Há 17 horas
quinta-feira, 31 de julho de 2025
Welcome to our live coverage of Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff regime.
2h ago
04.19
CEST
Opening
summary
Welcome
to our live coverage of Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff regime.
The US
president signed an executive order on Thursday imposing reciprocal tariffs
from 10% to 41% on US imports from dozens of countries and foreign locations.
Rates were set at 25% for India, 20% for Taiwan and 30% for South Africa ahead
of Trump’s self-imposed deadline of 1 August for striking trade deals with
countries worldwide.
He
extended the deadline for a tariff agreement with Mexico by another 90 days.
Brazil’s
tariff rate was set at 10%, but a previous order signed by Trump placed a 40%
tariff on some Brazilian goods, to punish the country for prosecuting its
former president Jair Bolsonaro over an alleged coup attempt after the 2022
election.
Cargo
containers line a shipping terminal at the port of Oakland, California
View
image in fullscreen
Cargo
containers line a shipping terminal at the port of Oakland, California, on
Thursday. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP
In other
key news:
Canadian
imports will face tariffs of 35%, not the current 25%, the White House
announced. Trump had threatened on Wednesday that Ottawa’s move to recognise a
Palestinian state would make agreeing a trade deal “very hard”.
Some of
the world’s poorest and most war-torn countries were hit with punitive rates,
including Syria, which faces a levy of 41%; Laos and Myanmar with rates of 40%;
Libya with a rate of 30%; Iraq with 35% and Sri Lanka with 20%. Switzerland
faces a rate of 39%. The rates are set to go into effect in seven days,
according to the order.
Thailand’s
finance minister said on Friday that a 19% tariff rate had been agreed –
significantly lower than the 36% level announced in April and better aligned
with other countries in the region. Vietnam and Indonesia reportedly negotiated
tariffs of 20% and 19% respectively.
China
faces a separate deadline for its higher tariffs of 12 August, with an
extension to the truce agreed in principle but yet to be approved by the White
House.
By 31
July just eight countries or economic blocs had reached formal agreements with
the White House: the UK, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, Japan,
Pakistan and the EU.
– With
Helen Livingstone, Lisa O’Carroll and agencies
Tommy Robinson FLEES UK hours after being filmed next to unconscious man... / Tommy Robinson arrives in Tenerife as UK police investigate alleged assault
Tommy
Robinson arrives in Tenerife as UK police investigate alleged assault
Far-right
activist flies to Spain after video emerges of him at scene of alleged assault
at London St Pancras station
Vikram
Dodd Police and crime correspondent
Wed 30
Jul 2025 19.43 CEST
The
far-right activist Tommy Robinson has arrived in Tenerife as British police
seek to question him over an alleged assault after he was filmed close to a man
who was left seriously injured on the ground.
Robinson
flew to Spain from the UK early on Tuesday. On Monday evening video emerged of
him saying “he come at me”, an apparent claim of self-defence, at the scene of
the alleged assault in St Pancras station in London as a 64-year-old man lay
motionless on the ground.
The
injured man was still in hospital on Wednesday in a stable condition. Police
are understood to be treating him as a victim, not a suspect, at this stage.
Police have said he was admitted to hospital “with serious injuries which are
not thought to be life-threatening”.
CCTV from
the busy central London station has been recovered and is being studied by
detectives.
British
Transport Police (BTP) say they were called to St Pancras at about 8.40pm on
Monday to reports of an assault. A source said detectives were confident they
had identified the suspect for the alleged assault and were not seeking anyone
else.
Police
are understood to have several lines of inquiry, one of which is locating
Robinson. While he is known to have arrived in Tenerife, in the past he has
travelled around Spain and into Portugal and Cyprus, sometimes relying on the
hospitality of wealthy friends.
Robinson,
whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is a former leader of the
extreme-right English Defence League. The far-right monitoring group Hope Not
Hate describes him as the “best-known far-right extremist in Britain”.
Police
believe Robinson, 42, originally from Bedfordshire, took a flight out of
Britain shortly after a video was put online showing him near the injured man.
The video
shows Robinson claiming the man had attacked him first, and was filmed at St
Pancras station, where he had been leafleting earlier in the day.
BTP said
on Tuesday: “Following a report of an assault at St Pancras station last night
(28 July), officers have confirmed that the suspect, a 42-year-old man from
Bedfordshire, boarded a flight out of the country in the early hours of this
morning. Detectives are continuing to work closely to progress the
investigation and bring him into custody for questioning.”
