Friday News Roundup
Middle East Watch
Egypt announced an emergency Arab summit in response to Donald Trump’s proposal to begin the mass forced removal of Palestinians from Gaza. If this had happened in the Balkans in the 1990s, we’d call it what it is: ethnic cleansing.
By issued a threat to Hamas that “all hell is going to break out” if hostages are not returned by Saturday, Donald Trump has let his mouth make the crisis in the Middle East worse. According to this English-language news segment from the German channel DW News, a spokesperson for Hamas shrugged off Trump’s threat and reiterated that they will only release hostages if Israel honors its ceasefire terms. According to an assessment by the UK think tank Chatham House, Trump’s could even undo what little progress Trump made in the Middle East in his first administration:
…for neighbouring countries, this is a life-or-death matter. Egypt and Jordan face existential threats from Trump’s proposal: displacing Palestinians into their countries would destabilize their regimes, fuel extremism and turn their territories into launchpads for Palestinian attacks on Israel. Their peace treaties with Israel would effectively be thrown into the abyss.
Elon Musk/DOGE Watch
On February 11, the Trump Administration issued an executive order that all federal agency heads are required to coordinate with Elon Musk’s DOGE project. According to Government Executive, a publication aimed at federal government administrators, a Trump White House fact sheet indicates the administration has imposed the arbitrary rule that U.S. government agencies can only hire one non-exempt person for every four government employees who leave.
According to affidavits by USAID staffers, the unilateral, illegal cutoff of funds to USAID by DOGE left staffers stranded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While under Elon Musk’s control, USAID refused to offer any help to the USAID employees who had their homes looted in the capital Kinshasa. In addition, security chiefs at USAID were involuntarily removed from the agency and put on leave after refusing to grant Elon Musk’s DOGE team unauthorized access to classified records.
Trump Corruption Watch
The Trump administration has released Russian money launderer Alexander Vinnik from jail in exchange for the American teacher Mark Fogel, who had served 3 and ½ years of a 14-year sentence for being arrested with medical cannabis in Russia.
Fogel should have never been in jail on basic humanitarian grounds, but this prison exchange is so suspicious it’s the equivalent of releasing Bernie Madoff from jail in order to get back a guy who had an overdue library book.
According to the IRS press release about his arrest in 2024, Vinnik operated the cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e from 2017 to 2021, which laundered at least $121 million in money from criminal activities including ransomware attacks, identity theft, narcotics distribution, and bribery of public officials. BTC-e was used to pay off the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear, which committed several cyberattacks against the Democratic Party in 2016, including the hacks that year against the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. There is a very strong possibility that Vinnik’s release is Trump’s quid pro quo for services rended by Russian hackers to his 2016 campaign.
In another very suspicious move, the Trump administration has issued an executive order pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which if you’re not familiar with it, it’s basically the law that makes it illegal for American business to bribe foreign officials. Trump’s FCPA order pretty much legalizes bribery overseas, but to show that he wants to Make American Bribery Great Again, he ordered the DOJ to drop bribery charges against NYC’s corrupt mayor Eric Adams.
The order from Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove stated, "The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime.” This suggests Trump is basically bribing Adams with a Get Out of Jail Free card if Adams cooperates with Trump’s mass deportation agenda against immigrants.
Trump’s Resegregation of America
After reading Jamelle Bouie’s column on Trump’s war on DEI, I’m going to start calling it what it is: an attempt to reimpose segregation on America. It’s segregation, but it’s an “intersectional” segregation for the 21st century. All power, prestige, and resources will go to cis, straight, able-bodied white Christian men, while anybody female, nonwhite, non-Christian, LGBTQ, or disabled gets hounded out of public life or any position of decision-making power.
For example, a new executive order by Donald Trump targets almost all private institutions that have voluntarily created their own diversity, equity, and/or inclusion programs. The basic idea is that Trump will intimidate private businesses and civil society for not being discriminatory enough. According to the order,
each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars.
In related news, Google has cravenly caved into Trump by removing Black History Month and Pride Month from the list of holidays on its calendars.
Climate Change Watch
The Trump Administration is much worse than any previous Republican administration. It is not merely in favor of environmental deregulation. It is gratuitously attacking the environment for the sake of MAGA culture war. Trump has revoked Biden’s target of 50% electric vehicles by 2030, promoted giveaways to fossil fuel companies, attacked the wind energy industry for being “disgusting,” and called solar energy “ridiculous.” This is not a conservative administration that pursues a “both/and” policy of renewables and fossil fuels. This is a deranged right-wing administration that is irrationally hostile to clean energy solutions for deeply rooted psychological or cultural reasons.
In related energy news, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have jointly unplugged from Russia’s power grid in order to plug into the European Union’s power grid instead. This may sound like a banal decision about Eastern European energy policy, but I suspect it may be motivated by the Trump Administration’s abandonment of Ukraine and the desire to reduce any dependency on Russia.
Mass Deportation Watch
Trump’s ethnic cleansing mass deportation agenda stands to have multiple negative economic consequences. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has redirected IRS employees away from catching rich tax cheats in favor of assisting raids on undocumented immigrants. Businesses owned by American citizens in Latino neighborhoods have reported massive drops in consumer spending, because “people are afraid to go out.” Meanwhile, a study from University of Wisconsin economists predicts that Trump’s immigration crackdown will lead to reduced housing affordability. This is on top of all the economic mismanagement due Donald Trump’s 25% tariff on all imported steel and aluminum. According to automakers, the steel tariff alone could lead to an increase in prices of $6,250 on a $25,000 new car.