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Via Middle East Eye

The UAE is lobbying the Trump administration to torpedo a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip that Egypt drafted and which has been endorsed by the Arab League, US and Egyptian officials told Middle East Eye.

The split is becoming increasingly bitter, with US diplomats concerned that it is harming US interests in the region. It reflects growing Arab competition over who calls the shots in the Gaza Strip’s future governance and reconstruction, as well as different opinions over how much influence Hamas should retain there. 

The Emirati pressure poses a dilemma for Cairo because both the UAE and Egypt broadly back the same Palestinian powerbroker for Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, an exiled former Fatah official. “The UAE could not be the lone state opposing the Arab League plan when it was agreed, but they are trashing it with the Trump administration,” the US official told MEE.

The UAE is flexing its unparalleled access to the White House to criticize the plan as unworkable and accuse Cairo of giving too much influence to Hamas.

The UAE’s powerful ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba, has been lobbying US President Donald Trump’s inner circle and US lawmakers to put pressure on Egypt to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians, one US official and one Egyptian briefed on the matter told MEE.

Otaiba was previously on record saying that he did not see “an alternative” to Trump’s call earlier this year for Palestinians to be forcibly displaced outside of the Gaza Strip. MEE contacted the UAE embassy in Washington, DC for comment but did not receive a reply. 

Hamas is an offshoot of the Egypt-founded Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE has tried to stamp out across the Middle East. Egypt’s military-led government has also crushed the Muslim Brotherhood, but it allows Hamas officials some freedom of movement. Egyptian spymasters have long-standing relations with Hamas members, including the Qassam brigades, which Egypt has used to mediate the ceasefires in Gaza.

UAE angered by US-Hamas talks

Egypt’s Gaza plan has been criticized by the UAE for not spelling out specifically how to disarm and remove Hamas from the Gaza Strip.

Egyptian officials say the plan is clear that governance will be handled by the Palestinian Authority. The plan calls for a security force in Gaza trained by Jordan and Egypt and leaves open the possibility for UN peacekeepers to be deployed in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Hamas said it accepts the plan, but Israel is against internationalising the conflict in such a way, regional diplomats say.

The US brokered a ceasefire to the war in Gaza in January, but it has effectively collapsed, with the besieged enclave on the verge of a return to war. Israel has cut off electricity to the enclave. Over the weekend, it launched deadly strikes that killed at least 15 people, Palestinian health officials said.

The US has floated a plan for Hamas to release the 27 living captives left in the Gaza Strip in exchange for an extension of a temporary truce. Hamas has insisted on a permanent end to the war, as stipulated in the January ceasefire agreement.

The Trump administration has said it backs Israel returning to war in the Gaza Strip. American diplomacy was jolted after Trump’s former nominee for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, met directly with Hamas recently in Doha, Qatar. 

The White House said Boehler met with Hamas to negotiate the release of one remaining American captive, but the envoy said publicly he discussed a five-year to ten-year truce with Hamas that would have seen the group disavow politics, and the US and its Arab allies ensure the demilitarisation of Gaza.

Those remarks, and Boehler’s statement to CNN that he would not rule out further meetings with Hamas, sparked backlash from the Israeli government and pro-Israel US lawmakers. On Friday, Boehler was withdrawn as the nominee for hostage affairs.The meeting also riled the UAE, the Egyptian and US officials told MEE.

Trump’s top advisors have been ambivalent about the Arab League’s post-war Gaza plan. While travelling in the region in March, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, did not endorse the plan but called it the “basis for the reconstruction efforts”.

US reassessing military aid to Egypt

Some US and Egyptian officials believe the Emirati campaign has already impacted US-Egyptian bilateral relations, with the US warning Egypt that it will cut military aid in 2026, an Egyptian official and one US official told MEE.

The American warnings that the White House planned to cut military assistance to Egypt were first reported by London-based news outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed last week. The US official told MEE that Egypt has been informed that the US is reassessing its military aid but has not been directly told that a future reduction is a quid pro quo in exchange for Egypt accepting a forced displacement of Palestinians. 

The Trump administration has been cutting foreign aid worldwide. Egypt and Israel both obtained waivers from the 90-day freeze on foreign American assistance. Other Arab countries, like Lebanon, have also received carve-outs in recent weeks.

The Trump administration followed through in March on the former Biden administration’s plan to divert $95m in aid earmarked for Egypt’s military to the Lebanese Armed Forces. 

A delegation of former senior Egyptian officials visited Washington last month to meet policymakers and think tanks in a bid to shore up Egypt’s position with the Trump administration. In their public discussions, they did not acknowledge the US warnings, an Egyptian briefed on the matter told MEE.

Egyptian officials have told their US counterparts that it is in Israel’s and Egypt’s interest to maintain US aid, the US and Egyptian officials told MEE. Egyptian officials have told the US that the aid is a cornerstone of the Camp David Accords, which led to a 1979 peace treaty between the two neighbours. But suspicion is deepening among Egypt’s elite.