In the
video, a man can be seen lying face down and motionless, with Robinson pacing
nearby. Robinson can be heard saying: “He come at me bruv.” Shortly afterwards,
Robinson tells an onlooker: “He come at me, you saw that.”
The video
seen on social media does not show how the injured man came to be lying
motionless on the floor.
Nothing
known publicly at this stage proves or disproves any version of the alleged
assault, nor who may have been at fault.
The
Conservatives’ home affairs spokesperson, Chris Philp, a policing minister in
the last government, told the Guardian that the case raised questions about
border security.
Philp
said: “The fact that a wanted fugitive was able to pass through our
international border should not be allowed to happen and it is further evidence
of this government’s complete lack of border control, inbound or outbound.”
A
government spokesperson said: “This is an operational matter for the police.”
Área ardida até julho triplicou face a 2024. Já há 26 detidos por fogo posto
Área
ardida até julho triplicou face a 2024. Já há 26 detidos por fogo posto
CNN
Portugal , AM
Há 3h e
29min
Até 15 de
julho, mais de 10.700 hectares arderam em Portugal continental, três vezes mais
do que no mesmo período de 2024, noticia o Diário de Notícias, que dá ainda
conta que o número de ignições é mais baixo (foram registados 3.370 incêndios,
o quarto valor mais reduzido desde 2015) mas os fogos têm sido mais agressivos:
57% superaram os 100 hectares de área ardida.
Estes
dados ainda não incluem os grandes incêndios desta semana, como o de Arouca,
que já destruiu cerca de quatro mil hectares, segundo a autarquia. Também em
Ponte da Barca o fogo continua ativo, com centenas de operacionais e meios
aéreos no terreno, incluindo apoio de aviões espanhóis.
As altas
temperaturas dificultam o combate e agravam o risco de incêndio, sendo que 12
distritos permanecem em risco elevado de incêndio.
A Polícia
Judiciária já deteve 26 suspeitos de fogo posto desde o início do ano,
superando o total de detenções da PJ em 2024.
Pressure piles on Merz to punish Israel over Gaza
Pressure
piles on Merz to punish Israel over Gaza
The
German chancellor is increasingly isolated among Europe’s big beasts for
refusing to endorse a Brussels plan to suspend EU research ties with Israel.
July 30,
2025 8:34 pm CET
By Elena
Giordano, Tim Ross and Nette Nöstlinger
https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-war-in-gaza-famine-starvation-germany-friedrich-merz/
BRUSSELS
— As famine looms in Gaza, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz faces pressure to
drop staunch support for Israel and allow Brussels to penalize Benjamin
Netanyahu’s government.
The
European Commission this week proposed halting parts of the EU-Israel
Association Agreement, warning that the Israeli government has triggered a
“humanitarian catastrophe” that threatens “virtually the entire Gaza
population.”
A growing
number of EU countries favor taking such a step, but Germany has so far refused
to sign off on the proposal, which would mark a clear break from its
traditionally unwavering support for Israel. Diplomats from multiple EU
countries privately voiced their frustration with Berlin after Merz suggested
he wanted to see how the situation on the ground develops in the coming days.
International
pressure has intensified on Israel in the past two weeks amid increasingly dire
warnings about the situation facing hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza. In
Europe, leaders including France’s Emmanuel Macron and the U.K.’s Keir Starmer
have announced they intend to recognize a Palestinian state, demanding Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu halts hostilities and opens up meaningful access for
aid agencies to deliver food and medical supplies.
Even
Donald Trump acknowledged this week that there is “real starvation” in Gaza.
Famine
risk
On
Monday, the Commission dropped months of diplomatic niceties in a scathing
assessment of the situation that directly accused Israel of violating
international humanitarian law. The document proposing action against Israel
stated the risk of famine for the entire Gaza population as well as “thousands
of civilian deaths” and a “collapse of basic services.”
The
Commission’s proposal, which circulated among EU ambassadors on Tuesday, calls
for the partial suspension of Israel’s access to Horizon Europe, the bloc’s
flagship research program. But despite the urgency, the measure did not appear
to have enough backing among EU countries at the meeting of envoys, and Germany
and three other countries blocked it.
