Political leaders across the world voice their disapproval of Trump’s travel ban, U.S. soldiers killed in Yemen, Myanmar's ruling party lawyer is shot and killed at an airport, and the Philippines bombs suspected terrorists.
Fuad Sharef Suleman shows his USA visa to the media after returning to Iraq from Egypt.
Ahmed Saad / Reuters
—Some U.S. politicians on both sides of the aisle and world leaders voice their disapproval of Trump’s travel ban that targets seven majority-Muslim countries.
—U.S. soldiers targeting al-Qaeda militants in Yemen died in an operation, the first casualties of Trump’s administration.
—The legal adviser to Myanmar's ruling National League for Democracy was shot and killed by a gunman at the airport.
—The Philippines killed 15 Muslim militants in the country’s south with targeted airstrikes.
—We’re tracking the news stories of the day below. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5).
Gunmen killed at least five people at a mosque in Quebec City who had come for a Sunday evening prayer service, according to the mosques’ president. About 40 people were inside the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center, located in the Sainte-Foy neighborhood, and two suspects have been arrested. Police have set up a perimeter surrounding the area. Quebec has seen increased incidence of Islamophobia in recent years, particularly after a 2015 political debate over whether the city should ban the niqab, a Muslim face covering; The majority of the city was in favor of the ban. This same mosque was the focus of an investigation in June, after a severed pig’s head was dropped at its doorstep, wrapped and left with the message, “Bon appétit."
The negative reaction to President Donald Trump’s ban on travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries came in the form of protest in cities across the country, at airports, and in the form of donations to The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), whose lawyers have filed suits against the ban.
Throughout the weekend lawyers with the human rights organization met banned travelers at airports all over the country, and in several cities they filed injunctions against Trump’s executive order, winning stays from federal judges.
From Saturday to late Sunday more than 290,000 donors had sent the ACLU $19 million—the organizations typical annual average is $3 million. That figure, as well as the growth in membership, was “unprecedented,” according to Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director.
The donations were supported in part through social media, where celebrities like the singer Sia, and actor Rosie O’Donnell offered to match donations to the ACLU of up to $100,000. Tech companies like Lyft pledged to donate $1million to the ACLU, and tech investors like Chris Sacca, an early backer of Uber and Instagram, matched up to $150,000.
The French Left Chooses Benoit Hamon as the Socialist Presidential Candidate
Christian Hartmann / Reuters
In France’s primary vote to determine who will run for president under the Socialist Party’s banner, voters handed the election to the traditional leftist Benoit Hamon. His win is a rebuke of the more-centrist policies of his rival, Manuel Valls, a former prime minister. Polls give Hamon little chance of winning the two-stage presidential election, with votes in both April and and May. Analysts believe his victory will likely turn more moderate leftists to vote for Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old independent centrist and former economy minister who wants to bridge the Left and the Right. Macron, however, is polled behind both Conservative Francois Fillon, and the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who are both seen as most likely to face off in May. The Socialist Party has suffered massive unpopularity after the presidency of Francois Hollande, who was criticised for U-turns on major policies, and because of several high-profile terrorist attacks, was perceived as unable to keep the country safe
Protests Against Trump's Executive Order Spread Nationwide
Trish Badger / Reuters
Late into the night on Saturday, protesters flooded airports around the country to condemn President Trump’s executive order on immigrants and refugees.
On Sunday, they flooded American cities.
Protesters seemed to have multiple goals as they carted banners and signs to various metropolitan downtowns: to tell the brand-new president that his executive order restricting immigration and refugees was un-American; to decry Trump and his top advisers personally; and to demonstrate to the world that U.S. citizens are actively rejecting the new policy.
The protesters came by the thousands, and by Sunday mid-afternoon showed little sign of dispersing. For some cities, this was the second straight weekend they’d seen massive protests: Last Saturday, women’s marches were held in the United States and internationally to protest Trump and his new administration.