The military establishment is already seething with resentment at the US for accusing it of failing to police the Rafah border crossing with Gaza. Republican Senator Jim Risch, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, accused Egypt of “blunting” Israel’s fight with Hamas in a previous interview with MEE.

Egypt receives $1.3bn in military aid each year. The US already conditions $300m in aid to human rights matters. The US’s leverage over Egypt has diminished since the Israel peace treaty. In 1978, US aid stood at six percent of Egypt’s GDP. Today, that number is less than half a percent, and it is not clear that the Trump administration views aid as an asset worth preserving.

US officials have told the White House that reducing aid would prompt Egypt to turn to Russia or China for military equipment, but Trump is re-ordering US ties to Russia. 

“Israeli media reported that the decision to resume heavy strikes against Gaza was made a week ago and was not in response to any imminent threat posed by Hamas.” https://t.co/WGvbRhh0o1

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 18, 2025

Egypt receives aid through foreign military financing, which means the US purchases military equipment for Egypt from American defence contractors, whereas oil-rich Gulf states mainly buy American weaponry with their sovereign funds through foreign military sales.

Frenemies: UAE and Egypt

One of the complicating factors in the dispute is that both Egypt and the UAE look to Dahlan as a power broker in post-war Gaza.  When the Egyptian-drafted plan was endorsed by the Arab League, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pardoned exiled former Fatah officials.

That was widely seen as a nod to Dahlan, who was Fatah’s enforcer in Gaza before Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. Dahlan relocated to the UAE after falling out with Abbas in the occupied West Bank.

MEE reported that the UAE is pushing for Dahlan to oversee a committee governing Gaza and later replace octogenarian Abbas as president. MEE contacted Dahlan for comment on this article. 

Sisi enjoys close ties to Dahlan. The UAE is a key backer of Sisi’s cash-strapped government. In 2024, it agreed to a $35bn investment in Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. But the UAE and Egypt are backing opposing sides in a brutal civil war in Sudan.

Further complicating matters, The Financial Times reported that the Trump administration is continuing to push for Sudan and the unrecognized government of Somaliland to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians.

The Trump administration’s expected nominee for Africa Affairs at the State Department, Peter Pham, is a vocal supporter of the UAE and Somaliland’s independence. The UAE is the main powerbroker in Somaliland, where it trains security forces and controls the main port through its state-owned company, DP World.

The Trump administration’s cold shoulder to Egypt’s Gaza plan has riled career officials in the US State Department, who have watched France, Germany, Italy, and Britain all endorse the framework.

American diplomats said the White House was brushing aside career officials’ warnings not to pressure Egypt to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians, MEE reported previously. Trump publicly walked back that demand after being dissuaded not by US officials but in a private discussion with Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House in February. The next month, Trump told reporters, “Nobody is expelling any Palestinians.”

The first major poll of Romanians’ preferences in the upcoming “do-over” presidential election points to a nationalist candidate coming out ahead in the first round, but a centrist winning the run-off that’s likely if no candidate tops 50% in the initial balloting. As Romania’s courts and election commissions gun for NATO and EU foes, one of the nationalist candidates is tempering his rhetoric — even calling Russia a “threat.” 

Before looking at the poll results, it’s important to note that polls in the run-up to the November 2024 election wildly understated support for now-banned nationalist Calin Georgescu. An October poll showed him with only 0.4% support, and a November survey had him racking up just 5.4%. He proceeded to snag 23% of the votes, placing him first among 13 candidates. In a shocking move, Romania’s Constitutional Court threw annulled the election and ordered that it start all over again, amid questionable allegations that Georgescu — who opposes Romanian membership in the European Union and NATO — owed his upset victory to “Russian interference.” 

Now, a new AtlasIntel survey finds a different nationalist is poised to win the first round of balloting that will be held on May 4, taking a 30% share. We say “a nationalist” because two prominent right-wingers have received approval from the election commission, but the two previously agreed that one of them would drop out to let a single standard-bearer enjoy the benefit of concentrated support at the polls.  

Those two nationalist candidates are 38-year-old George Simion of the Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR) — Romania’s second-largest party — and 41-year-old Anamaria Gavrila of the Young People Party (POT). In scenarios where only one them is on the ballot, the AtlasIntel poll has them performing almost identically — 30.4% for Simion and 30.2% for Gavrila. 

However, the same poll suggests that the first-round nationalist victor will go on to lose a May 18 runoff, with centrist independent Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan taking the prize as the non-nationalist vote rallies to him. In those scenarios, Simion performed better, coming in 6.8 points behind Dan, while Gavrila lagged Dan by 8.4. Though approved to run, Simion’s candidacy may still be in some peril, as he’s under investigation for inciting violence, owing to saying those who banned Georgescu should be “skinned in a public square.” He later said he was merely using a figure of speech amid a “tense” situation, but acknowledged that such fiery rhetoric was “not wanted in a democracy.” 