But there
are signs Merz’s opposition is softening. The German leader said Monday that
Berlin would await the outcome of a planned visit to Israel next week by the
foreign ministers of France, Germany and the U.K. “We naturally reserve the
right to hold further discussions and make further decisions,” he said. “We
assume that the Israeli government is quite willing to recognize that something
must be done now.”
At home,
Merz is also facing increasing pressure. The German coalition’s Social
Democrats (SPD), along with parts of the opposition, have begun to question the
country’s unwavering support for Israel in light of the Gaza emergency.
Government
talks are scheduled for after the German foreign minister’s visit, said Derya
Türk-Nachbaur, an SPD lawmaker. “I would like us to decide on more concrete
measures.”
“Coordinating
at the European level also means possibly increasing the pressure with France
and England, and perhaps also not blocking measures announced by the EU,” she
added. In June, the SPD formally urged the government to stop blocking partial
suspension of the association agreement at the EU level.
No more
cover-ups
“Pressure
on Germany might come more from internal parties than from other EU countries,”
one diplomatic source told POLITICO. Even Merz’s Christian Democrats “can no
longer justify or cover up Israel’s actions.”
Italy,
which has aligned with Germany in resisting the Commission’s plan, is also
reconsidering its stance. “Italy is with Germany, but in fact, both countries
are considering changing their position, and discussions are underway with the
Israeli government,” the same person added. Other EU diplomats and officials,
all also granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, corroborated the
stance.
Several
countries are now impatient and want the Commission to go further and suspend
key trade links with Israel, including potentially a ban on importing all goods
from the occupied territories, according to the diplomats and officials.
A
spokesperson for the Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp told POLITICO that
due to “the lack of progress” on the agreements between the EU and Israel on
humanitarian aid for Gaza, the Netherlands had decided to advocate for the
suspension of the trade chapter of the EU-Israel association agreement.
Critical
days ahead
If Berlin
shifts, the delicate balance in the Council could tip in favor of a formal EU
rebuke of Israel, beginning with the Horizon Europe program but potentially
extending to broader trade measures.
The
diplomatic situation is changing rapidly, and observers think Germany could
change its position in the coming hours or days. EU countries’ ambassadors
could be recalled to Brussels for an emergency meeting to vote on the
Commission’s Horizon plan, potentially within the next week.
One
hold-up is the need for the Commission’s draft legal text to be translated from
English into other EU languages for countries to give proper consideration to
the proposal, one official told POLITICO.
France
and the U.K., meanwhile, are charting their own course, with both set to
formally recognize the Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly
in September.
Elsewhere
in Europe, the question of what to do about Israel and Gaza is also dominating
debate. On Monday, the Dutch parliament interrupted its summer recess to hold
an emergency session on the worsening humanitarian situation. The Netherlands
also became the second EU country after Sweden to sanction Israeli ministers by
banning two members of Netanyahu’s cabinet from entering the country.
“That’s
because we see that the steps in Brussels are taken slowly,” Veldkamp said at a
press conference on Wednesday, adding that for The Netherlands, “a country
that’s traditionally friendly to Israel, that is quite a step.”
Still,
Veldkamp ruled out unilateral recognition of Palestine, saying, “At this
moment, there is no process underway. Recognizing a Palestinian state now will
not make much of a difference on the ground.”
‘Political
gesture’
Italy,
another key player, is waiting to see the outcome of the U.N. meeting in
September before deciding whether to back recognition.
“If Hamas
remains, then declaring the willingness to immediately recognize Palestine as a
state is a political gesture, not an anathema,” said one Italian official,
speaking on condition of anonymity. “But we need to see what opportunities may
arise in a week’s time. As things progress with the current situation, or
rather the continuation of Israeli military attacks, even the Italian
government could change its mind,” he added.
In
Belgium, Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot said that any decision on recognition
will be postponed until at least early September. The country’s five governing
parties remain split on the issue, though opposition groups are intensifying
calls for Belgium to align with France’s position.
By
contrast, Spain, Ireland, and Slovenia have already taken the step to recognize
Palestinian statehood, a signal that the EU consensus is fracturing further as
pressure mounts for a more coordinated response to the war in Gaza.
Inside
the Commission, divisions are increasingly public. European Commission Vice
President Teresa Ribera broke ranks in a radio interview on Wednesday, accusing
the Commission of dragging its feet.
Ribera
said that “for months, practically every week,” she has urged European
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to take a stronger stance. “The
Commission is a reflection of national sensibilities. Institutionally it
shouldn’t be so, it is supposed to be independent and represent the interests
of the EU, but the truth is that everyone comes with their cultural context,
their beliefs.”
