Trump Refuses to Answer One Key Question on Palestinians in Gaza

President Trump’s Gaza ceasefire deal seems to be more geared toward preparing the region to be his “Riviera of the Middle East” than offering self-determination to Palestinians.  

“Can you promise Palestinians they will be able to stay?” a reporter asked Trump at his Thursday Cabinet meeting, just a day after he announced the ceasefire deal. 

“Well, they know exactly what we’re doing. We’re gonna create something where people can live, you can’t live right now in Gaza,” Trump replied. “It’s a horrible situation, nobody has ever seen anything like it. So yeah, we’re gonna create better conditions for people.” 

A deal that forces Palestinians out of their homes and puts redevelopment into the hands of the U.S., Israel, and Tony Blair isn’t a deal—it’s ethnic cleansing. This deal is also contingent upon Israel lifting the aid blockade and ending its genocidal attacks once the hostages are returned, but even that is not a guarantee. 

“Looking ahead, what guarantees Hamas disarms, and that Israel doesn’t resume bombing once the hostages are released?” another reporter asked. 

“Well the first thing we’re doing is getting our hostages back, OK? And that’s what people wanted more than anything else, they wanted these hostages back that have lived in hell like nobody has ever even dreamt possible,” Trump said. “After that, we’ll see. But they’ve agreed to things, and I think it’s gonna move along pretty well.” 

Israel “agreed to things” in the short-lived ceasefire of November 2023, which it broke on the very first day when the IDF opened fire on Gazans returning to their homes. When asked how this time would be any different, all the president could say was, “We’ll see.” 

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has drawn widespread criticism for manipulating science to fit his agenda, admitted that he is working to “make the proof” to support his controversial claim that the use of acetaminophen, or Tylenol, during pregnancy causes autism.

Kennedy mentioned Tylenol at a Thursday Cabinet meeting because, he said, he’d been disturbed by a social media video: “Somebody showed me a TikTok video of a pregnant woman at eight months pregnant—she’s an associate professor at the Columbia Medical School—and she is saying ‘F Trump’ and gobbling Tylenol with her baby in her placenta,” he recalled. It is not immediately clear what video he was referring to, and babies are not in the placenta, but attached to it, in pregnancy.

The health secretary went on to cite a number of studies that allegedly support his Tylenol suspicions. Then he made an eyebrow-raising statement about the existing evidence: “It is not proof,” Kennedy said. “We’re doing the studies to make the proof.”

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, it is safe for women to use acetaminophen occasionally “as directed for fever and pain relief during pregnancy,” and patients should talk with their obstetrician about pain relief, as with all medications, during pregnancy.

RFK Jr.’s stated plan to invent evidence to back up his controversial claim to the contrary has already drawn ridicule online. “Ah yes,” wrote Dr. Michelle Au, a physician, public health advocate, and Democratic state legislator in Georgia, “the scientific method famously instructs us to predetermine a conclusion and then do studies to ‘make the proof.’”

But “make the proof” is a fitting credo for a man reshaping the public health system as Kennedy is now. The health secretary in June dismissed the CDC’s entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; installed his own hand-picked members, including vaccine skeptics; and fired Susan Monarez, the former director of the CDC, for refusing to “commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation, regardless of the scientific evidence,” as Monarez testified last month.

Homeland Security Secretary Krisit Noem accused local leaders in Portland, Oregon, of “lying” because they wouldn’t back up her baseless claims that the streets were overrun with terrorists.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting Thursday, Noem excoriated Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, and Portland Police Chief Bob Day, after her surprise visit to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the South Portland neighborhood earlier this week.

“I … met with the governor, met with the mayor, met with the chief of police, and the superintendent of the highway patrol. They’re all lying, and disingenuous, and dishonest people,” she said. “Because as soon as you leave the room, then they make the exact opposite response.

“So, we’re looking at new facilities to purchase there in Portland too. And we’re gonna double down. And I told them if they didn’t meet our demands for safety and security on the streets then we’re going to bring in more federal law enforcement,” she added.

But Noem’s trip Tuesday revealed that Portland isn’t the war zone the president claims.