Perhaps trying to appeal to moderates or to avoid being kicked off the ballot, Simion’s recent pronouncements are a far cry from what one expects from a Romanian nationalist, as he’s discounting the idea of Romania exiting NATO or the EU, sounding alarms over the supposed Russian menace, advocating continued sanctions against Moscow, and embracing increased European military spending.  Consider these Simion quotes from a new interview with the Financial Times: 

• “Our stance cannot be changed. Eighty percent of the Romanians want NATO and want the European Union. This is not something we can negotiate.”
• “Putin’s Russia was and is one of the biggest threats for the European states, especially for us, for the Baltic states and for Poland.”
• “Without a common geopolitical bloc, like . . . NATO, led by the US, we are in a big danger.”

It’s a dangerous time to promote sovereignty in Romania. Last month, Georgescu was arrested and questioned as he faced Orwellian allegations of disseminating “false information” and “incitement to actions against the constitutional order.” Upon his release, he was forbidden from appearing on mass media or creating social media accounts. 

Campaigning last fall, Georgescu pledged to restore Romanian sovereignty and put an end to what he characterizes as subservience to NATO and the EU. He took a hard line against the presence of NATO’s missile defense system that’s based in Deveselu, southern Romania, calling it a “shame of diplomacy” that is more confrontational than peace-promoting. He has also pushed for Romania to pursue a non-interventionist policy in the Ukraine war, and said US arms-makers were manipulating the conflict.

Georgescu isn’t the only presidential hopeful to be banned over his political views. On Saturday, Romania’s electoral commission announced that nationalist Diana Sosoaca would be barred from the May election, saying her opposition to NATO and the EU disqualified her.  

The EU…. Preserving democracy for Klaus and George. https://t.co/dZv9Q48Hdq

— Truth Seeker (@TruthSe49517863) March 17, 2025

Authored by Emel Akan and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Trump administration is committed to taking decisive action against one of the nation’s most pressing yet overlooked crises: human trafficking.

In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Alina Habba, senior advisor to President Donald Trump, shared the administration’s plan and her role in addressing this critical issue. But as Habba sees it, this isn’t just about human trafficking—it’s about “human extortion,” a more encompassing term that includes everything from sex trafficking to cyber activity and forced labor.

“I’m focused on human extortion, which includes child trafficking,” she said in an interview with Jan Jekielek, senior editor at The Epoch Times and host of “American Thought Leaders.”

Habba emphasized that her efforts focus not only on children who are victims of trafficking but also on any individual, regardless of age, who falls victim to sex trafficking, financial extortion through cyber means, or modern slavery.

Habba, 40, who served as Trump’s defense attorney in recent years, now works as a counselor to the president, collaborating closely with government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She is currently drafting a series of executive orders aimed at strengthening regulations and protecting the victims of human extortion.

In her view, the crisis reflects the widespread abuse of vulnerable individuals who are coerced and exploited, often in ways that the public is barely aware of. Habba pointed to examples like cyber-interactive pornography that encourages people to hurt children, calling it a “sick” and disturbing reality of today’s world.

She also noted that the issue worsened during the border crisis under the Biden administration.

Many children were, misleadingly, trafficked over the border, she said.

“They were displaced from their families and then found themselves in vulnerable positions where they were sex trafficked and labor trafficked.”

Since Trump took office, Habba said she has spent nearly two months fully understanding the scale of the problem. The administration is now focused on bringing these children home, providing them with necessary care, capturing their traffickers, and prosecuting those responsible—particularly pedophiles.

A DHS report from August 2024 revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) transferred over 448,000 unaccompanied migrant children to the HHS between fiscal years 2019 and 2023. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division within HHS, is responsible for placing these unaccompanied children with sponsor homes in the United States. However, the report indicated that ICE was unable to track the location and status of all the children who had been released from HHS custody.

While Habba declined to provide exact numbers, she stated that the absence of familial DNA testing had led to a surge in child trafficking.

In 2023, the Biden administration revoked a Trump-era program that required rapid DNA testing for illegal immigrants crossing the border. Without this measure, she said, individuals were entering the country with alleged relatives—such as parents, aunts, or uncles—without any verification. As a result, it was impossible to determine whether those accompanying the children were associated with cartels or engaged in human trafficking.

The Biden administration reportedly did not provide specific reasons for ending the program, only stating that it was not renewing the contract with the private company doing the tests.

Since Trump’s return to office in January, the DNA testing program has been reinstated. However, Habba said there are still other critical issues to address.

She mentioned that some migrant children were placed in “fake sponsor homes” by HHS. When officials visited these homes for safety checks, they found that the children were no longer there.

“So, effectively, they were being re-trafficked,” Habba said.

The administration is now working closely with public and private sector individuals to ensure these children are kept safe, provided with necessary rehabilitation, including therapy and medical care, and placed in secure homes.

Tate Brothers and Epstein Files

Habba addressed the recent controversy surrounding the influencer Tate brothers, who are facing human trafficking and rape allegations. She faced criticism after expressing in a January interview that she was a big fan of Andrew Tate.