For
people on the ground, the EU’s inability to agree on what amounts to a largely
symbolic measure underscores the toothlessness of its response.
“The mere
fact that the EU can’t even agree on the smallest step possible … is a joke in
the face of the scale of the suffering,” Bushra Khalidi, the policy lead for
Oxfam in the Palestinian territories, told POLITICO. “Some countries say they
need more time, but it’s just more time for more death in Gaza.”
Giorgio
Leali contributed reporting from Paris and Ben Munster contributed reporting
from London.
Mercedes and Porsche Squeezed by U.S. Tariffs and Slowdown in China
.webp)
Mercedes
and Porsche Squeezed by U.S. Tariffs and Slowdown in China
Germany’s
leading luxury automakers are sharply scaling back expectations for the rest of
the year.
Melissa
Eddy
By
Melissa Eddy
Reporting
from Berlin
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/business/mercedes-porsche-tariffs.html
July 30,
2025
The
luxury automakers Mercedes-Benz and Porsche slashed their forecasts for
earnings this year as the double whammy of President Trump’s tariffs and
slowing demand in China hit the German companies hard.
Mercedes
said on Wednesday that revenue in 2025 would come in “significantly below” last
year. The company also lowered its projection for profit margins.
The
automaker reported a plunge in profit in the first half of the year, more than
halving from the year before. Its vehicle sales fell 6 percent in the United
States and 14 percent in China over that period, “primarily due to tariff
policy,” the company said.
Porsche,
which is controlled by Volkswagen, also cut its earnings outlook on Wednesday.
It was the third time this year that the automaker scaled back its forecast.
The company said its profit plunged roughly two-thirds in the first half of the
year, hit by 400 million euros ($462 million) in tariff costs.
Porsche
is especially exposed to U.S. tariffs, because all of its vehicles are produced
in Europe and shipped from there. The company is also under pressure from
rivals in China, where demand for its high-end cars has collapsed.
Porsche’s
deliveries in North America rose in the first six months of the year, in part
because dealers accelerated orders to get ahead of tariffs and Porsche offered
to keep prices steady despite the levies. Its sales in China, however, fell
nearly 30 percent, the carmaker said, citing “intense competition.”
German
automakers faced a 27.5 percent tariff for vehicles destined for the United
States for much of the second quarter. On Sunday, the European Union agreed to
a trade deal with the United States that would reduce tariffs on imported cars
to 15 percent, which Mercedes and Porsche incorporated into their forecast
cuts. American cars shipped to Europe would face no duties under the deal.
For
Mercedes, which builds its popular S.U.V.s at a plant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and
ships them to Europe, zero E.U. tariffs on American-made vehicles could be
beneficial, executives said.
“It is
not a gift to the U.S.A.,” Harald Wilhelm, the company’s chief financial
officer, said of the U.S.-E.U. trade deal that many considered lopsided in
favor of the Americans. Some aspects of the agreement “will help, not hurt us,”
Mr. Wilhelm noted.
But the
cars built in Alabama are also shipped to China, where they faced tariffs as
high as 100 percent for much of the spring, before a truce between Washington
and Beijing was reached in May. That compounded the company’s problems in
China, which accounted for around a third of the automaker’s sales so far this
year.
Melissa
Eddy is based in Berlin and reports on Germany’s politics, businesses and its
economy.
Do These Jeans Make My Ad Look Racist?
John
McWhorter
Opinion
Do These
Jeans Make My Ad Look Racist?
July 29,
2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/opinion/sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-ad.html
John
McWhorter
By John
McWhorter
Opinion
Writer
Have you
heard the rumor that the clothing company American Eagle is using racist
propaganda to sell clothing? That’s the allegation that bubbled up on social
media in response to the company’s new ad campaign featuring the actress Sydney
Sweeney and a pun.
Sweeney,
best known for her roles on the television shows “Euphoria” and “The White
Lotus” and the film “Anyone but You,” has been featured in advertising
campaigns for products ranging from expensive Korean cosmetics to
Baskin-Robbins ice cream, but it’s the American Eagle ads that really caught
some people’s eye. In one spot, the camera slowly pans over her supine body as
she zips up her fly and explains, “Genes are passed down from parents to
offspring.” Turning to the camera, she adds, “My jeans are blue.” In another
ad, she walks up to a billboard that says, “Sydney Sweeney has great genes.” A
moment later, the last word has been crossed out and replaced with “jeans.”
