International News Briefs for Friday, July 18, 2025
HAVANA TIMES – Here are some of the top international news stories compiled by Democracy Now on Friday, July 18, 2025.
White House Poised to Claw Back $9B in Foreign Aid, Public Media Funding After House Vote
Jul 18, 2025
The House of Representatives voted 216 to 213 early this morning in favor of President Trump’s rescissions package clawing back $9 billion in already-approved funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting. Only two Republicans opposed the measure, which now heads to Trump’s desk for his signature. The legislation codifies Trump’s cuts to foreign assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the British medical journal The Lancet reports could result in 14 million additional deaths globally by 2030. Katherine Maher, head of NPR, blasted the “unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions, [by] an act of Congress that disregards the public will.” We’ll have more on this later in the broadcast with Loris Taylor, president of Native Public Media, and Congressmember Ro Khanna.
14 Members of Gazan Family Die as Israel Bombs Their Home and Attacks Rescue Efforts
Jul 18, 2025
In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli strike today killed five displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents in al-Mawasi — an area designated a “safe zone” by Israel’s military. The attack sparked a major fire. Infants were among the dead. Separately, Israeli attacks killed seven more hungry Palestinians as they searched for parcels of humanitarian aid. Medical workers report Israeli attacks have killed at least 30 Palestinians since dawn today.
This follows an Israeli airstrike Tuesday on a home in Gaza City’s al-Tuffah neighborhood that killed 14 members of the Arafat family, including seven children. Video shows 35-year-old Hala Arafat trapped under the rubble of her home, crying out for help. Rescue crews attempting to approach the site over the next eight hours were reportedly fired on by Israeli drones; during that time, Hala and other members of her family fell silent and died.
UNICEF: Israel Has Killed Over 17,000 Children in Gaza and Injured 33,000 Others
Jul 18, 2025
The United Nations Children’s Fund warns 21 months of Israeli attacks have killed more than 17,000 children in Gaza, with another 33,000 injured. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell testified to the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday.
Catherine Russell: “An average of 28 children have been killed each day, the equivalent of an entire classroom. Consider that for a moment: a whole classroom of children killed every day for nearly two years. These children are not combatants. They are being killed and maimed as they line up for lifesaving food and medicine.”
Christian Leaders in West Bank Call for Accountability and End to Israeli Settler Violence
Jul 18, 2025
Image Credit: X/@SlavFreeSpirit
In the occupied West Bank, Christian leaders have accused Israeli settlers of attacking religious sites, including an arson attack on a cemetery and a 5th-century church in the Christian town of Taybeh. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III told reporters, “We call for an immediate and transparent investigation on why the Israeli police did not respond to emergency calls from the local community and why these abhorrent actions continue to go unpunished.”
Sectarian Fighting Resumes in Syria’s Suwayda After Latest Ceasefire Effort
Jul 18, 2025
In southern Syria, heavy fighting has once again erupted between Druze fighters and Bedouin armed groups, just hours after Syrian government forces withdrew from the province of Suwayda as part of a ceasefire deal. A spokesperson for Syria’s Interior Ministry is denying reports that Syrian forces are being redeployed to the region. The U.N. Human Rights Office reports all factions fighting in Suwayda have committed widespread rights violations, including summary executions, arbitrary killings, kidnappings and looting.
Trump Moves to Release Some Epstein Documents But Fails to Allay MAGA Revolt
Jul 18, 2025
President Trump says he’s directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to release grand jury testimony from federal investigations into the deceased serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But Trump’s announcement failed to quench a revolt among his MAGA supporters who are continuing to demand the Justice Department release all files related to Epstein. On Thursday, the White House ruled out having Trump name a special prosecutor to look into the case.
Meanwhile, Republicans on the House Rules Committee adopted a nonbinding resolution calling for the release of files on Epstein. Separately on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported Trump sent a lewd letter to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 wishing him a happy 50th birthday. It concludes, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Senate Republicans Cut Off Debate to Advance Judicial Nomination of Trump Loyalist Emil Bove
Jul 18, 2025
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to advance the nomination of controversial Justice Department official Emil Bove to a lifetime appointment on a federal court. The vote came despite vocal objections from Democrats after committee Chair Chuck Grassley shut off debate on Bove’s nomination. All Democrats on the panel walked out of the vote in protest. Earlier this week, over 75 former federal and state judges sent a bipartisan letter urging the Judiciary Committee to reject Bove’s nomination. Separately, more than 900 former Justice Department attorneys issued a similar plea. Bove has been called an “extreme ideologue” and has allegedly directed Justice Department lawyers to ignore judicial orders that undermine Trump’s agenda. This is Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: “As to Emil Bove, let me start with this nominee having told a room full of Department of Justice lawyers that if the federal courts didn’t back off on restricting unlawful deportations, they would have to tell courts, ‘F you.’”
