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Israel’s war on Gaza: List of key events, day 104

Israel’s war on Gaza: List of key events, day 104

EXPLAINER Medical aid enters Gaza while deadly Israeli strikes continue on the south of the enclave. Here’s how things stand on Thursday, January 18, 2024: Latest updates Five trucks carrying medical aid for hospitals and 45 Israeli captives entered Gaza on Wednesday, announced Qatar, which mediated a deal between Hamas and Israel. The United States has redesignated Yemen’s Houthis as a “global terrorist” group in response to their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, the White House’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, said in a statement on Wednesday. Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, called for Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and said that Palestinians should be “encouraged” to leave the territory in an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 news on Wednesday night. Human impact and fighting At least 16 Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli shelling of a house east of Rafah in the Gaza Strip overnight, according to local sources and video footage verified by Al Jazeera. An estimated $15bn will be required to rebuild just the homes in Gaza, the head of the Palestine Investment Fund, Mohammad Mustafa said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said that it targeted 14 missiles “that were loaded to be fired” in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen on Wednesday. Diplomacy Australian foreign Minister Penny Wong said the country is “deeply concerned by ongoing settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank”, in a post on X after visiting the territory on Wednesday. The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron met Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on the sidelines of the Davos Summit on Wednesday. In a post on X, Cameron said he made “clear” to Amirabdollahian that “Iran must cease supplying the Houthis with weapons and intelligence”. On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, urged Iran and Pakistan to “avoid actions that would lead to an escalation of tension”. Israeli raids in the West Bank Israel arrested 46 people from one family in Tuqu village near Bethlehem overnight, according to Al Jazeera Arabic. A military raid on the occupied West Bank’s Tulkarem continued into a second day on Thursday. Six Palestinians have been killed in Tulkarem, according to Al Jazeera correspondent, Hamdah Salhut. On Wednesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an independent investigation into the Israeli military amid deadly Israeli air strikes on Nablus and raids in Tulkarem refugee camp. Adblock test (Why?)

Biden policies driving massive surge in Venezuelan migration to southern border, report finds

Biden policies driving massive surge in Venezuelan migration to southern border, report finds