The
message of the ads seems to be that Sweeney has good genes because she’s
attractive. Beneath that, perhaps, is the hint that people can get a bit of her
good fortune by buying her jeans. But a number of observers heard something
more upsetting: A young, attractive, blond woman talking about genes —
especially “great” ones — and offspring sounded to them like a dog whistle
about eugenics.
One
social media post called it “genuinely scary.” Another opined: “The American
Eagles ad wasn’t just a commercial. It was a love letter to white nationalism
and eugenic fantasies, and Sydney Sweeney knew it.”
“Praising
Sydney Sweeney for her great genes in the context of her white, blond hair blue
eye appearance,” a commentator said on TikTok. “It is one of the loudest and
most obvious racialized dog whistles we’ve seen and heard in a while. When
those traits are consistently uplifted as genetic excellence, we know where
this leads. This just echoes pseudoscientific language of racial superiority.”
As for
good (or great) genes, Robin Landa, an expert on advertising and branding, told
Newsweek that the expression “was once central to American eugenics ideology,
which promoted white genetic superiority and enabled the forced sterilization
of marginalized groups.”
The whole
thing made me wonder — as I have on many other occasions — what the statute of
limitations should be on historically tarnished terms. Are some terms really
off limits forever because of what they meant to people long ago?
The word
“spook,” for instance, once used as an anti-Black slur, is these days more
commonly associated with ghosts and goblins. Last year at Harper College, in
Palatine, Ill., a flier for a Halloween event included the word
“spooktac-Q-lar.” A campus editorialist objected, arguing that such words
“should be retired, not because we seek to erase history, but because we are
committed to creating a future where everyone feels respected and heard.” An
increasing number of people have made similar suggestions.
I doubt a
vast majority of Black Americans would see this kind of ceremonial politesse as
necessary or even relevant. Experiences will differ, but I, for one, close to
60 years old, have never heard the word used in that context, even in jest.
A similar
problem has arisen with “tar baby,” an expression that had an early life as an
anti-Black slur but today more typically means something you get a hold of but
then can’t let go. In 2011, Representative Doug Lamborn warned that if debt
ceiling negotiations failed, voters would “hold the president responsible. Now,
I don’t even want to have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar
baby, and you get it, you’re stuck and you’re a part of the problem now and you
can’t get away.”
Not
Lamborn’s best day: Because the president in question — Barack Obama — is
Black, it sounded as though Lamborn was using the term to denigrate him.
Lamborn apologized, but the journalist David Sirota wrote that the gaffe showed
“how various forms of racism are still being mainstreamed by the fringe right.”
Was that
really what was going on — as opposed to just a clumsy turn of phrase? If so,
how to explain the equally self-righteous harrumphing when Mitt Romney used the
phrase while discussing a highway project; a White House spokesman, Tony Snow,
used it in reference to telephone surveillance, and John McCain mentioned it
while talking about divorce procedures.
A desire
for respectful discourse does not outweigh the obvious fact that a word or
expression can have two meanings, one of them widely understood and one of them
antique and little known. Romney and Snow indicated that they didn’t know “tar
baby” could be used as a slur; McCain and Lamborn emphasized in their apologies
that they were not intending to use it that way. On this one as well, I, at
least, was unaware until I encountered the blowback.
Are we
Black Americans really so delicate that we (or our fellow travelers) should
demand that America be ever on lexical tiptoes, shielding us from supposed
reminders of a grievous past?
On the
television series “The Gilded Age,” Gladys is a young heiress married against
her will to an English duke. Spirited off to his dreary estate and cringing
under the withering smirks of her sister-in-law, she moans, “There are so many
rules!”
American
linguistic culture can feel like that these days. People from both left and
right tell us what we are not allowed to say, for reasons that feel more
performative than urgent. We grapple with a willfully tricky and ever-accreting
volume of etiquette.
In many
cultures around the world, speaking the name of deceased ancestors is taboo; in
some cultures, that extends even to words that merely sound like their names. I
doubt this is where we want to go.
Language
changes; culture changes; labels are reassigned. And a blond, blue-eyed actress
talking about jeans — or even genes — is just a pun, not a secret salute to
white supremacy.
