By: TII team
Date: January 26, 2025
WASHINGTON,— U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he had directed the U.S. military to release a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, reversing a hold placed during President Joe Biden’s administration.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said the bombs, which had already been purchased by Israel, were being delivered after delays linked to concerns raised during Biden’s tenure.
“We released them. We released them today. And they’ll have them,” Trump said. “They paid for them, and they’ve been waiting for a long time.”
The shipment of the powerful bombs had been on hold due to fears over their potential impact on civilians in Gaza’s Rafah area during Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian enclave. The bombs, capable of penetrating reinforced concrete and causing widespread destruction, had drawn scrutiny from human rights organizations.
Reports last year indicated the Biden administration had previously authorized thousands of similar bombs to Israel following the deadly October 7, 2023, Islamic State-style attack by Hamas militants. That attack left approximately 1,200 Israelis dead, according to official figures, and saw around 250 hostages taken by Hamas. However, the Biden administration halted delivery of one specific shipment, citing humanitarian concerns.
Trump defended his decision to release the weapons, emphasizing that they had already been purchased by Israel. Earlier on Saturday, he reaffirmed his position on Truth Social, stating, “Many items that Israel ordered and paid for, which were held back by Biden, are now being delivered!”
Since the war began, the United States has provided billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, citing the need to counter threats from Iran-backed groups such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.
Both Trump and Biden have expressed strong support for Israel, though Washington has faced growing criticism from human rights advocates over the humanitarian toll of the conflict in Gaza. Protests have erupted across the United States and internationally, calling for an arms embargo against Israel.
A temporary ceasefire took effect last week, leading to the release of several Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Despite the truce, tensions remain high in the region as the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to fuel violence.
(Credit: Reuters)
Copyright © 2025 The Insight International. All rights reserved
The Return of Donald the Destroyer
Photograph Source: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson – Public Domain
Our concern with the politics, policies, and propaganda of Donald Trump underplays the central question of his presidency: Is Donald Trump psychologically fit to be president of the United States? In Trump’s first term, psychiatrists and psychologists warned that our dangerously disordered president was a threat to domestic and international security. The erratic behavior of Trump as a candidate in 2015-2016 and as a president in 2017-2021 led to the ethical principle known as the “duty to warn” of the danger he represented.
Trump’s malignant narcissism was well established in his first term as he claimed that he knew more than anyone else and that only he could fix our problems. Trump’s demonization of the press and his opponents as well as his treatment of minorities and his handling of immigration issues pointed to paranoia. His separation of immigrant families demonstrated the lack of empathy that accompanies narcissism. His lack of impulse control was particularly worrisome in a nuclear age that presents no real checks and balances on a commander-in-chief’s role regarding the use of nuclear weapons. It is the combination of paranoia and impulse control that is most worrisome because it can lead to destructive acts.
As a result of his performance as president, Trump faced an unusual level of public criticism from his own appointees, including chief of staff John Kelly, secretary of state Rex Tillerson, national security adviser H.R McMaster, and even director of national intelligence Dan Coats. The criticism by Tillerson, McMaster, and Coats cost them their jobs, and they were replaced by loyalists at the time, such as Mike Pompeo at the Department of State, John Bolton at the National Security Council, and John Ratcliffe as director of national intelligence. Most of his first term appointees refused to support his efforts to gain a second term. Trump will not be facing questions of loyalty in his second term because—without exception—his current appointees have paid fealty to him.
In his first term, Trump declared war on governance, intelligence, jurisprudence, diplomacy, law enforcement, public service, and fact-finding, particularly in the scientific community. But there were “adults in the room” who were able to challenge and even moderate his worst impulses. There will be no “adults in the room” this time as Trump has appointed individuals who are also impetuous and authoritarian. The vision of “America First” animated Trump’s first and second inaugural addresses. This time around Trump also has claimed that divine intervention saved him from an assassin’s bullet so that he could “make America great again.”
Trump stated that he would be a dictator on Day 1 and he was true to his word. In addition to pardoning 1,600 criminals from the January 6th riots, Trump issued an unconstitutional immigration order denying birthright citizenship, a violation of the 14th amendment of the Constitution that guarantees citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Trump also restored the order from his first term that created a new classification for federal civil servants—Schedule F—that would end civil service protections and allow him to remove tens of thousands from the federal payroll.
High-level officials at the Department of Justice and the Central Intelligence Agency are particularly vulnerable. On Day 1, Trump replaced the leaders of three of the most important U.S. attorneys’ offices in addition to removing key career officers at the most important divisions of the Department of Justice. This marked the beginning of the weaponization of the DoJ. These steps point to the democratic crisis that the nation is facing from a new director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Kash Patel) with an enemies list and a new director of national intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard) anxious to prove her loyalty to Donald Trump. Patel and Gabbard still face confirmation.
Meanwhile, Trump’s appointees have already taken steps that range from counterproductive to just plain petty. The incoming national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who does not require congressional confirmation, ordered all hands out of the White House situation room by noon on January 20th before Trump had even completed his oath of office. The situation room is occupied by more than one hundred personnel who are not political appointees. Many of them are on loan from the intelligence community to deal with sensitive international crisis points. As a result of Waltz’ order, they won’t be in position to brief the incoming staff. Presumably, this was Waltz’s way of demonstrating fealty to the new president.
A particularly petty act was the removal of General Mark Milley’s portrait from the Pentagon’s prestigious E-ring hallway that features portraits of all former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was done only several hours after former president Joe Biden pardoned Milley. Trump has suggested that Milley could be executed for treason because of his call to his Chinese counterpart to reassure him that the United States was “100 percent steady” in the wake of the January 6th insurrection. The Pentagon refuses to say who ordered the removal of Milley’s portrait, which has contributed to fears among high-level generals and admirals that a massive shake-up will soon be underway. Pete Hegseth, still awaiting confirmation, has stated on numerous occasions that there are too many four-star generals and admirals and that nobody is above review. Like Waltz and Patel, Hegseth will be anxious to prove his loyalty to Trump.
The fact that Trump’s disturbing inaugural address was given on the holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King adds to the anxiety that so many of us feel. The rule of law means nothing to Donald Trump, who seems committed to breaking long-standing traditions and institutions. Trump’s idea of law and order is to pardon insurrectionists who threatened to kill Vice President Mike Trump.
The fact that he has a loyal MAGA following, a Republican Party that supports his every move, and a pliant Supreme Court point to the emergence of a far less democratic United States of America. One of the basic questions in the study of history is whether individual leaders shape history or whether historic forces shape individual leaders. I believe that we will soon get an answer to that dilemma, and it will not be reassuring.
Trump: How Low Can We Go?
Photograph Source: Sdkb
– CC BY-SA 4.0
A wise man once told me that when the pendulum gets to the bottom it can only go up. “But how will I know it has gotten to the bottom?” I responded. Trump’s November 5 election and January 20 inauguration can be seen as a bottom, but perhaps they are only the tip of what could be a much greater descent. I have lived through low points with “Tricky Dick” Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump 1.0. (Those not mentioned should not be assumed to be high points on the pendulum.) The question is resistance. What lies ahead for those shocked, discouraged, disgusted by what is taking place. Michelle Obama was not at the 2025 inauguration. In 2017 she described her feelings at Trump’s first swearing in: “To sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display, there was no diversity, there was no color on that stage,” the former First Lady said. “There was no reflection of the broader sense of America. Many people took pictures of me and they’re like, you weren’t in a good mood. No, I was not.” This time she was a no show.
What is there to do? What kind of resistance is possible? I have long-lost relatives calling from the States asking me about moving to Switzerland where I live, a form of no show.
A small Swiss example of resistance: Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20, the very day the World Economic Forum (WEF) began its 55th annual meeting in Davos. So at the same time Trump 2.0 officially began, 3,000 of the world’s formal leaders met to discuss “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.” While Trump could not be there in person – even he cannot accomplish the quantum phenomenon of being in two places at the same time – his presence was dominant. As the media reported, “Trump is a magnetic force that does not escape Davos,” a CEO told the New York Times. “Davos is only talking about one thing,” he observed, “which is Donald Trump as president of the United States and what it means for the world.”
Trump is in many ways the ultimate Davos Man. While the WEF’s mission statement says, “Together we continue to strive for a better world, where cooperation and trust lead to lasting progress,” Trump flouts “America First” and “Make America Great Again,” and has little value for working together, cooperation or trust. But Trump is the ultimate Davos Man. As Robert Reich wrote, “Instead, after years of calling for responsible global corporate capitalism, the CEOs gathering in Davos are now openly focusing on their bottom lines. In other words, the jig is up. The pretense is over. The blather about corporate social responsibility is revealed for what it really is and always has been — PR designed to make the public believe that big global corporations care about anything other than making as much money as possible, as soon as possible.”
Trump is the incarnation of the individual who thinks he or she is the ultimate power broker and decider. The term Davos Man was originally used by the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington in a 2004 essay describing a new class of enriched globalists who are only loyal to themselves. Much like today’s nomads who ski the slopes of Verbier in Switzerland or Vail in Colorado while “working,” or surf the beaches in Hawaii or Bali between zoom meetings, Trump, the Davos Man, is imbued with his own importance, dedicated to making himself more money while pretending “to strive for a better world.” Surrounded by 5,000 Swiss soldiers as well as thousands of police officers, the 3,000 makers and shakers at Davos this year count 350 government leaders, more than 1600 business leaders including over 900 of the world’s top CEOs. The Davos Man takes many forms.
To return to resistance: Several hundred protestors are present in the Swiss alpine resort this week. Far from the warmth of the conference meetings and top-end hotels, Young Socialists and anti-capitalism activists from Strike WEF are among the assembled few braving the cold outside demonstrating against Davos Man and all he represents. “We are criticising the elites who presume to speak for the people while millions of people are already dying from climate change,” a spokesperson for the Strike WEF collective told Keystone-SDA. Many carry signs such as “Tax the Rich.” Some throw snowballs at the passing attendees’ upscale vehicles. The history of protests against the WEF is long. In 2003, protestors blocked access to the town and anti-globalization demonstrations spread throughout Switzerland. The point of the protests is always the same. Hundreds of people gathering in the cold of January to express their displeasure with the global elites representing all that is wrong with capitalism and its failures to deal with global inequality, climate change and whatever else the WEF and Davos Man represent.
But, in reality, the Davos protests are like throwing snowballs to try to squelch California fires. The protestors are correct in their sentiments; it’s the right thing to do, but what are the consequences? Over 70 million American citizens voted for Trump 2.0. He has control of both houses of Congress as well as a powerful influence over the Supreme Court. In addition to political domination, he even feels divinely anointed; “I felt then, and I believe even more so now, that my life was saved by God to make America great again,” he said in his inauguration speech.
For the moment, the pendulum is moving radically downward on the democratic/humane scale. No one is sure how low the pendulum will go, nor when it will start going upward. But throwing snowballs at Davos or brandishing signs will surely not be enough.
EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE
A quick guide to Trump’s executive orders
Mike Phipps looks at the first raft of measures from the new US administration.
On his first day in office, President Trump signed a slew of executive orders on a wide array of issues. Some, like the order to end “birthright citizenship” are already being challenged in the courts while others, like renaming the Gulf of Mexico, look pretty childish. Here is a far from comprehensive list of some of the decisions that will have an immediate and significant impact.
Mass pardoning of January 6th rioters
Trump’s decision to pardon or commute the sentences of all the January 6th rioters, roughly 1,500 people, including those who violently attacked police officers, was a spur of the moment decision, it is now being reported.
The pardons include leaders of far right organisations given long sentences for seditious conspiracy. They fly in the face of what leading members of the Trump team have previously argued, including his Vice President and Secretary of State. “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” Vice-President JD Vance said a little over a week ago.
The country’s largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, has spoken out against the pardons, as have the International Association of Chiefs of Police, a number of judges and many traditional Republican conservatives who attach some value to the rule of law. Only 20% of Americans approve of the pardons, polls suggest.
Jackson Reffitt, who reported his father Guy’s participation in the January 6th riot and was a key witness against him, told reporters he fears for his life now that his father is free. Others will be in a similar predicament.
One commentator noted: “One of the pardoned individuals is already back in prison on a gun charge, illustrating, as legal analyst Joyce White Vance said, why Trump should have evaluated ‘prior criminal history, behavior in prison, [and] risk of dangerousness to the community following release. Now,’ she said, ‘we all pay the price for him using the pardon power as a political reward.’ On social media, Heather Thomas wrote: ‘So when all was said and done, the only country that opened [its] prisons and sent crazy murderous criminals to prey upon innocent American citizens, was us.’”
Trump also signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road, a dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold. Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money-laundering conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison, but Trump joined libertarians in claiming the conviction was an example of government overreach.
Diversity
Trump has shut down all federal government diversity, equity and inclusion offices and has put all federal employees working in such programs on leave. He overturned the executive orders of not just President Biden, but even President Johnson, who in 1965 signed an order to stop discriminatory practices in federal government hiring and in the businesses of those who were awarded federal contracts.
The Trump administration has also frozen all civil rights cases currently being handled by the Department of Justice and ordered that none of the civil rights attorneys file any new complaints or other legal documents.
In a blatant attack on trans rights, Trump signed an order revoking “gender ideology guidance”, stating: “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable.” The order also incorporated tenets of “foetal parenthood”, the notion that life begins at conception, long pushed by anti-abortion activists.
