Not the Middle Eastern Riviera -- a 1965 Buick Riviera. For the car's facelift GM design chief Bill Mitchell instructed a designer to study a suit of armor on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts -- but that story, too, might be apocryphal. Scroll down for more. (Image: oldcarbrochures.com)
UPDATE: A block of President Trump’s January 20 executive order preventing the children of migrants without permanent legal status from receiving birthright citizenship in the US was furthered by District Judge Deborah Boardman at a hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, Wednesday, The Hill reports.
Unless Boardman’s ruling is overturned by an appeals court, birthright citizenship will remain intact up to when she can issue a final ruling on the merits of the constitutional case put forth by plaintiffs in the suit against Trump’s EO, which is expected to take months. A federal judge in Seattle had previously put the EO on hold in a ruling that was set to expire Thursday.
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Middle Eastern Riviera – There’s Greenland and the Panama Canal, and Canada as our 51st state (does the GOP figure they’re more likely to get one or two US senators out of our neighbors to the north, than from Washington, D.C. or Puerto Rico?). Now you can add the Gaza Strip to the list of foreign lands that interest the otherwise isolationist President Trump, who is floating the idea of taking it over, clearing it from the rubble of the Israel-Hamas war, and developing it, economically, The Hill reports.
Trump Hotels for all our lands?
Certainly, a better US investment than continuing to supply arms to Ukraine.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job – whether we’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out,” Trump said in opening remarks of a joint White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – first foreign leader to visit Trump 47. “Create an economic development that will supply untold numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area, do a real job, do something different.”
Trump said it could become the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Certainly without any Palestinians, who would be exiled to a nearby Arabic state. Not a bad or crazy idea from Netanyahu’s point of view.
“You cut to the chase,” Israel’s prime minister said. “You see things others refuse to see.”
Trump saw that something in a year-old YouTube video interview of his son-in-law and former senior advisor Jared Kushner, from the Middle East Initiative of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Kushner, whose private equity firm at the end of Trump’s first term four years ago received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, said February 15, 2024; “Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable to, if people could focus on kind of building up, you know, livelihoods. You think about all the money that’s gone into this tunnel network and all the munitions. If that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done?” (Kushner’s YouTube comments were first reported by The Guardian last year.)
Did senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri have buyer’s remorse for spending all that cash on fighting Israel by building tunnels in the Gaza Strip and filling them with munitions?
“We regret Trump’s statements,” Abu Zuhri said about Trump’s interest in turning the Gaza Strip into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East.’
“We consider this a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region,” he said (per Newsweek).
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FBI v. Retribution – The FBI Agents Association and the Center for Employment Justice filed separate lawsuits in a Washington, D.C. federal court Tuesday, to block Justice Department leadership from compiling lists of agents who investigated the January 6thattack on the US Capitol plus criminal investigations of Donald J. Trump (per Politico). The suits argue that the DOJ’s lists of FBI agents are part of a retaliation campaign.
For example, the FBI Agents Association’s lawsuit points to calls by Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, after his pardon by President Trump, for the punishment of the agent who investigated his 1/6 involvement, resulting in his prosecution for seditious conspiracy. Once the Justice Department releases the FBI agent’s name, his or her personal information will be available permanently for anyone who wants to avenge Tarrio’s prosecution, the suit contends.
The Center for Employment Justice’s suit cites screenshots of the Justice Department’s three-page survey the center says is intended to identify thousands of FBI agents who worked on politically sensitive cases.
Meanwhile… In related news, the Senate Tuesday confirmed by 54-46 vote Pam Bondi, an experienced prosecutor who is nevertheless a Trump loyalist, as attorney general, per Roll Call. All Republican senators plus John Fetterman voted for Bondi while all Democrats, except for Pennsylvania’s senior senator, voted against.
Others … Ex-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is headed for certain confirmation as Trump’s director of national intelligence after the Intelligence Committee forwarded her nomination, 9-8 along party lines. That confirmation is certain, because Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who voted against Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary said she supports Gabbard, Roll Call reports. Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) also was considered a holdout, but has confirmed his support for Gabbard, who came under mostly Democratic pressure for her support of whistleblower Edward Snowden and a 2017 visit to Syria with then-dictator-leader Bashar al-Assad.
Former Rep. Doug Collins (R-VA) was confirmed 77-23 by the Senate as secretary of Veterans Affairs.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa