The Monday PT Reminds You Today is Doctor-Patient Trust Day

I can’t come up with any witty titles to accurately describe my disdain

Top IRS lawyer pushed aside as DOGE seeks records and 20% staff cuts

Elon Musk’s team has provoked concern among career staff over requests for tax records of undocumented immigrants.

The Washington Post (archive.ph)

Keeping With Kennedy’s Advice, Measles Patients Turn to Unproven Treatments

In West Texas, some with severe illness have not been taken to a doctor until their conditions worsened, officials said.

The New York Times (Guest)

Eggs Are So Expensive People Are Smuggling Them in From Mexico

The contraband is yet another sign of how far consumers will go to battle soaring prices

The Wall Street Journal (Gift)

Donald Trump’s open contempt for immigrants unmasks what has always been true about America

Racism is our tragic and brutal legacy, an original and perennial sin that has infected our nation.

LGBTQ Nation

‘We’re on the edge of chaos’: families with trans kids fight for care as bans take hold

“We have seen dozens of families affected across the United States, in many, many states that have been left and abandoned without care that they need,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and healthcare strategist at the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Lambda Legal. “This is an unlawful executive order because it seeks to override the congressional mandate to condition federal financial assistance on non-discrimination, and this order seeks to require discrimination as a condition of federal funding.”

The Guardian

Trump administration deports hundreds under sweeping wartime authority despite judge’s pause


The Trump administration said Sunday that hundreds of individuals were deported from the country after President Donald Trump invoked a sweeping wartime authority to speed up the deportations of migrants allegedly affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

CNN

Trade War Retaliation Will Hit Trump Voters Hardest

The figures underscore the dramatic impact that a trade war could have on American workers, potentially causing Mr. Trump’s economic strategy to backfire. Mr. Trump has argued that tariffs will help boost American jobs. But economists say that retaliatory tariffs can cancel out that effect.

The New York Times (Gift)

Doctor barred from re-entering US after visiting family in Lebanon

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a 34-year-old working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease and Hypertension was barred from entering the US, with her phone seized.

The New Arab

Steel Buyers Enter Tariff Era as Ships Rerouted, Trucks Halted

Since Trump’s inauguration the cost to buy US-produced steel has surged to the highest in more than a year. American aluminum consumers are ponying up rising shipping charges that Ford Motor Co. has warned could “blow a hole” through their industry. Two of the US’s biggest import sources, Canada and Mexico, are threatening broad retaliation that will only further roil unified supply chains built over decades and rebuilt in recent years to benefit North American industries.

Bloomberg UK

Why Trump is singling out South Africa and accusing it of being anti-white and anti-American

Trump falsely accused the South African government of a rights violation against white Afrikaner farmers by seizing their land through a new expropriation law. No land has been seized and the South African government has pushed back, saying U.S. criticism is driven by misinformation.

The Trump administration’s references to the Afrikaner people — who are descendants of Dutch and other European settlers — have also elevated previous claims made by Trump’s South African-born advisor Elon Musk and some conservative U.S. commentators that the South African government is allowing attacks on white farmers in what amounts to a genocide.

AP News

How a Columbia Student Activist Landed in Federal Detention

Mahmoud Khalil never shielded his face with a mask the way some protesters did. That made him a target when President Trump decided to move aggressively against campus activists.

The New York Times (Gift)
Doing a bit better

Brazil’s Bolsonaro blasts election ban as ‘denial of democracy’

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is accused of backing an attempted coup, told supporters in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday that a ban on him seeking re-election next year amounted to a “denial of democracy.”

AFP

Zelensky accuses Russia of avoiding peace as airstrikes continue

“Those who want the war to end as soon as possible do not act this way,” Zelensky wrote on X, referring to Moscow’s claimed willingness to halt the fighting.

dpa International

Over 100,000 people join protest rally in Belgrade against Serbia’s president and government

At least 100,000 people have converged in Belgrade for a massive rally in the Serbian capital seen as a culmination of months-long protests against populist President Aleksandar Vucic

The Washington Post (Gift)

‘Pray for us. They’ve arrived’: How Syria descended into revenge bloodshed

Overnight and in the early hours of March 7, pro-government fighters fell on the neighborhood of Al-Qusour in the city of Baniyas, among the first major highway exits, opening fire on residential buildings and killing families in their homes. Similar attacks unfolded in a string of towns and villages further north along the coast including Al-Mukhtariya, Al-Shir, Al-Shilfatiyeh and Barabshbo where the ethno-religious Alawite community is concentrated.

Reuters

The end of an era: Assad is gone, and Syrians reclaim their future – analysis

14 years after Syria’s uprising, citizens celebrate the fall of Assad’s regime and look toward a new future.

The Jerusalem Post

Mexicans stage mass protests after discovery of “extermination center” with “clandestine crematoriums”

Demonstrations took place in the western state of Jalisco, where the remains were found, and in cities across the country, including the capital Mexico City, Tijuana, Veracruz, and San Luis Potosi, according to AFP journalists and local press reports.

Families searching for some of the more than 100,000 people missing in Mexico discovered the bodies on March 5 at a ranch where forced recruits are thought to have been held.

Tag24

Cautious calm in Yemen after US strikes; Houthis vow ‘painful’ reply

A cautious calm was prevailing on Sunday in the capital Sana’a and other areas controlled by the Houthis in Yemen, hours after a series of US airstrikes that the Iranian-aligned militia said left at least 31 civilians dead.

US President Donald Trump ordered massive attacks on Saturday on the Houthis in several Yemeni provinces including Sana’a and the militia’s stronghold of Sa’ada in the far north of the war-torn country.

dpa International

Canada reconsidering multi-billion dollar defense deal with the US

After committing to buying 88 F-35 fighter jets in 2023, Canadian government is now looking at non-American alternatives

Independent

(2nd LD) Ruling party says will accept impending Constitutional Court ruling on Yoon’s impeachment

The ruling People Power Party (PPP) will accept whatever decision the Constitutional Court makes on President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment trial, the party’s floor leader said Sunday, outlining the party’s official stance ahead of the ruling.

Rep. Kweon Seong-dong’s remark came as the court is currently deliberating whether to reinstate or remove Yoon from office after he was impeached over his short-lived martial law declaration on Dec. 3. It has yet to announce the date of the ruling, though many observers expect it to take place this week.

Yonhap News Agency

Hungary’s Orbán, facing opposition surge, promises crackdown in speech laden with conspiracy theory

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is vowing to rid his country of foreign-funded groups, calling them a “shadow army” serving the European Union and a “liberal American empire.”

The Washington Post (Gift)

Venezuela blasts ‘illegal’ US deportations under wartime law

Venezuela’s government on Sunday blasted the U.S. implementation of a rarely used wartime law, rapidly blocked by a U.S. judge, to deport over 200 alleged members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador.

“Venezuela rejects the application of an anachronistic law, illegal and in violation of human rights, against our migrants,” Venezuela’s government said in a statement, adding its “profound indignation at the threat of kidnapping 14-year-old children.”

Reuters