Julian Hattem

Trump Tax Cuts Finances for Poor, Boosts Income for Wealthy Trump’s tax and spending bill extends 2017 cuts but reduces Medicaid and food stamp benefits.

A new CBO analysis shows Trump’s tax law cuts income for the poorest 10% by $1,200 per year.

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

Trump called for doing this 5 years ago, too. My colleagues estimated it could lead to the exclusion of as many as 20 MILLION US CITIZENS from the census

www.migrationpolicy.org/news/million...

How much of Gaza is left standing? Analysis by independent researchers reveals the scale of the destruction

“The studies imply estimated [Gaza] life expectancy has fallen by more than 35 years, to ~ half the pre-war figure. In percentage terms…bigger than…during China’s Great Leap Forward; in absolute terms it is similar to the one in the Rwanda genocide” www.economist.com/interactive/...

it's easy to talk about immigrants on sports teams in platitudes -- sports as the "universal language" and all that. But public conceptions of immigrants' role on the field reflects broader thinking about their role in society

Who is being told to adapt to whom?

Eighty years ago today, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, the U.S. destroyed Nagasaki with a second bomb. It was the first & only time a nuclear weapon was used in warfare, vaporizing the cities and instantaneously killing tens of thousands, mostly civilians, in each.

Wow, after their initial sanctuary jurisdiction list drew widespread criticism & was pulled down within days, the admin has published ANOTHER sanctuary jurisdiction list.

First list by DHS: 14 states, 415 counties & 227 cities

New list by DOJ: 13 states, 4 counties & 18 cities

Inside Trump’s New Tactic to Separate Immigrant Families

"Interior separation is approved"

@haleaziz.bsky.social counts 9 instances where the US has separated foreign-born parents from their children as part of removal cases, seemingly to push people to choose to "self-deport"

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/u...

Due to changes to international student visa processing under Trump, @nafsa-official.bsky.social predicts a 15% decrease in enrollments for 25-26, $7 billion in lost revenue & 60,000 fewer jobs.

And that estimate doesn't take into account decreased interest- so the drop could be much more.

Stella Rimington, First Woman to Lead British Intelligence Agency, Dies at 90 Widely regarded as the inspiration for the recast of the James Bond character “M,” she was the first British spy chief to be publicly named and photographed.

Dame Stella Rimington, the first woman to lead MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, and the spy chief widely regarded as the inspiration for the character "M" in the James Bond movies, died Sunday at 90.

The US could see a 30-40% decline in new international student enrollment, resulting in nearly $7 billion in lost revenue and more than 60,000 fewer American jobs. https://www.nafsa.org/fall-2025-international-student-enrollment-outlook-and-economic-impact

for perspective, Columbia is one of the largest institutions for international students in the US. There were more than 20,000 enrolled international students in 2023-24

www.migrationpolicy.org/article/inte...

Number of internally displaced people between 2016 and 2024

nearly a decade after the 2016 peace deal, violence is on the rise again in Colombia
www.thenewhumanitarian.org/maps-and-gra...

‘Can We Extradite Him?’ How U.S. Officials Grappled With the Release of a Triple Murderer

"Michael Kozak, the career official who oversees diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere, replied: “Well then we probably should not have asked for him. Can we now extradite him to Spain? We did get the S.O.B. released.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/u...

If you want a weird but true fact to talk about:

Dexter Holland, lead singer of The Offspring, was instrumental in this. His doctorial thesis in molecular biology was sequencing mRNA in HIV. The paper was also heavily cited in creating the COVID-19 vaccine.

TRÁNSITO IRREGULAR DE EXTRANJEROS POR LA FRONTERA CON COLOMBIA POR REGIÓN SEGÚN ORDEN DE IMPORTANCIA: AÑO 2025

TRÁNSITO IRREGULAR DE EXTRANJEROS POR LA FRONTERA CON COLOMBIA POR REGIÓN SEGÚN ORDEN DE IMPORTANCIA: AÑO 2024

only 10 people crossed the remote Darien Gap between Colombia & Panama this June. Last June, more than 31,000 crossed

www.migracion.gob.pa/estadisticas/

Using mRNA, scientists overcome a key challenge to HIV vaccines Scientists used a mRNA-based vaccine to reliably trigger antibodies that block HIV infection in people and monkeys

Progress towards creating a vaccine against HIV is hands-down one of the most jaw-dropping developments of my lifetime. We are slowly chipping away at a disease that has killed 10s of millions of people

www.statnews.com/2025/07/30/m...

Border clash between Ugandan, South Sudanese troops kills at least four It is not clear what triggered the fighting although sections of the border have long been contested.

Rare and seemingly unexplained fighting between Ugandan & S Sudanese forces this week left several dead. This seems to suggest it stemmed from border dispute www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/...

Tim Tebow?

„The Bottom Line: Without significant recovery in visa issuance in July and August, up to 150,000 fewer students may arrive [in the US] this fall.“

this is a cool story

41% of the US now lives in a jurisdiction in which local or state police have been deputized to be immigration authorities. This is a massive expansion from just a few months ago

"Four talked about a man who started cutting himself and writing messages on the walls and sheets with his blood: 'Stop hitting us.' 'We are fathers.' 'We are brothers.' 'We are innocent people.' "

Hun Sen Is Inflaming the Thailand-Cambodia Crisis for a Reason A border crisis has plunged Thailand back into political instability, in part because Cambodia’s ex-leader is stirring up trouble for domestic gain.

If you're looking for background context on the flare-up at the Cambodia-Thailand border, we ran this great in-depth piece by Michael Hart last week.

Border clashes happened periodically in the late 2000s & early 2010s around Preah Vihear, but I don't remember either side resorting to airstrikes.

ALEX DE WAAL: So, let me say that I've been working on this field of famine, food crisis and humanitarian action for more than 40 years, and there is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today.

Few if any experts know more about the deliberate use of starvation as a war crime than Alex de Waal. If he says it's happening, it's so.

Opinion | Trump Is Building a Machine to Disappear People

"By expanding the practice of forced relocation, Mr. Trump is using migrants as currency in a global network of geopolitical negotiation."
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/o...

Trump administration hands over Medicaid recipients' personal data, including addresses, to ICE U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will gain access to personally identifiable information for all of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees.

The administration is giving medicaid recipients’ personal information to ICE

apnews.com/article/immi...

Flight Manifests Reveal Dozens of Previously Unknown People on Three Deportation Flights to El Salvador Hacked data obtained by 404 Media reveals dozens more people on deportation flights to El Salvador who are unaccounted for. “We have not heard from these people’s families, so I think perhaps even the...

SCOOP: The manifests for three legally contested deportation flights to El Salvador contain the names of dozens of people who have not been acknowledged in any way by the US government. Immigration experts following the case say they don't know where these people are

www.404media.co/flight-manif...

Trump administration restarts third-country deportations with flight to Eswatini Five immigrant detainees from Vietnam, Laos, Jamaica, Cuba and Yemen have been sent to the small nation of Eswatini in southern Africa.

US is restarting deportations to third countries (in Africa), by sending 5 men from Asia and the Caribbean to Eswatini

www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Global AIDS funding to be pulled from Trump clawbacks request The White House is backing off $400 million in proposed PEPFAR cuts due to GOP objections.

Some really great news: funding for PEPFAR--about $400M for the global fight against HIV and AIDS--has been restored. Millions of lives will be saved.

www.politico.com/live-updates...