A new report by a conservative immigration group into the ongoing surge in Venezuelan migration at the southern border finds that the crisis has been sparked by U.S. policy as much as it is by economic conditions.  The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has issued the report, a copy of which was obtained by Fox News Digital, which looks into the dramatic increase in migrants coming from the socialist dictatorship to the U.S. southern border. It highlights how the number of Venezuelans coming to the border has skyrocketed from 50,000 in FY 21 to nearly 335,000 in FY 23. BIDEN ADMIN EYES MORE DEPORTATION FLIGHTS TO VENEZUELA AS MIGRANT NUMBERS SHATTER RECORDS  “This makes Venezuelans the second most commonly encountered nationality at the border,” it says. “It is difficult to capture the scale of these numbers without conceptualizing them in some way besides the raw figures. The number of Venezuelan nationals encountered in FY 2023 is equivalent to five times the number of people who can fit into the New England Patriots’ Gillette stadium. It is also nearly the same number of people who are active-duty personnel in the U.S. Air Force.” Typically, analyses of the numbers coming have emphasized the conditions in Venezuela, which over the years has faced hyperinflation, poverty and human rights abuses. But the FAIR report stresses that until FY 21, numbers coming to the border were low, despite conditions being poor for years. Instead, the report links the numbers with reduced enforcement, arguing that numbers have risen but have reduced sharply whenever the Biden administration has taken enforcement action. ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT POPULATION SOARS UNDER BIDEN: GOVERNMENT DATA “Venezuelan illegal immigration to the U.S. is driven as much by policy as economic conditions. When the Biden Administration announces tougher enforcement policies, the number of encounters drops,” it says. The report argues that after Mexico announced it would no longer allow Venezuelans to enter Mexico visa-free after calls from the Biden administration, there was a drop in encounters. It also points to a drop in Venezuelan migration after the ending of Title 42 in May and the promise of a re-imposition of “consequences” for illegal entry. There was a similar drop in the fall of 2023, when the Biden administration announced that it was restarting deportation flights directly to Venezuela. The administration said this month that “we do have the intention of ramping up repatriation flights to Venezuela” and that the administration sees it as a “critical part” of the broader immigration strategy. “It’s an important deterrent,” an official said.  But the report also argues that other moves, including the program to allow up to 30,000 Venezuelans, along with Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans, into the U.S. each month via the use of humanitarian parole, and the redesignating of Venezuela for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) have encouraged migration levels from Venezuela. DHS TO OFFER WORK PERMITS, DEPORTATION PROTECTION TO OVER 470,000 VENEZUELANS AMID NEW BORDER SURGE  Overall though, it says that the move by the Biden administration to release more illegal immigrants into the country rather than detain and deport has been a driving factor, calling it a “major driver of mass migration.”  The group, which argues for lower levels of immigration overall, says that the situation in Venezuela is “highly regrettable” but that the solution is not “allowing countless numbers of Venezuelans to come to live in the United States permanently.” “If the U.S. wishes to promote political change, the best way to do that is not draining Venezuela of potential change makers by encouraging and enabling them to leave their home country behind,” it says. The report also expresses concern about the potential for gang members from Venezuela to enter the U.S. — as well as concerns about terrorism, given Venezuela’s close ties with Iran, which in turn sponsors Hezbollah and Hamas. It notes past congressional hearings that have highlighted how Venezuela has provided militants with travel documents. Federal officials have said that all migrants encountered at the border are subject to a multi-layered vetting system before being released. The administration has said it is pursuing a broad strategy of expanding “legal pathways,” including the parole program for Venezuelans and other nationalities, while enforcing “consequences” for illegal entry. It has pushed back against claims it is mass releasing migrants by arguing that it has returned more migrants since May than in the entirety of FY 2019. It has also sought funding from Congress which includes additional removal authorities. Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said it is the “broken” system that is the magnet drawing migrants north, and which Congress needs to fix. “What is a magnet is the fact that the time in between an encounter of an individual at the border and their final ruling in their immigration case can sometimes take six or more years,” he said this month. “That is a magnet, which is precisely why I am working with Republicans and Democrats in the United States Senate to deliver a solution for the American people, to deliver a fix to an immigration system that everyone agrees is broken, and that is long overdue.” The report calls for safe third country agreements to be formed with countries neighboring Venezuela, the ending of parole programs and the halting of “catch-and-release” policies. That is in addition to deportations, a Title 42 expulsion authority and increased vetting of Venezuelan nationals. “If these policies are enacted, it is highly likely that the mass migration from Venezuela will slow. Given the scale and speed of Venezuelan arrivals in America, these policies must be put in place without delay, and many can be done immediately by the Biden Administration,” it says. The report comes as the migrant crisis is still breaking records. There were over 302,000 migrant encounters at the southern border in December, coming after a record 2.4 million encounters in FY 23. 

Supreme Court appears ready to reel in administrative state in landmark challenge from East Coast fishermen

Supreme Court appears ready to reel in administrative state in landmark challenge from East Coast fishermen