John
McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) is an associate professor of linguistics at
Columbia University. He is the author of “Nine Nasty Words: English in the
Gutter: Then, Now and Forever” and, most recently, “Woke Racism: How a New
Religion Has Betrayed Black America.” @JohnHMcWhorter
White House Says Liberal Outrage Over Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle Jeans Commercial Is ‘Moronic’ and a ‘Big Reason Americans’ Voted for Trump
White
House Says Liberal Outrage Over Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle Jeans
Commercial Is ‘Moronic’ and a ‘Big Reason Americans’ Voted for Trump
By Jack Dunn
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/white-house-outrage-sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-jeans-1236474992/
The White
House is weighing in on the controversial American Eagle jeans advertisement
featuring Sydney Sweeney.
White House
communications manager Steven Cheung slammed the Left for its response to the
ad, which reads “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” The spot plays on “great
genes,” which caused some liberal voices to denounce the campaign for
glorifying her white heritage and thin physique.
“Cancel
culture run amok,” Cheung wrote of the ad on X. “This warped, moronic and dense
liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024.
They’re tired of this bullshit.”
In the
commercial, Sweeney says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring,
often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My
jeans are blue.”
Conservative
TV personality Megyn Kelly also called out the “lunatics on the Left” for their
take-down of the ad, calling their reaction “absurd.”
“She’s being
called a white supremacist by people who don’t like her latest ad, which is for
American Eagle,” she said. “She’s advertising jeans, and yet the lunatics on
the Left think she’s advertising white supremacy. This is obviously a reference
to her body and not to her skin color, but the lunatic left is going to do what
the lunatic left is going to do.”
Kelly added,
“They’re upset because it’s about who gets to be the face of America’s Best
Genes. They think it’s no accident that they’ve chosen a white, thin woman
because you’re, I guess, not allowed to celebrate those things in any way,
shape, or form. But they’re completely ignoring the reference to her body,
which is the thing she’s famous for. It’s just absurd.”
Israel - Extremisten an der Macht | Doku HD | ARTE
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said
the Israeli state's borders should be expanded into Syria, a shocking new
documentary has revealed.
MENA
The New Arab Staff
10 October, 2024
https://www.newarab.com/news/smotrich-calls-bit-bit-israeli-expansion-damascus
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's
latest controversial remarks were featured in the Arte documentary 'Israel:
Extremists in Power' [Getty]
Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel
Smotrich has advocated for the creation of a Jewish state that would encompass
all Palestinian territories and neighbouring Arab territories, including the
Syrian capital of Damascus.
Smotrich, in an interview for the Arte
documentary 'Israel: Extremists in Power', said he hopes to expand Israel's
borders deep into Arab land, according to Jewish scripture.
"It is written that the future of Jerusalem
is to expand to Damascus," he was quoted as saying.
This Jewish state, he said, must extend into
Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, highlighting the
long-standing vision of many Israeli ultra and religious nationalists for
significant territorial expansion across the Middle East.
Annexation and acquiring territory through
military conquest are prohibited under international law, as outlined in the
United Nations Charter.
Arte’s latest documentary, 'Israel: Extremists in
Power examines the views and potential policies of members of the most
right-wing government in Israeli history, focusing on Smotrich and fellow
far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, against the backdrop of the war on
Gaza.
It also highlighted how Smotrich and Ben-Gvir
have gained considerable political influence, further deepening divisions
within Israeli society and exacerbating the plight of Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has
relied on the support of the far-right figures, particularly following the
resignation of former Defence Minister Benny Gantz from the emergency war
cabinet.
Gantz left amid disagreements over strategies in
the Gaza war and the how to approach the issue of Israeli captives being held
by Hamas.
Israel’s year-long assault on the devastated
Palestinian territory has led to the killing of at least 42,010 people in Gaza,
according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Israel has also intensified air strikes in
Lebanon since September 23, uprooting more than a million people and killing
over 1,200 Lebanese.
Movement for
Greater Israel
Movement for
Greater Israel
התנועה למען ארץ ישראל השלמה
Leader Avraham Yoffe
Founded July 1967
Dissolved 1976
Merged into La'am
Ideology Greater Israel
Neo-Zionism
Anti-Arabism
Ethnocracy
Jewish
supremacy
Alliance Likud (1973–1976)
Most MKs 1 (1973–1976)
Fewest MKs 0 (1969–1973)
Election
symbol
כן
Politics of
IsraelPolitical partiesElections
The Movement
for Greater Israel (Hebrew: התנועה למען ארץ ישראל השלמה, HaTnu'a Lema'an Eretz Yisrael HaSheleima), also known as
the Land of Israel Movement, was a political organisation in Israel during the
1960s and 1970s which subscribed to an ideology of Greater Israel.
The
organisation was formed in July 1967, a month after Israel captured the Gaza
Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights in the Six-Day
War. It called on the Israeli government to keep the captured areas and to
settle them with Jewish populations. Its founders were a mixture of Labor
Zionists, Revisionists, writers and poets, including Nathan Alterman, Aharon
Amir, Haim Gouri, Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi, Yitzhak Tabenkin, Icchak Cukierman,
Zivia Lubetkin, Eliezer Livneh, Moshe Shamir, Shmuel Katz, Zev Vilnay, Uri Zvi
Greenberg, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Isser Harel, Israel Eldad, Dan Tolkovsky and
Avraham Yoffe.
In the 1969
Knesset elections it ran as the "List for the Land of Israel", but
earned only 7,561 votes (0.6%), and failed to cross the electoral threshold of
1%. Prior to the 1973 elections, it joined the Likud, an alliance of Herut, the
Liberal Party, the Free Centre and the National List.Likud won 39 seats, of
which one was allocated to the Movement for Greater Israel, and taken by
Avraham Yoffe.
In 1976 it
merged with the National List and the Independent Centre (a breakaway from the
Free Centre) to form La'am, which remained a faction within Likud until its
merger into Herut in 1984. Two of its members, Moshe Shamir and Zvi Shiloah,
later became Knesset members for Likud and Tehiya.
‘Loyalty Enforcer’ Laura Loomer Targets Additional Officials
‘Loyalty
Enforcer’ Laura Loomer Targets Additional Officials
The
far-right activist is continuing to use her close association with President
Trump to go after those she deems insufficiently loyal.
After
being denied jobs in both President Trump’s campaign and in his administration,
Laura Loomer has set out to prove that she is a better judge of personnel than
the president’s people are.
Robert
DraperJulian E. BarnesChristina Jewett
By Robert
DraperJulian E. Barnes and Christina Jewett
Reporting
from Washington
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/us/politics/laura-loomer-trump.html
July 30,
2025
Laura
Loomer, the far-right activist and self-described Trump administration “loyalty
enforcer,” has had another busy stretch.
Last
Friday, April Falcon Doss, the general counsel of the National Security Agency,
was fired after Ms. Loomer spotlighted conservative attacks of her previous
work, including for the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Democratic staff.
Then the
Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, Dr. Vinay Prasad, resigned
on Tuesday after a post by Ms. Loomer on social media, in which she pointed out
his past statements disparaging President Trump and describing his following as
a “cult.”
On
Wednesday, the Army secretary, Daniel Driscoll, ordered the U.S. Military
Academy at West Point to rescind the employment offer it made to a
cybersecurity expert and Army veteran, Jen Easterly. Ms. Easterly, who has
worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations, had drawn Ms.
Loomer’s ire for serving as the director of the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
They are
the most recent examples of government officials being “Loomered,” in Ms.
Loomer’s own parlance. A podcaster and influencer who expresses fierce fidelity
to Mr. Trump, Ms. Loomer has flexed the power of her broad social media
following and her access to the White House to target those whom she views as
insufficiently loyal.
While it
is difficult to know the extent of her reach, multiple officials across the
administration have been pushed out after ending up in Ms. Loomer’s sights.
This year, she called for a purge of the National Security Council, targeted
top officials at the National Security Agency and even went after a career
federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.
Kevin
Carroll, a former C.I.A. officer who is now a lawyer representing intelligence
officials fired by the Trump administration, said Ms. Loomer’s unfettered
influence was dangerous.
“You have
a person, from outside of the government of no national security experience and
with extreme views, having de facto hire and fire authority over some of the
most senior and important positions in the United States government,” Mr.
Carroll said.
“Eventually,
when all of the qualified people are driven out and only the people acceptable
to Laura Loomer remain, there could be an extremely bad result for the United
States in some international crisis,” he added.
Asked to
comment on concerns that Mr. Carroll and others have about Ms. Loomer’s effect
on personnel decisions, a White House spokesman, Kush Desai, did not directly
respond, instead saying that Mr. Trump had “assembled the best and brightest
talent to put Americans and America first.”