Habba told Jekielek that her comments had been manipulated and taken out of context. She clarified that her support for Tate was based on his political views and should be viewed separately from the accusations being made against him.

“The accusations against the Tate brothers are stomach-churning. They are disturbing,” she said. “There is no part of me that condones at all that behavior,” she said of the reports. The Tate brothers are contesting the allegations being made against them.

Habba also provided an update on the long-awaited Epstein files.

She said that Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are leading the investigation to review the files and thoroughly vet the accusations.

“We are committed to transparency,” Habba said, urging Americans to be patient during the process.

“We’re not going to be off the cuff. We’re not going to shoot from the hip. We’re going to look at things methodically and take them very seriously. And unfortunately, that takes time.”

Habba also discussed her upbringing and family, identifying herself as a Middle Eastern Catholic woman. Her parents, both Chaldean Catholics, emigrated from Iraq to the United States in the early 1980s to escape persecution in their home country.

“My family is religious. They are very involved in the church, and I’m proud of that,” she said.

Trump praised Habba when announcing her appointment as counselor to the president, highlighting her dedication and loyalty.

“She has been unwavering in her loyalty, and unmatched in her resolve—standing with me through numerous ‘trials,’ battles, and countless days in Court,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Dec. 8, 2024.

“As a first generation American of Middle Eastern Heritage, she has become a role model for women in Law and Politics, most recently being named Chaldean Woman of the Year.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it very clear Tuesday in his first remarks since a major Israeli assault was unleashed on the Gaza Strip within 24 hours prior that the country has returned to full-on war against Hamas in Gaza.

He insisted in a televised address from Tel Aviv that Israel “will continue to fight” until all of its war goals are achieved, which includes the return of all remaining captives and the final destruction of Hamas. He further stressed that under his leadership Gaza will never again constitute a threat to Israel.

He declared that any negotiations on restoring the ceasefire will continue “only under fire.” Thus he strongly pointed to the war’s indefinite continuation, after the two-month temporary truce which is now completely shattered.

This has sparked large protests in the Israeli capital and Jerusalem by advocates of the remaining victims, led by their families. Addressing them, Netanyahu said, “My heart, all of our hearts, are with the hostages and their families.”

“They are going through an inhuman nightmare every day, every minute,” he said, stressing he’ll continue to work tirelessly for their return. However he rejected as “lies” that he sabotaged the peace process for political reasons.

Netanyahu also blasted the media, saying “They have no shame, they have no red lines, and that his critics “simply echo Hamas’s propaganda time and time again.”

He then made clear:

“So I want to say to Hamas — don’t rely on this. Because nothing will stop us from achieving all the goals of the war.”

“This is just the beginning,” the Israeli leader then said in his characteristic unapologetic and fiery fashion. He also expressed appreciation in the comments for US military help against the Houthis of Yemen.

Earlier in the day the Houthis launched a ballistic missile against southern Israel, with no reports of injuries on the ground.

Gaza health authorities have meanwhile said the dead are already in the hundreds, with local hospitals describing it feels like ‘Armageddon’ once again.

The White House has said it was aware that Israeli was gearing up for another round of military attacks, and that it’s given a greenlight to the Israeli strikes. This comes after Trump for weeks floated a controversial plan to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, which international groups have condemned as ethnic cleansing.

Authored by Rob Walker via RealClearScience,

America’s space community is having a phony and destructive debate about whether the U.S. should continue its current focus on returning astronauts to the Moon or switch to Mars.  The chattering class is accusing Elon Musk of distracting President Donald Trump from the Moon with a riskier path of going directly to Mars. Ultimately, they want to provoke a fratricidal fight between two parts of the Trump coalition.  

This distraction is a cynical ploy to delay needed reforms and allow the deep state in NASA and its heritage aerospace contractor community to continue to fail to deliver real space achievement while blaming politicians or the public for not providing infinite budgets or 100 percent unchanging policy.  

Furthermore, the phony fight between the Moon and Mars is entirely unnecessary. Cynics assert that the U.S. can only do one thing at a time in space, at least in part because they presume that (1) space is primarily about science and national prestige, and therefore (2) space is mostly or even exclusively the domain of NASA, a civilian science/research agency. 

Neither of these have been true since well before the first Trump administration. America now has a thriving commercial space industry investing billions of private dollars every year to pursue economic opportunities throughout cislunar space, giving federal space agencies huge financial and technical leverage. And the U.S. now has a military service dedicated to using space to support terrestrial military and diplomatic needs – and dominating space as a new warfighting domain.  

Commercially, today there are two companies developing systems for landing humans on the Moon. Those same companies have already test-flown reusable heavy lift launch vehicles. At least three companies are already sending robotic landers to the Moon, some of them scalable to serve larger logistical needs. Many of these can also support aggressive robotic and human exploration of Mars. One system was intentionally designed and sized to support human missions to Mars. Several companies looking to replace and expand on the capabilities of the International Space Station can also help build modular bases on the Moon and then apply those lessons to Mars habitats. 

