The Trump administration is increasing its war on the media, with its latest line of attack seeming to be that outlets reporting on Gaza are accused of fuelling a rise in anti-Semitism in the US.
Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has accused AP, The New York Times and CNN of spreading “lies” and Hamas propaganda in their coverage of the long-overdue distribution of aid in Gaza, where Israel only recently began to allow food in after a nearly three-month blockade. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt levied similar charges against the BBC.
Dozens of people were shot or wounded in an incident at a food distribution centre on Sunday. It remains unclear what exactly happened, largely because Israel has banned international journalists from entering the Palestinian territory.
Yet somehow, and with total and unequivocal certainty, Mr Huckabee knows that any reports of the Israeli military shooting at people as they tried to collect food are false.
“There were no injuries, no fatalities, no shooting, no chaos,” he said in a statement published by the US embassy. “The only source for these misleading, exaggerated and utterly fabricated stories came from Hamas sources.”
He said the news outlets are “contributing to the anti-Semitic climate” that led to the murder of Israeli embassy staff members in Washington and the terror attack on a group of pro-Israel demonstrators in Colorado at the weekend.
The Israeli military are giving changing accounts about what has happened at aid sites, and they acknowledged firing warning shots at crowds in an incident on Tuesday.
In time, more details will emerge of what has been happening at these aid distribution sites. If the media have got it wrong, we will correct the record. One wonders if Mr Huckabee would do the same.
His statement came just days after Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth expanded his own war on the press. He issued a memo banning Pentagon reporters from roaming through America's military headquarters, a privilege they have enjoyed for decades under Republican and Democratic administrations.
America used to pride itself on granting media access to the heart of its Defence Ministry, but now Mr Hegseth says reporters need a minder even if they are to walk from the “bullpen” where they work to any of the Navy, Army or Marine Corps press offices dotted around the enormous building.
Mr Hegseth, who has yet to hold a proper media conference in the Pentagon since taking office, gives the risk of leaks of sensitive information as justification for his clampdown. Strange, considering one of the biggest scandals of President Donald Trump’s second term came when the Pentagon chief accidentally shared plans to attack the Houthis on Signal with a journalist.
In other goings-on this week, Elon Musk is trying to scrub the make-up off Mr Trump's “big, beautiful” tax bill that would give tax cuts while adding to America's $37 trillion national debt. Mr Musk called the plan, which has passed the House of Representatives and is now before the Senate, a “disgusting abomination”. According to projections from the Congressional Budget Office, it would dwarf any cuts to federal spending Mr Musk made with his Doge initiative.
Finally, Mr Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who apparently told the US leader that he would be retaliating against Ukraine's drone attack and that Moscow could get involved in Iran nuclear talks.
EYE ON THE WHITE HOUSE
Trump signs order banning travel from 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran and Yemen
President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation that bans people from 12 countries from entering the US.
Yesterday's travel ban covers Afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The measure also partially limits entry of people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
“We cannot have open migration from any country where we cannot safely and reliably vet and screen,” Mr Trump said in a video posted on social media. The decision comes after he ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio to review “high-risk regions” that should have restrictions imposed.
What's Washington talking about?
Wacky Wednesday Politics makes strange bedfellows and yesterday was no exception. Mr Trump said he agreed with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, liberals found themselves agreeing with Elon Musk and Steve Bannon said the US needs to raise taxes on the wealthy. All were reacting to the Republicans' “big, beautiful” tax bill.
A secret side Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the US Senate, says special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff must appear before Congress to face questions about whether the Trump administration is trying to cut a “secret side deal” with Iran.
War crimes Matthew Miller, the former US State Department official in Joe Biden's administration, now says that Israel has “without a doubt” committed war crimes in Gaza. “When you're at the podium, you're not expressing your opinion, you're expressing the conclusions of the United States government,” he told Sky News.
Cognitive decline President Trump last night ordered an investigation into what Republicans claim was a “conspiracy” to cover up Joe Biden's declining cognitive health during his time in the White House.
Spotlight: A refugee caught in Trump's aid freeze
On a rainy afternoon in Maryland, Mohammad Saaid Abdalnabi and a few fellow refugees pitch a tent in the corner of a car park and fire up a grill. The rich aroma of sizzling kebabs fills the air as they prepare traditional Syrian food for an event to thank donors who helped their families begin new lives in the US.
Born and raised in Damascus, Saaid had dreamt of moving to the US since he was 12. When Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011 and pro-democracy protests spread across the country, calling for an end to president Bashar Al Assad’s authoritarian rule, his desire to leave grew stronger.
“I left Syria because I was at the age of joining the military,” Saaid tells The National. “When I turned 18, I tried to get my passport and come here as I did not want to fight my people, because the military was fighting our people."
Read more from Nilanjana Gupta
ONLY IN AMERICA
Trump administration freezes new student visa interviews worldwide
Mr Trump's administration has put on hold new foreign student interviews at embassies and consulates around the world as it considers requiring the vetting of applicants' social media histories.
The directive was sent to US diplomatic and consular posts abroad and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
If the administration goes through with the plan, it could severely slow down student visa processing, and ultimately hurt universities that rely heavily on foreign students' tuition fees.
In 2023-2024, the US hosted an all-time high of 1.1 million international students. About 90,000 are from the Arab world, according to estimates, while more than 300,000 are Indian.