In Washington, D.C., demonstrators on Sunday took their chants to Trump’s new Pennsylvania Avenue hotel—and down the street to Lafayette Square, just outside his White House. Here are scenes from some of the protests:
An estimated 1,200 people at Turner Park protest today against Trump's executive order on immigration, W-H reporter says. Full story later. pic.twitter.com/iMAik7YSUp
Protest happening along Avenida De Las Americas in front of the GRB Convention Center. It is a peaceful protest with security everywhere. pic.twitter.com/S5KF64uYGU
Philippine Airstrike Gravely Injures the Top ISIS Leader in Southeast Asia
Bullit Marquez / AP
Philippine military leaders confirmed Sunday that an airstrike in the country’s south killed 15 Muslim militants with ties to ISIS, and seriously injured an Indonesian leader considered one of Southeast Asia’s top terror suspects. Isnilon Hapilon, who is also known as Mohisen, is the leader of Abu Sayyaf, a group of militants notorious in the region for kidnapping tourists and holding them for ransom. Last year the group beheaded two captured Canadian tourists, and the U.S. has placed a $5 million bounty on Hapilon’s head. Philippine military Chief of Staff General Eduardo Ano said Hapilon was believed to be seriously injured, and is somewhere on the outskirts of Butig, a town in the country’s mountainous south, which has long been a haven for extremists. Jet fighters carried out the strikes, dropping six 500-pound bombs Wednesday night and Thursday on the group’s encampment. Officials said that while Hapilon has not yet been captured, their intelligence says he is being moved around on a stretcher by his followers, who are surrounded by Filipino troops.
Protesters Outside the White House Chant Against Trump's Immigration Order
(Elaine Godfrey / The Atlantic)
Protesters have filled Lafayette Square outside the White House in Washington, D.C., in response to the executive order on immigration that President Trump signed Friday that severely restricts immigration from seven Muslim countries, suspends all refugee admission for 120 days, and bars all Syrian refugees indefinitely. Since they can’t get close to the White House, protesters are lining Madison Place, and climbing the steps of the nearby U.S. Court of Federal Claims. They’re chanting “Let them in” and “No hate no fear, refugees are welcome here.” A few are shouting “Fire Bannon,” a reference to Steve Bannon, the president’s chief strategist and senior counselor. After every round of chants, the crowd breaks out into cheers. On the perimeter of the square, I caught a young man named Tom, wrapped in the American flag, sprinting to the protest. The immigration order is, “just disgusting,” he said, and kept running. Four Iranians who said they had green cards told me they were afraid their family members won’t be able to visit them—and they won’t be able to see their relatives. One woman, who said her name was Mehnoosh, brought her two daughters to the protest. She cried telling me she isn’t sure her sister, who was supposed to be visiting soon, will be able to get in. “I’m very sad ... I’ve been crying the past few days.”
The First Combat Casualty of the Trump Administration
Fawaz Salman / Reuters
A U.S. soldier was killed Sunday in a raid in Yemen that targeted local al-Qaeda militants, making it the first casualty of President Donald Trump’s administration. The soldier was a member of a Navy Seal unit, and three others U.S. soldiers were injured during the crash-landing of their aircraft, which was later intentionally destroyed. The operation’s goal was to collect intelligence, including computer equipment, that was believed to be linked to possible future attacks. The local wing of al-Qaeda in Yemen, which is in the midst of a civil war, has proved a powerful threat. The U.S. has mostly relied upon drone strikes to fight militants in the area, and this operation had reportedly been planned for months. It received authorization by Trump, The Washington Postreported. Fourteen militants died in a firefight with U.S. soldiers, and there are reports of more than a dozen dead civilians.
U.K. Citizens Start a Petition Against Trump, and Other Reactions to the Travel Ban
Kate Munsch / Reuters
President Donald Trump and his administration stood defiant Sunday, despite growing, global criticism over his travel ban. Some world leaders have weighed in on the executive order, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She said on Sunday that she is “convinced that the necessary, decisive battle against terrorism does not justify a general suspicion against people of a certain origin or a certain religion.” Similarly, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain does not support Trump’s ban, and citizens there started an online government petition titled "Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom." Its text reads, in part, that Trump’s "well-documented misogyny and vulgarity disqualifies him from being received" by Queen Elizabeth or Prince Charles. By Sunday at 1 p.m., nearly a half-million people had signed the petition, well beyond the 100,000 signatures needed for parliament to consider it. Among members of the U.S. Congress, the ban is also getting pushback. Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman said: "I think we should slow down.” Arizona Republican Senator John McCain said “it’s been a very confusing process,” and that it would likely “give ISIS some more propaganda." Meanwhile, Trump’s team seems unfazed. A top adviser and former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said Sunday on Fox News that the order was about "preventing, not detaining," and said not many people had been impacted by the travel ban. The day before, she’d tweeted this:
Get used to it. @POTUS is a man of action and impact.
Promises made, promises kept.
Shock to the system.
And he's just getting started https://t.co/AoUsZWClXt
The populist right has portrayed New College as a notorious example of indoctrination in higher education—a narrative that does not withstand scrutiny.
Before this year, life at New College of Florida could feel like a retreat into a pleasantly forgotten corner of the country. Students walked on paths that wound past wisps of Spanish moss and a stately banyan tree to a park on Sarasota Bay, where the outside world often felt as distant as the sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico. Then on January 6, Ron DeSantis, Florida’s popular Republican governor, seized control of the college by appointing six new members to its board of trustees.