Likewise, NASA now has strategic partners in other federal agencies that can enable and spur progress as part of a whole of government national strategy in space. For example, the Department of Transportation is pursuing a second wave of reforming its launch and re-entry regulations to ease approvals of high-cadence reusable launch activities. The Department of Energy is working with industry to enable smaller, safer modular nuclear reactors which also have uses on other planetary surfaces. They eventually may even speed up transport to and from Mars. The Department of Commerce is developing a civilian Space Situational Awareness System to help manage the growing satellite traffic in Earth orbit and allow the Space Force to focus on monitoring and countering adversaries’ actions in space. DARPA and the Space Force are looking at how to protect national security assets and private economic development activities in Earth orbital and cislunar space.

More needs to be done to broaden and deepen our commercial space industry. NASA must transform itself from a builder and owner-operator of space infrastructure to an explorer and user.  The Space Force needs to fully separate from the Air Force because while the early aerospace industry evolved from aviation, the space domain is not an extension of air. Other agencies need to step up and play constructive roles to complement NASA and the Space Force and help enable commercial space growth.

Space exploration is now a multi-event team sport with many star players and experienced coaches, so the question is not whether NASA should continue towards the Moon or switch its focus to Mars. The right strategic question is: does America want to usher in a golden age by strategically dominating the solar system or are we content to barely outpace other nations’ symbolic achievements?   

If Jeff Bezos wants to develop and settle the Moon and Musk wants to occupy Mars, the right leadership strategy for America is not to choose but embrace the power of “and.”  

What is important about Bezos’s and Musk’s respective visions are their similarity as modern refinements of President John F. Kennedy’s dream of a New Frontier. I want America back on the Moon – and also going to Mars. More importantly, I want hundreds, and then many thousands, of Americans on the Moon and a growing human presence on Mars, in Earth orbit, and in free space. Manifest Destiny in space isn’t a bad thing in 2025. We aren’t taking planets and asteroids away from anyone.   

An America First space agenda should be nothing less than America developing and settling every part of the solar system that makes economic or military sense – and inviting the rest of free humanity to join us.  

We can’t afford the distraction of being pulled into a stupid fight over space destinations when the real issue is what kind of space destiny our children will inherit. We want to bequeath them – literally – all of the above.

President Trump’s tariffs are reshaping non- “America First” trade policies and agreements, causing concern among Goldman analysts. They recently downgraded the US GDP growth forecast to 1.7% from 2.4%, marking their first below-consensus call in 2.5 years.

In the latest Top of Mind macro research note titled “All About Fading U.S. Exceptionalism,” analysts Jenny Grimberg, Allison Nathan, and Ashley Rhodes provided clients with a brief note about the declining US outlook and the rise of the rest of the world amid expectations that the average US tariff rate will increase by 10 percentage points this year—a generational high.

Chart of the Day: The US effective tariff rate is likely to rise by 10pp this year, roughly 5x the increase during the first Trump Administration.

Here’s the summary:

Our expectation that the average US tariff rate will rise by 10pp this year has left our 2025 US GDP growth forecast at 1.7%, down from 2.4% (both on a Q4/Q4 basis) at the start of the year and our first below-consensus call in 2.5 years. Markets have also downgraded their US growth views—and sharply so, on our estimates—as evidenced by the S&P 500 entering correction territory this week. While we continue to expect US equities to move higher ahead, we recently lowered our YE25 S&P 500 index target from 6500 to 6200 and trimmed our 2025 EPS growth forecast from 9% to 7% on the back of our US growth downgrade, and modestly reduced our valuation expectations given the significant uncertainty around US policy.

In stark contrast, markets have significantly upgraded their European growth views, fueling strong outperformance of European assets that we think has further to run. Specifically, we believe European equities can continue to outperform given the still-large valuation gap between US and European equities and recently raised our 2025/2026/2027 SXXP EPS growth forecasts to 4%/6%/6% (from 3%/4%/4%), partly on the back of the growth boost from higher European defense spending that we expect. We believe Europe has made a promising start on the road to this higher spending amid positive signals from the EU Council and Germany, where preliminary coalition negotiations have resulted in an agreement on the recently-announced substantial fiscal package. We also expect EUR credit to continue outperforming USD credit ahead, as implied by our recently-revised spread forecasts. But we think the risks are more two-sided for Bunds and the Euro even as we recently raised our YE25 10y Bund yield forecast to 3.00% (from 2.25%). Beyond Europe, China and broader EM equities have also performed relatively well this year, and we see further room to run here as well.

We believe this fading of US exceptionalism further underscores the case for regional diversification, and continue to like Defense, Technology, and Healthcare stocks in Europe, both China A and H shares, and pockets of EM equities. That said, we believe the diversification theme could run into challenges if the current US equity market correction extends further, as we find that regional correlations tend to be higher during larger US corrections and regional equities have rarely delivered positive returns in such periods.

Trump’s tariff saber-rattling has been seen as a critical tool to unleash America First and globalism last. Ridding the system of toxic policies will likely result in a detox period for the economy. At the same time, hemispheric defense comes next.

Submitted by Samantha

I was at a dinner party over the weekend, and I had a conversation with a Democrat. He voted for Biden; he voted for Harris, and he hated Trump and Elon Musk. I engaged in conversation with him and here is what happened; how I handled it and what I took from it.

Started off friendly enough. 

He is a retired businessman in his 70’s who lived in New York his whole life. 

He retired wealthy but was self-made. He is an educated man and holds a college degree. 

The dinner party we were at was hosted by a mutual friend and I had already known the man from past gatherings but never talked politics with him.

We got talking about DOGE and he expressed his feelings about “Elon Musk trying to cancel social security.” I assured him that was not the case. 

I told him of the DOGE findings and that many social security recipients were over 150 years old. 

“That is not true,” he snapped at me. “It is true” I said to him. “Well, I don’t believe it.” He continued, “and I just don’t like Trump. He’s a racist.” 

I asked, “why is he a racist? what are you basing this on?” I bet you already know what he said.

“Good people on both sides.” 

Once I heard that I admittedly checked out of the conversation.

I am not going to change the mind of this man. The Liberal media has brainwashed him. No matter what I show him he will say that is a lie. So, where do we go from here? He is genuinely a nice man and family friend. I am not going to hate the man because he is uninformed. If he and I went to a magic show and afterward he believed all the tricks were really magic, I would still be his friend. That said, it terrifies me that this man gets to vote and shape policy that affects my life. There is nothing we can really do. There is going to be some percent of society that are never waking up from TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome. There are plenty of people like that man I spoke with who are intelligent, successful people and are just totally brain rotted about politics. They are gone. Incapable of seeing reality.

I am sure that many of you have family members or friends like this. If they are generally nice people, like the man I chatted with, I think that it’s important to not cut them out of your life. Politics is such a small part of who they are. They watch a few hours of news a week, if that, they are almost always older and for the most part they are nice enough. Hearing stories of people hating their grandparents for voting for Trump or voting for Harris is pretty sick. I can see cutting out some smarmy gym friend or something, but your grandparents? That is insane.

Try and be the bigger person. Be more accepting. Focus on the good things you like about them and can chat about. 

If you allow politics to tribalize you, on either side, then you are throwing away who you are and the life that you would have led for one that is not your own. Focus on chatting about a fun movie you saw or thing you did this past weekend. Oh, and maybe if they call you to drive them to the voting booth you are busy that day…

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry has said Tuesday that over 400 people were killed overnight and into the morning by Israeli airstrikes following the collapse of the fragile two-month ceasefire.

Local officials say the death toll is expected to climb higher through the day as many are still buried under the rubble. The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders desribed, “We woke up, at around 2am local time, to 20 minutes of airstrikes and heavy artillery, just like the past 15 months of war.”

The statement further said, “We are appalled and outraged by these new unacceptable massacres of civilians.” But Israel has blamed Hamas for the truce’s collapse, also as dozens of Israeli captives (including bodies of the deceased) still remain in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that “Israel will act against Hamas with increasing military force.” He blasted group’s “repeated refusal” to release more hostages.

Israel’s military claimed overnight that Hamas’ highest-ranking security official, Mahmoud Abu Wafah, was killed in the strikes. Bombs pummeled the territory every “five, six seconds” according to a Unicef official.

The Trump administration gave the greenlight for the fresh wave of Israeli attacks. “The Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Monday night Fox News interview, just as the bombs were flying. And meanwhile, this somewhat strangely timed headline on Tuesday has hit:

The US reportedly agreed to an Egyptian proposal to rebuild Gaza without Hamas, with a local price tag of $50bn.

Hamas has blamed Israel for what it says was the unilateral overturning of the ceasefire agreement. Trump has for weeks been warning that all “hell” could be visited upon Hamas if it didn’t immediately return all of the remaining hostages.

Leavitt acknowledged this in her commentary to Fox: “As President Trump has made it clear – Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel, but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay. All hell will break loose,” she said.

“All those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but America will pay a price. All hell will break loose,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, confirming that the Trump administration gave the green light for Israel’s bombing of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/dpJsSP7ncf

— red. (@redstreamnet) March 18, 2025

The Israeli strikes have been going constant for over 12 hours, and several Hamas and Islamic Jihad senior commanders have been killed. This suggests the group is still intact despite a near constant state of war since Oct.7, 2023.

“Hamas just identified a fifth senior official killed in Israel’s assault in Gaza since early this morning: Yasser Harb, a member of the group’s political bureau,” NY Times reports.

Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Dr. Eithan Haim, a surgeon from Texas, says that some physicians cannot handle the shock after realizing that prescribing drugs or performing surgeries for youth with gender dysphoria can cause harm.

Haim said such doctors “have to grow a spine” and speak out about this alleged malpractice in the medical community toward vulnerable youth that “turn them into chronic medical patients.”

“Self-reflection for them would be self-immolation. Their souls, I don’t think, could survive that reality, that truth,” he said in an interview March 12 with Jan Jekielek on NTD, a sister outlet of The Epoch Times.

“So they lie to themselves.”

Haim recently emerged from a legal battle with the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden. The Texas physician faced charges of illegally accessing medical records when he revealed that a Houston hospital was performing gender transition procedures on minors, against state law.

Those charges were dropped shortly after the election of President Donald Trump.

Haim was a guest panelist at a Capitol Hill forum highlighting detransitioners—individuals who have undergone gender transition procedures, but later chose to halt those procedures or attempt to reverse them.

The panel, hosted by detransition advocacy group Genspect, was held on Wednesday, Detrans Awareness Day. Established in 2021, Detrans Awareness Day honors the experiences of detransitioners and raises awareness about the harmful effects of gender ideology and “gender medicine.”

Speaking during the panel, Dr. Patrick Hunter, a pediatrician, said he is “not optimistic” that doctors will change their minds about “gender-affirming care” unless motivated by public scrutiny and the threat of legal and financial action.

“Make them defend themselves, that will damage their reputation, and help save kids,” he said.

Dr. Patrick Lappert, a plastic surgeon, told attendees that hormone therapies can be reversed, but many “below-the-belt” surgeries cannot, leaving patients disfigured and unable to conceive children. They may also experience kidney, bladder, and bowel problems.

Surgical assistance to detransitioners after such surgeries involves “managing the complications of what they’ve done in the past,” Lappert said.

“Surgery is essentially management of chronic wounds and chronic problems, but there’s no way to reverse genital mutilation.”

Underlying Psychological Trauma

The detransitioners who spoke at the event said their decision to undergo gender changes was preceded by psychological trauma—sometimes involving family problems.

Growing up, Laura Becker said she suffered psychological and emotional abuse from her father. The 28-year-old artist and author said her father’s behavior was “very damaging,” and it made her feel worthless and left her considering suicide.

She said her doctor and therapists diagnosed her as transgender without addressing her family situation, drug abuse, or suicidal thoughts.

“I wasn’t being accepted by my own family, and when I found gender ideology … I believed it because I didn’t have any other framework besides self-hate,” she said.

“My identity was self-hate. That’s what transgenderism is.”

Forrest Smith, who underwent hormone therapy, breast implants, and had his testicles removed, said his gender dysphoria was preceded by an addiction to online pornography, which began when he was a child.

The 28-year-old said the addiction quickly spun out of control, and resulted in a compulsion to view increasingly more deviant material, which disgusted him but had an iron grip on his young mind.

“It was really ugly, and I really look back and think there were pedophiles on the other side of that,” he said.

After years of shame and trauma, Smith said the prospect of gender transition seemed like a “spiritual” transformation that would help him break free of his self-loathing. He was presented with “total affirmation therapy” by doctors and psychologists, but said none of these professionals asked the question: “Where does this come from?”

He was offered the chance to be placed on a waiting list to receive breast implants.

“If I hesitated, they would say, ‘Well, you’ll have a year to make up your mind and it’s free, so why not just get on a waitlist?’”

Smith also said some of the physicians seemed conflicted about their own work. When he decided to cancel his breast implant surgery, the surgeon told him he was making the right choice and that he thought many of his own patients were making a mistake.

However, Smith eventually did have the surgery, and had an orchiectomy to remove his testicles. Although he had the breast implants removed—a procedure his insurance refused to cover—his lower body surgery cannot be reversed.

“And of course, as soon as I start to question my transgender identity, the therapeutic profession doesn’t want to touch me. It’s hands-off,” he said.

California native Abel Garcia echoed this, saying his therapist never mentioned his childhood trauma until he decided to detransition. Before that, he said, it was like being on a “conveyor belt.” He had reached out to a therapist for help because he was confused about his gender identity and was quickly told that he was transgender.

Garcia told one medical professional that he did not want his genitals altered, a procedure commonly referred to as “bottom surgery.” He said he was fast-tracked for both surgeries anyway.

“Now, luckily, I only did get the implants,” he said.

The same therapist later tried to discourage him from detransitioning, he said.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

As a nation, we have literally been in the process of committing financial suicide for decades.  Sadly, some people have responded to the new administration’s efforts to get debt levels under control by committing acts of extreme violence.  Our society is deeply addicted to debt and that must stop.  The 7 economic charts that you are about to see are incredibly shocking.  If you know anyone that still does not believe that the United States is in the midst of a long-term economic decline, just show them these charts.  Sometimes you can quote economic statistics to people until you are blue in the face and it won’t do any good, but when those same people see charts and pictures suddenly it all sinks in.  What is great about charts is that you can very easily demonstrate what has been happening to the economy over an extended period of time.  As you examine the economic charts below, pay special attention to what has been happening to the U.S. economy over the last 30 or 40 years.  The truth is that what is wrong with the U.S. economy is not a great mystery.  All of the economic problems that we are experiencing now have taken decades to develop.  Hopefully the charts in this article will help people realize just how nightmarish our economic problems have become, because until people start realizing how incredibly bad things have gotten they will never be willing to accept the dramatic solutions that are necessary to fix our financial system.

