from The New York Times it's the headlines I'm Tracy Mumford today's Wednesday February 5th here's what we're [Music] covering last night Donald Trump made one of the most Brazen declarations by any recent American president the US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it to we'll own it he declared that the United States should assume control over and that the territory's roughly 2 million residents should be moved out Gaza is a hell hole right now it was before the bombing started frankly and we're going to give people a chance
to live in a beautiful Community that's safe and secure Trump framed it as a humanitarian issue saying Gaza is basically unlivable after Israeli attacks have turned much of it into Rubble he also framed it almost as a real estate deal and I don't want to be cute I don't want to be a wise guy but the Riviera of the Middle East this could be something that could be so bad this could be so magnificent Trump said that the US should level what's left of Gaza and redevelop it and he said all gazans should be relocated
to countries like Egypt and Jordan even though both countries have long rejected any kind of mass resettlement he announced the plan after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House and As Trump laid out the idea Netanyahu was next to him smiling Hamas which still controls Gaza immediately rejected the plan calling it a recipe for creating chaos Trump did not site any legal Authority that would give the US the right to take ownership of Gaza and he did not address the fact that forcibly removing a population violates international law instead he claimed
that everyone he'd spoken to loves the idea do a real job do something different just can't go back if you go back it's going to end up the same way it has for 100 years this was an absolutely extraordinary shocking intervention from president Trump no one thought that the president of the United States would propose American occupation of territory in the Middle East Patrick Kingsley is the times Jerusalem bureau chief to Palestinians it was horrifying this would be to them an act of ethnic cleansing on a more terrifying scale than any they have experienced since
the birth of Israel in 1948 but in Israel most aspects of this plan are a dream come true for prime minister Netanyahu and his base on the Israeli right since the beginning of the war they have been proposing the wholesale displacement of gaza's entire population that idea was shot down by Egypt and the Biden Administration early on in the war now president Trump has come back and presented it as his own plan even in parts of the Israeli left there was a sense that it was a good thing that President Trump was upending decades of
foreign policy convention about the future of Israel and Palestine but all that said the plan to many experts seemed so unworkable that they wondered if even president Trump realized that and if so whether it was simply the opening Gambit in negotiations around the Middle East about the future of [Music] Godin meanwhile Trump's facing a growing number of legal challenges as he tries to aggressively push through his domestic agenda on Tuesday alone FBI staffers sued to stop Trump's team from releasing the names of everyone who worked on the January 6th investigations saying they feared they could
be targeted the treasury Department was hit with a lawsuit after giving Elon musk's Department of government efficiency access to the private information of millions of Americans and a federal judge signed a restraining order temporarily blocking the justice department from moving transgender women into men's prisons which Trump had ordered in all the Trump Administration is now facing more than two dozen lawsuits some legal experts say Trump may be intentionally testing the limits of his power any lawsuits and subsequent appeals could push his policies all the way up to the Supreme Court that could give the conservative
majority there the opportunity to expand Presidential [Music] Power the way many Americans shop online may have just hit a wall under President Trump's new trade rules for China until this week millions of small packages a day had been coming into the US from China with little to know paperwork or Customs checks because of a long-standing exemption on low value shipments that's how online retailers like shien and timu have been able to send vast amounts of cheap clothes and products directly to American customers but now Trump's gotten rid of the exemption in part because of fears
Smugglers have been using small packages to get fentanyl into the US and yesterday the Postal Service stopped accepting all packages from China it's not clear how long the pause will last and the Postal Service wouldn't confirm that it's connected to Trump's new rules but trade experts say the policy change may have caught the postal service off guard and overwhelmed Customs officials who suddenly have to screen Millions more packages Trump's trade war with China is also starting to hit American businesses my colleague Danielle Kay has been looking at the impact of the new 10 % tariffs
on all Chinese Imports when looking at these tariffs and the potential Fallout economists really talk about how this is likely to Ripple through the entire US economy and especially hit small businesses pretty hard so I called a handful of small businesses to get a sense of how they're thinking through how these tariffs might affect their business and and affect their customers tell me a little bit about the business and what you sell yep we are family hardware stores and we sell everything from barbecue girls to traditional Hardware paint and lawning garden one woman I spoke
with her name is Sarah Pitkin she and her sister own four hardware stores in Virginia a lot of goods are made in China some of the specific ones that are really causing concern would be Power Tools because there's a very low margin in power tools and so we make just enough to actually bring them in and put them on the shelf and she said Power Tools barbecue grills electronics parts all those are things where she expects cost to rise because of these tariffs and then because of that she'll be forced to raise prices for her
customers so we have to figure out where that break point is between people still wanting to buy it and still making sales or if we raise the price too much people will shy away from buying it and then we make absolutely [Music] nothing and finally the computer game The Sims turned 25 this week that's a quarter Century of people basically playing God with their little gibberish speaking Sims building them dream houses pushing them to fall in love or leaving them to swim forever in the backyard pool by taking away the ladder The Sims remember that
you did that by the way when the game was first released back in 2000 most computer and video games were linear and goal oriented you played through the levels saved a princess beat the final boss but the Sims was different it was about building a world the unstructuredness was seen as a risk the inventor of the game told the times that when he first proposed it everyone in the room hated the idea the game proved them wrong over the years 500 million people have played it and it paved the way in part for other massively
popular games like Minecraft that are all built around World building and designing your own adventure everybody wants that it seems if you play the latest version of The Sims The Sims can even play The [Music] Sims those are the headlines today on The Daily a look at Elon musk's SL and burn campaign against the federal government that's next in the New York Times audio app or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts I'm Tracy Mumford we'll be back tomorrow
