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UAE advances EU trade deal
Semafor • Dec 12, 2025

UAE advances EU trade deal

The deal will build on the UAE’s more than 30 CEPAs, free-trade-style pacts that incorporate services and other forms of economic cooperation.

Trump Gold/Platinum Card: Amid Immigrant Crackdown, U.S. Sells Visas for Up to $5 Million
Democracy Now • Dec 12, 2025

Trump Gold/Platinum Card: Amid Immigrant Crackdown, U.S. Sells Visas for Up to $5 Million

As the Trump administration expands its immigration crackdown nationwide, President Trump is simultaneously creating new pathways for wealthy noncitizens to obtain U.S. visas. Earlier this week, Trump officially launched a program allowing affluent visitors to fast-track permission to live and work in the United States. For a $1 million payment, applicants can receive a so-called Trump Gold Card, which promises to speed up U.S. residency applications “in record time.” The administration says it will also soon offer a $5 million “Trump Platinum Card” that would allow participants to avoid paying some U.S. taxes. The announcement comes as new rules published this week would require visitors from 42 countries in the visa waiver program to submit up to five years of social media history, along with phone numbers, email addresses and biometric data. Shev Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says the changes show that “if you’re wealthy, if you can pay to play, then you’re welcome to come to the United States. But if you’re not — if you’re coming as a tourist, or you’re coming to seek humanitarian protection — then we’re going to make it much tougher for you to come here and really put a lot of hurdles along the way in the guise of security and vetting.”

"Watched, Tracked & Targeted": Gaza Writer Mohammed Mhawish on Life Under Israeli Surveillance
Democracy Now • Dec 12, 2025

"Watched, Tracked & Targeted": Gaza Writer Mohammed Mhawish on Life Under Israeli Surveillance

Award-winning Palestinian reporter Mohammed Mhawish, who left Gaza last year, joins us to discuss his new piece for New York magazine about Israel’s surveillance practices. It describes how Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza have been watched, tracked and often killed by Israeli forces who have access to their most intimate details, including phone and text records, social relations, biometric data and more. This all-encompassing surveillance system is “reshaping how people speak, how they’re moving, how they’re even thinking,” says Mhawish. “It manufactured behavior for people, so they shrink their lives to reduce risk, they rehearse what version of themselves feels safest to present, and that creates an enormous psychological burden.” Mhawish also describes the terror of when his family’s house was bombed, killing two of his cousins and two neighbors in an attack he says was linked to Israeli surveillance of his reporting activities. “I was being watched and tracked,” he says.

Is Trump the New Nero?
Scheer Post • Dec 12, 2025

Is Trump the New Nero?

The (Immoral) Politics of Authoritarianism and the Bible (Then and Now).

From COVID to Hepatitis to Measles, RFK Jr. Is Gutting Vaccine Science: An Ex-CDC Expert Speaks Out
Democracy Now • Dec 12, 2025

From COVID to Hepatitis to Measles, RFK Jr. Is Gutting Vaccine Science: An Ex-CDC Expert Speaks Out

As Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dramatically reshapes U.S. immunization policy, we speak with Dr. Fiona Havers, a former top vaccine expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who resigned in June. Last week, Kennedy’s handpicked advisers on a federal vaccine panel voted against universal hepatitis B shots for newborns, reversing 35 years of CDC guidance that all newborns receive the vaccine within 24 hours of birth. The Trump administration also recently altered the CDC’s website to include false claims linking autism and vaccines, in keeping with Kennedy’s spreading of vaccine misinformation going back decades. CNN is reporting the FDA is also considering putting a “black box” warning on COVID-19 vaccines. “This administration is causing a lot of confusion and is using, basically, the CDC to spread misinformation now about vaccines,” says Dr. Havers. She also discusses her decision to resign from the CDC and the chaos the Trump administration has caused at the agency, calling RFK Jr.’s changes a “hostile takeover” to advance “anti-science views.”

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