The sad fact of the matter is that we are living in the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world.  All of this debt has made the present more pleasant, but it has also destroyed the bright economic future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to enjoy.  If they have the opportunity, future generations of Americans will look back on what we have done to them in absolute horror.

The 7 economic charts posted below are meant to shock you.  Most Americans today need to be shocked before they will be motivated to take action.  Please share these charts with as many people as you can.  If we can wake enough people up, hopefully something will be done about all of these problems while there is still time.

1 – Government spending is expanding at an exponential rate.  As you can see from the chart below, federal spending is now roughly 14 times higher than it was back in 1980.  And federal spending is about three trillion dollars higher per year than it was during the last full year before the pandemic.  Once the pandemic subsided, federal spending went down a bit, but now it is starting to rise at an exponential rate once again…

2 – U.S. government debt is absolutely exploding.  The United States government is 36 trillion dollars in debt.  How insane is that?  Our national debt is approximately 36 times larger than it was when Ronald Reagan first entered the White House.  Unfortunately, it continues to grow at breathtaking speed.  Even with the budget cuts we are witnessing, we will add trillions more to the debt this year.  Can we afford to continue to accumulate debt at this rate?…

3 – The growth of our money supply is a horror show.  Just look at how rapidly M1 has been skyrocketing over the last couple of years.  During the pandemic, M1 went from about 4 trillion dollars to more than 20 trillion dollars.  The Federal Reserve is clearly guilty of economic malpractice.  Is there any way that we are going to be able to avoid paying a very serious price for all of this reckless money printing?…

4 – Household debt has soared to almost unbelievable levels over the last 30 years.  The sad truth is that it is not just the U.S. government that has a massive debt problem.  U.S. households have also been accumulating debt at a staggering rate.  Total household and nonprofit organization debt did not pass the 2 trillion dollar mark until the mid-1980s, but now total U.S. household and nonprofit organization debt has surpassed the 20 trillion dollar mark.  Household debt alone accounts for approximately 18 trillion dollars of this total…

5 – The total of all debt (government, business and consumer) in the United States is now well over 100 trillion dollars.  If anyone doubts that our society is addicted to debt, just show them this chart.  This is a debt bubble that is absolutely unprecedented in U.S. history…

6 – More than 100 million U.S. adults that do not have jobs are considered to be “not in the labor force”.  When a U.S. adult is not working, they are put into one of two buckets.  For years, government bureaucrats have kept the number of Americans that are “officially unemployed” at a very low level, while the number of Americans that are dumped into the bucket labeled “not in the labor force” has just kept going up and up.  During the Great Recession, the number of Americans that were considered to be “officially unemployed” plus the number of Americans that were considered to be “not in the labor force” never exceeded 100 million.  Today, the number of Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force” alone exceeds 102 million…

7 – The price of gold has gone absolutely nuts, and that is not a good sign.  When instability hits the financial markets, many investors flock to gold.  This is especially true in inflationary times.  Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by close to 99 percent.  One of the reasons given for the creation of the Federal Reserve was that the Fed was supposed to help control inflation.  But that didn’t exactly work out too well.  The truth is that the United States never had consistently rampant inflation until the Federal Reserve took control.  In particular, once the U.S. totally went off the gold standard in the 1970s inflation really started escalating out of control.  When the gold standard ended, an ounce of gold was worth 35 dollars.  Today, an ounce of gold is worth more than 3,000 dollars…

Needless to say, if the economic trends documented by the charts above continue to persist, we will have an enormous nightmare on our hands.

The U.S. economy as it currently exists is unsustainable by definition.  It is only a matter of time before we slam into an economic brick wall.

We have developed an economy that cannot function without massive amounts of debt, and at this point it seems like almost everyone is drowning in red ink.  The federal government is massively overextended, most of our state and local governments are massively overextended, most of our major corporations are massively overextended, and the majority of U.S. consumers are massively overextended.

The only way that the game can continue is for our leaders to continue to borrow and spend increasingly larger mountains of money.

But no debt spiral can go on forever.  At some point this entire house of cards is going to collapse.

When that happens, there is going to be economic pain that is greater than anything that this country has ever seen before.

Everything that I have been warning about for more than a decade is playing out right in front of our eyes.

We can’t keep piling up debt like this.

We just can’t.

But look at what has happened as a result of Elon Musk and his team making some modest cuts to government spending.

A significant portion of the population is losing their minds.

Our society cannot handle large spending cuts, and our society cannot handle what will come after a financial crash either.

We are in far more trouble than most people realize.

*  *  *

Michael’s blockbuster entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.