Manipulating control of the government
The Trump team has told the staff at Department of Health and Human Services —including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health — to stop issuing health advisories, scientific reports, and updates to their websites and social media posts.
Trump has also suspended all funding for projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, which invested billions of dollars in construction of clean energy manufacturing and the repair of roads, bridges, ports, and so on, primarily in Republican-dominated states.
Meanwhile, all remote working is ended: federal employees must be in their workplace full-time. Another executive order reclassified thousands of federal employees as political appointees, making it much easier for them to be fired.
Immigration
On migration, Trump has declared an emergency on the US’s southern border. He revived a number of measures from his first administration, including forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for decisions in the US immigration cases, implementing “extreme vetting” of immigrants coming into the US, and cracking down on “sanctuary cities” and states that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agents. The sending of large numbers of military personnel to the Mexican border is another feature of his policy.
A full analysis is provided by the American Immigration Council, which noted: “The executive orders signed on the first day of President Trump’s second term radically expand the legal authorities used to enforce immigration law against immigrants already in the U.S., while calling for an equally radical expansion of the infrastructure that would be needed to accomplish the ‘mass deportations’ the president has promised. Furthermore, they signal efforts to immiserate unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, depriving them of the ability to work legally and punishing them for being unable to ‘register’ with the U.S. government – something they have no way of doing.”
It added: “The expansion of expedited removal alone could subject millions of recent arrivals, and others swept up by error, to potential deportation without a court hearing, depriving them of the chance to demonstrate that they qualify for legal status.” It predicted “increased racial profiling, while the funding threats and threats of criminal prosecution to ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions may successfully intimidate localities who would otherwise seek to avoid entangling their local law enforcement with Trump’s mass deportation campaign.”
One particularly pernicious measure is the order under which nearly 1,660 Afghans cleared to resettle in the United States, including family members of active-duty military personnel, have been removed from flights to the US.
Foreign policy
Trump has cancelled sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The increase in Israeli violence against Palestinians living in the West Bank may be understood in this context.
Trump has also reinstated an executive order allowing him to impose economic sanctions against the international criminal court (ICC). The powers were used in 2020 to impose asset freezes and travel bans against the ICC’s former chief prosecutor.
He also restored the nonsensical designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” which Biden had lifted. “No one has bothered to explain what ‘terrorism’ Cuba is responsible for,” observed one analyst.
Trump also pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement with immediate effect. The US is responsible for around 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions and Trump has promised to boost domestic oil and gas production. He also revoked a non-binding executive order signed by Biden aimed at making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric.
He also withdrew from the World Health Organization, a decision seemingly motivated by both cost – the US contributes a fifth of its budget – and anti-China rhetoric. Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has clinically demolished both these arguments. Global public health experts describe Trump’s decision as “catastrophic”.
What’s next?
All this is even before Trump gets started on the global economy. A recent report claimed “Trump’s new administration believes it has Sir Keir Starmer’s government ‘over a barrel’ on trade as Britain becomes increasingly reliant on a US deal.” One Trump aide said it was time “to remind Starmer who holds all the cards in this relationship.”
“The US has long wanted the UK to lift its ban on chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef, a move former UK ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, warned would destroy British farming,” reported the Independent.
Global Justice Now Director Nick Dearden tweeted: “Couldn’t be clearer – a trade deal with Trump means handing economic sovereignty to the White House.”
It’s unclear how alert the UK Labour government is to these dangers. Speaking this week, Foreign Secretary David Lammy described Donald Trump as “a man who had incredible grace, generosity… very funny, very friendly, very warm about the UK.” He added that most of the world welcomed his return to power.
Lammy’s comments are in stark contrast to remarks he made about Trump in the past, when he called him a “tyrant in a toupée – a woman hating neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath.”
How times change. Yet Lammy’s new-found sycophancy will be met with derision from the US administration.
If Trump’s first term is anything to go by, there will be a great deal of media coverage of the President’s unpredictable outbursts over the next months. In fact, this is his intention: to set the agenda by social media posts. Bernie Sanders understands this and warns: “In the coming months, our job is not just to respond to every absurd statement that Trump makes. That is what the Trump world wants us to do. He wants to define the parameters of debate and have us live within his world. We should not fall into that trap.”
The left globally will need to map its own path forward in the coming months and not be diverted either by the taunts and grandstanding of the Trump project or by the corrupting influence of its power, which is already turning people who should know better into appeasers and enablers.
Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.
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