A senior
administration official said the recent departures were not necessarily tied to
Ms. Loomer’s public criticisms, but declined to elaborate. Mr. Trump has
publicly praised Ms. Loomer as “a fantastic woman, a true patriot” and
“amazing.”
For her
part, Ms. Loomer — who was denied jobs in both Mr. Trump’s campaign and in his
administration — has said that she is determined to prove that she is a better
judge of personnel than the president’s own staff.
“I was
raised to dress for the job you want, and even if you don’t have the job,
pretend that you do,” Ms. Loomer said in an interview this summer. “I want to
do vetting, so I’m going to do the job I want.”
Ms.
Loomer now appears to have other officials on her radar. Late last week, she
was seen walking through the West Wing, cradling a large stack of documents
that she had brought into the White House.
She has
recently directed her criticism at a senior Pentagon official, Tom Rakusan,
citing an excerpt from a new book that recounts his work at the C.I.A.
countering Russia around the time of the 2016 election.
Mr.
Rakusan, a C.I.A. veteran, is an expert on Russia and looked critically at
Moscow’s efforts to manipulate American politics. Ms. Loomer’s focus on him
caused consternation among current and former officials, who said that he is a
fan of Mr. Trump and supportive of his agenda.
The
C.I.A. declined to comment. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for
comment.
Ms.
Loomer has claimed credit for the removal of at least three senior officials
from the National Security Agency: General Timothy Haugh, the former director;
Wendy Noble, his deputy; and now Ms. Doss, the agency’s top lawyer.
U.S.
officials said Ms. Doss’s removal, and the voluntary retirement of two other
top lawyers at the N.S.A., had created a noticeable gap in expertise at the
agency, whose lawyers must routinely review and approve spying operations.
This
week, in his first interview since being fired, General Haugh was reluctant to
address the circumstances of his dismissal, saying only that he had served at
the pleasure of Mr. Trump.
“I don’t
and did not expect an explanation, and from the second I was told I was no
longer serving in the role, the focus shifts to the leaders the president has
put in the capacity,” General Haugh said.
The
impact of losing such expertise appears to trouble Ms. Loomer less than the
prospect of having officials in government she thinks cannot be trusted. In
ferreting out those she believes to be disloyal, Ms. Loomer relies on hundreds
of tips that she says she receives weekly through her website, as well as
encrypted emails.
Ms.
Loomer said in an interview on Wednesday that she recently received a tip on
her website about past remarks by Dr. Prasad, who was the top vaccine and gene
therapy official at the F.D.A. and had the backing of the health secretary,
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
She said
she spoke by phone to the tipster, whom she described as an administration
official in one of the health-related government agencies, and then began
listening to Dr. Prasad’s podcasts, where he had said of Mr. Trump in 2020, “I
hate him too,” and a year later joked about using a stuffed toy of the
president as a voodoo doll. Dr. Prasad, whose resignation was confirmed on
Tuesday by the Health and Human Services Department, declined to comment.
Inside
the F.D.A., there were mixed reactions on Wednesday to his abrupt departure and
worries about who else could be targeted by Ms. Loomer, according to current
and recently departed F.D.A. staff members.
Ms.
Loomer insists that she is not an “absolutist” when it comes to “auditing” the
record of current or prospective government officials.
This
year, she openly supported Jared Isaacman, a billionaire tech entrepreneur, to
be Mr. Trump’s NASA administrator, despite Mr. Isaacman having made
contributions to Democrats.
Mr. Trump
ultimately withdrew Mr. Isaacman’s nomination, telling others at the time that
he did so because of the entrepreneur’s ties to Democrats. Without directly
criticizing Mr. Trump’s decision, Ms. Loomer posted on X that “he would have
been a fantastic NASA Administrator.”
“Isaacman
never made derogatory comments about President Trump and has an exceptional
talent that’s hard to replicate,” Ms. Loomer said on Wednesday. “But when
someone like Vinay Prasad insults the president’s character and calls into
question the sanity of his supporters, then that’s somebody who’s not going to
be a fit for the Trump administration.”
Helene
Cooper contributed reporting.
Robert
Draper is based in Washington and writes about domestic politics. He is the
author of several books and has been a journalist for three decades.
Julian E.
Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters
for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
Christina
Jewett covers the Food and Drug Administration, which means keeping a close eye
on drugs, medical devices, food safety and tobacco policy.
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