Local officials have continued to undermine the Trump administration’s outlandish claims about Portland. Kotek, who got wind of Noem’s visit, reportedly met her at the airport, where the governor said she “reiterated again that there is no insurrection in Oregon.”

Outside the facility Noem visited, there were no hardened terrorists, only a handful of reporters and a guy in a chicken costume. By midday, there were about two dozen protesters, but they were still outnumbered by reporters, according to Oregon Live. And across the city, organizers threw a puppy parade to tell ICE to get its paws off Portland. Still, appearing on Fox News later, Noem called local leaders “a bunch of pansies” and said she wanted even more security at the ICE facility.

Wilson said that the quiet day Noem witnessed was proof that “Portland continues to manage public safety professionally and responsibly, irrespective of the claims of out-of-state social media influencers.”

It seems that Noem now hopes to punish Portland officials for their repeated assertions that they were doing a fine job of managing public safety on their own.

On Wednesday, during a roundtable of right-wing influencers talking about anti-fascist resistance to the president, Noem accused Wilson and Kotek of “covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets.”

Noem also claimed that Portland police officers were “cheering” on protesters that were saying slogans such as “kill ICE agents” and “Molotov cocktails melt ICE.”

Day told KGW8 that Noem’s claim was an “abhorrent allegation.”

“Since the secretary had several people documenting her movements, we urge her to provide video evidence to support this claim,” he said. “Such inflammatory rhetoric undermines trust and distracts from our goal to ensure safety in the South Waterfront area. Our officers remain professional, dedicated, and committed to serving the people of Portland with integrity.”

Donald Trump could not be more plain: He is planning to use the government shutdown to take revenge against Democrats.

During a Cabinet meeting Thursday, the president announced that the White House would be cutting congressionally approved programs during the government closure—but only those supported by America’s liberal party.

“We’ll be making cuts that will be permanent, and we’re only going to cut Democrat programs, I hate to tell you,” Trump said. “I guess that makes sense, but we’re only cutting Democrat programs.

“We’ll be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly, that’s the way it works,” he continued. “They wanted to do this, so we’ll give them a little taste of their own medicine.”

For the record, that’s not how the government is supposed to work. The Impoundment Control Act was passed in 1974 for exactly this purpose: to prevent the executive branch from withholding funds in a way that would undermine Congress’s “power of the purse.” Regardless of Trump’s bravado, a government shutdown doesn’t suddenly suspend the law.

It’s not the only law that the Trump administration has decided could be flouted. So far, the shutdown has furloughed more than half a million federal employees, according to a New York Times monitor. That includes 89 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency, 87 percent of the Education Department, and 71 percent of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Forty-five percent of the civilian workforce of the Defense Department has also been temporarily let go.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has insinuated that not every furloughed federal worker will be eligible for back pay, despite a bipartisan-supported 2019 law that mandates they are.

In other seismic executive oversteps, the White House has promised to target liberals in a forthcoming mass firing and, last week, issued ideological messaging via executive agency heads to thousands of federal employees, in potential violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch and the Hatch Act.

Justice Department lawyers reposting President Trump’s statements may have inadvertently endangered their prosecution of Luigi Mangione, who is on trial for the alleged murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December.

On September 18, Trump said in a Fox News interview that Mangione “shot someone in the back as clear as you’re looking at me.... He shot him right in the middle of the back — instantly dead.... This is a sickness. This really has to be studied and investigated.” All of what Trump said was only alleged. 

A clip of the interview was posted by conservative page Rapid Response 47. DOJ Public Affairs head Chad Gilmartin retweeted it, commenting that the president was “absolutely right,” violating the judge’s explicit orders that DOJ employees refrain from public comment about the  case. 

Mangione’s defense team promptly notified the court that they will be filing a motion to dismiss and a suppression motion on Friday. 

Federal prosecutors are defending Gilmartin’s actions, saying he and other department employees “operate entirely outside the scope of the prosecution team, possess no operational role in the investigative or prosecutorial functions of the Mangione matter, and are not ‘associated’ with this litigation,” according to the filing, as reported by NBC News. 

Mangione has pleaded not guilty, and already had charges of state terrorism dismissed in September.