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority in Wednesday’s arguments appeared ready to reel in a legal precedent challenged by a group of fishermen who say the decades-old doctrine gave the administrative state too much power over their business. On Wednesday morning, the high court heard a set of two cases stemming from lawsuits brought by New Jersey fishermen and herring fishermen from Rhode Island who argued that a regulation issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) requiring them to pay $700 a day for an “at-sea monitor” is out of the bounds Congress set for the federal agency. The core of their arguments, presented Wednesday by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) and veteran Supreme Court litigator Paul Clement, is what’s known as the Chevron doctrine — a legal theory established in the ’80s that says anytime a federal regulation is challenged, the courts should defer to the agency’s interpretation of whether Congress granted them authority to issue the rule.  “How do we determine how much deference is too much deference?” asked Justice Clarence Thomas in the roughly four-hour-long arguments. “How do we know where the line is?” THE SUPREME COURT CAN SAVE WORKING FISHERMEN FROM BIDEN REGULATORS Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh appeared the most skeptical of the Justice Department’s counterarguments to let Chevron stand, with Gorsuch at one point questioning Chevron’s “disparate impact” on classes of people who have “no power to influence agencies.”  “The cases I saw routinely on the courts of appeals—and I think this is what niggles at so many of the lower court judges—are the immigrant, the veteran seeking his benefits, the Social Security disability applicant, who have no power to influence agencies, who will never capture them, and whose interests are not the sorts of things on which people vote, generally speaking,” stated Gorsuch. “[I] didn’t see a case cited, and perhaps I missed one, where Chevron wound up benefiting those kinds of peoples. And it seems to me that it’s arguable—and certainly the other side makes this argument powerfully—that Chevron has this disparate impact on different classes of persons,” he said.  Gorsuch called Chevron a “recipe for instability.” NEW ENGLAND FISHERMEN FIGHTING ‘GOVERNMENT OVERREACH’ HOPE TO CATCH A BIG WIN AT SUPREME COURT “You’ve left open the possibility that a judge, if left to his own devices, would say the fairest ruling is in favor of the immigrant, it’s in favor of the veteran, and it’s in favor of the Social Security Disability applicant, but because of a fictionalized statement about what Congress wanted when it didn’t think about the problem, the government always wins,” he said.  There are nearly 200,000 pages of federal regulation on the books today that govern nearly every aspect of American life. Solicitor General Elizabeth Preloger argued that overturning Chevron would “upend” the framework on which “Congress, agencies, states, regulated parties and the American public” have relied on for decades, and that it would be a “disruption” to the legal system. But Justice Kavanaugh retorted that federal agencies controlled by different political parties when they change hands make new and retract old rules unfettered is like a “shock to the system.” “[T]he reality of how this works is Chevron itself ushers in shocks to the system every four or eight years when a new administration comes, whether its communications law or securities law, or competition law or environmental law, it goes from pillar to post,” Kavanaugh said. HOW MAINE LOBSTERMEN TURNED A ‘SLAP IN THE FACE’ FROM THE WHITE HOUSE INTO A POLICY VICTORY “You just pay attention to what happens when a new administration comes in at EPA, at SEC, at FTC, you name it. It’s just massive change that is at war with reliance, and that is not stability. I think to hold up stability and reliance is a little tough given just watching how it operates every four years,” he added.  Justice Elena Kagan argued that overturning Chevron would mean courts deciding on policy and political issues without expertise.  “Will courts be able to decide these issues as to things they know nothing about? Courts that are completely disconnected from the policy process, from the political process, and that just don’t have any expertise and experience in an area?” she questioned. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked tough questions of both sides, at times suggesting a scaled back ruling — a “course correction” as was suggested in court — narrowly favoring the fishermen, might be the best approach. The fishermen say that the mandated cost of at-sea monitors cuts into 20% of their business. Many of them are stewards of fourth- and fifth-generation small family businesses, and say that a legal victory would mean securing their livelihoods they feel have been on the brink.  “It’s pretty much unfathomable,” Jerry Leman, founder of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), told Fox News Digital in an interview, speaking of the financial burden on the boats for at-sea monitors. NEFSA is a bipartisan, nonprofit alliance of fishermen off the coast of New England fighting to limit erroneous government regulations.  “We’ve never really had a say,” Aaron Williams, captain of the F/V Tradition in Stonington, Connecticut, said of the mandate. “It would just be nice to have our voices heard.” James Valvo, executive director of Cause of Action which represents the New Jersey fishermen said, “nowhere are the perverse, and often punitive, consequences of Chevron more apparent than they are in this case.” “Requiring these fishermen to pay the salaries of at-sea monitors is neither feasible nor fair, The petitioners are seeking to make a modest living through hard and often dangerous work. They have carried monitors aboard their vessels for decades and are dedicated contributors to NOAA’s conservation efforts and research,” Valvo said in a statement.  Valvo added that unlike fishermen, monitors receive consistent pay regardless of catch size and even when there is no catch at all.  “The substantial costs for each fishing trip and unpredictable yield mean that fishermen would often make less than the monitors or even lose money under this