Gaza Strip following the fighting between Israel and Hamas. The comments came during his press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump’s vision includes temporarily or permanently relocating the roughly 1.8M Palestinians in Gaza to neighboring countries with “humanitarian hearts,” who would provide a place.
He called Gaza a “hell-hole” and argued that the Palestinian people deserve to live in safe and secure neighborhoods.
At the end of the war between Hamas and Israel, Trump says the U.S. will take over the region, leveling it and clearing the rubble and destruction to build an “economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”
“This could be so magnificent. But more importantly than that is the people that have been absolutely destroyed that live there now can live in peace in a much better situation because they are living in hell.”
Israeli leaders have largely agreed and been supportive of the idea.
Some context: The Gaza Strip has been largely turned to rubble from Israeli bombing and ground operations. Satellite data from January found that roughly 70% of structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed including 245,000 homes. Before it would be possible to rebuild anything, the rubble and clean-up is a massive task in and of itself.
Backlash from both sides of the aisle
Many of Trump’s supporters say the policy is the opposite of Trump’s “America First” vision of no foreign entanglements or nation-building he promised during the campaign. Democrats, on the other hand, argue the proposal to relocate Palestinians is an act of “ethnic cleansing” and that the Palestinian people have the right to remain in their own country and not be forcibly moved.
Republican Senator John Kennedy told reporters, "In your natural lifetime or mine, you will not see me voting to take U.S. taxpayer money and rebuilding Gaza.”
Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded saying, "It is horrific. It is the definition of 'ethnic cleansing'. It is part of the culmination of--what I view--to be genocide of the Palestinian people."
Others call it a negotiation tactic
The White House says Trump’s idea is visionary and an attempt to try something new to establish peace in Gaza which has been in conflict for decades.
“This is an out-of-the box idea, that’s who President Trump is, that’s why the American people elected him,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Levvit, told reporters.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “the only thing President Trump has done, very generously, in my view, is offer the United States’ willingness to step in, clear the debris, clean the place up from all the destruction that’s on the ground, clean it up of all these unexploded munitions.”
It’s unclear whether the proposal from Trump is part of an actual larger plan or a tactic to encourage more robust negotiations for the future of the Gaza Strip.
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