Democrats also accuse Bove of being involved in a Justice Department decision not to release the Epstein files. Bove is Trump’s former personal lawyer.
ICE Will Have Access to Personal Medicaid Data
Jul 18, 2025
As the Trump administration ramps up nationwide raids and deportations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s nearly 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including their home address, Social Security number, ethnicity and race. The new agreement was first reported by the Associated Press, and Trump officials have not publicly announced it. Undocumented immigrants are already banned from Medicaid benefits, but federal law requires all states to offer emergency Medicaid, which offers nearly free coverage for lifesaving care at hospitals regardless of a person’s immigration status.
Immigrant Rights Groups Sue over ICE Courthouse Arrests
Jul 18, 2025
A coalition of immigrant rights groups are suing the Trump administration over the arrest of potentially thousands of people at immigration courts nationwide in recent months. The class-action lawsuit seeks to end ongoing collaboration between the Homeland Security and Justice Departments which has led to ICE agents swarming courthouses across the country, ambushing immigrants during routine hearings. The groups said the policy “intentionally stripped people of basic due process rights … in order to place them in expedited removal proceedings and deport them without hearings.”
ICE Targets Sex Workers in Mounting Raids
Jul 18, 2025
A Truthout investigation warns of intensifying police and ICE raids at massage parlors nationwide, targeting and disappearing hundreds of immigrant sex workers, including here in New York. Advocates have criticized the lack of resources supporting immigrant sex workers, who have long been vulnerable to harassment and arrest by federal immigration agents, often abandoned in detention to face deportation without legal help.
Anti-Corruption Watchdog Flees El Salvador Amid Crackdown
Jul 18, 2025
A human rights group in El Salvador reports at least 427 people have died in Salvadoran prisons since President Nayib Bukele imposed a “state of emergency” in March 2022. The following year, Bukele’s government authorized mass trials, with people accused of crimes systematically denied due process under the guise of combating gangs. There have been numerous reports of abuse and torture in El Salvador’s prisons.
In related news, the long-standing anti-corruption watchdog Cristosal says it has evacuated its staff from El Salvador amid Bukele’s crackdown on dissent. Authorities arrested prominent Cristosal lawyer Ruth López in May. She remains in detention. This is Cristosal’s executive director, Noah Bullock.
Noah Bullock: “You know, we have persisted through espionage monitoring, legal administrative harassment, defamation, but when it became clear that the government was prepared to persecute us criminally and that there’s no possibility of defense or an impartial trial, that makes it unviable to take those risks anymore.”
French Troops Withdraw from Senegal, Ending Permanent Presence
Jul 18, 2025
French troops completed their withdrawal from Senegal Thursday, the last West African country and former colony where France maintained a permanent military presence. Senegal has said it will continue collaborating with France, in contrast to the military governments of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, which ousted French forces in recent years.
DOJ Requests One-Day Sentence for Louisville Cop Convicted over Breonna Taylor’s Killing
Jul 18, 2025
The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to sentence a former Louisville, Kentucky, police officer, convicted of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor, to one day in prison. Last year, a federal jury convicted Brett Hankison for using excessive force as he discharged several gunshots through Taylor’s apartment window during a botched raid that killed Taylor inside her own home in 2020. Taylor was a Black, 26-year-old emergency room technician, whose killing sparked nationwide racial justice protests.
Judge Lifts Domestic Travel Restrictions on Columbia Student Activist Mohsen Mahdawi
Jul 18, 2025
Image Credit: Amanda Swinhart/AP
A judge has lifted all domestic travel restrictions on Columbia University Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi. He’s reportedly the first student activist targeted by ICE to be granted such freedoms. Mahdawi was arrested by federal immigration agents in April and detained in Vermont for over two weeks.
CBS Cancels “The Late Show” After Stephen Colbert Skewers $16 Million Settlement with Trump
Jul 18, 2025
CBS has announced it’s canceling the long-running “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” The network called it “purely a financial decision,” despite the show being consistently the highest rated among its late-night competitors. Trump has previously called Colbert, who frequently skewers the president on air, “a complete and total loser.” The news came amid CBS parent company Paramount’s impending and controversial merger with Skydance, and just three days after Colbert called out Paramount for agreeing to pay Donald Trump $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
Stephen Colbert: “As someone who has long been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.”
CBS’s “The Late Show” has been on the air since 1993, with Colbert taking the reins in 2015.