Suddenly, the Sarasota campus found itself at the center of the culture wars. A DeSantis spokesman declared that the college had been “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.” Christopher Rufo, the most outspoken new trustee, vowed to take it back. “We are now over the walls and ready to transform higher education from within,” he tweeted. In New College, Rufo saw every excess of “wokeness” in academia. He believes that critical theorists spent decades pursuing the “ideological capture” of universities, installing “coercive ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ programs.” At New College, he charges, the students and faculty faced something like “a hostage situation.”
Many calls and messages now count as a “visit” that you could be charged for.
The pandemic initiated a slew of transformations, and though many have not stuck, one indisputably has: Telehealth is booming in America. This golden age of electronic engagement has one massive benefit—doctors are more accessible than ever. Unfortunately, this virtue is also proving to be telehealth’s biggest problem. For patients, being able to reach their doctors by video visit, phone call, or email is incredibly convenient, but physicians have been overwhelmed by the constant communication. This cost is now being shifted back to the patients, and almost every interaction with a doctor, no matter how casual, counts as some form of “visit” now.
At the start of the pandemic, telehealth was lauded as the beginningofarevolutioninmedicine. Patients quickly became adept at using online portals to reach their doctors, frequently writing to them with quick questions or concerns in between visits. But when in-person visits largely resumed, this higher volume of online messaging did not go away. In fact, it did not even seem to decrease. And though a video appointment and office visit might be interchangeable in a doctor’s daily schedule, busy physicians found themselves with little time to respond to those smaller communications.
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A grand jury has reportedly indicted Donald Trump on criminal charges stemming from his role in a hush-money payoff to the porn star Stormy Daniels. This historic event is a tragedy for the American republic not because of what it has revealed about Trump, but because of what it is revealing about us as voters and citizens.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Trump’s indictment presents Republicans, and all Americans, with a clear choice.
The first Catholic. The first African American. Someday, maybe soon, the first woman. The history of the presidency is a history of firsts. Now there is one more: the first former president to be indicted.
It’s a solemn and sad moment. It’s also a fiercely just moment.
Remember that although Donald Trump’s indictment in New York has been confirmed by one of his attorneys, we do not yet know, as of the evening of Thursday, March 30, what he has been indicted for. When Trump himself circulated the first rumors of his pending indictment, many reacted with rapid comments on the inadvisability of indicting a former president for offenses arising from a sexual affair, a reservation I share. But it’s also possible that this reported indictment arises from the Trump Organization’s decades-long practices of criminal tax fraud.
Owning a home won’t make you happy. Filling it with love will.
“How to Build a Life” is a column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.
Are you looking to buy a house in 2023? Welcome to hell. The average 30-year mortgage rate has approximately doubled in the past year, following a nearly 8 percent increase in average home prices the year before. How does a two-bedroom fixer-upper a block from the airport sound? It’s just 40 percent over your price range.
Choosing whether and where to buy a home is nerve-racking even if your only concern is your wallet. But the decision is also, in no small part, an emotional one. When I was buying my first home, I remember a stew of feelings: the pride of owning such a huge physical thing (well, 20 percent of that thing—the bank owned the rest); the aggravation of working with a realtor who was angling to run up the price; the fear that I was buying at the wrong time (I was) and would lose money in the end (I did). I also felt excited, because I expected that owning that house would improve my happiness, although I couldn’t say exactly how or why.
The field has long shied away from describing artifacts as sexual. But things may finally be changing.
Just south of Hadrian’s Wall, the ancient stone barrier that cuts across England from coast to coast, is a Roman fort called Vindolanda. Built around 85 A.D. and occupied for more than 300 years, Vindolanda was the tense interstice between empire and unoccupied frontier—a largely self-contained city at the edge of the Roman world. Today, surrounded by green, picturesque countryside, it is a wellspring of insight into the human past.
Thousands of wooden objects have been found at Vindolanda, most of them mundane—bits of wheels, remnants of furniture, a toilet seat. Rob Sands, an assistant professor in archaeology at University College Dublin, was recently examining these objects for an upcoming exhibit when he came across one particular artifact and did a double take. The artifact’s official description labeled it as a darning tool, a crafting device that helps secure fibers and can be shaped like a mushroom or maraca. But to Sands, the “darning tool” looked much more like a wooden penis.
Where do shoppers turn when an industry built on novelty runs out of new ideas?
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Nearly half a decade has elapsed since I last worked in the fashion industry, but one thing from my previous career remains a compulsion to this day: I look at people’s purses. In the brain space that might otherwise be occupied by dear childhood memories or the dates and times of future doctor appointments, I tend to an apparently undeletable mental spreadsheet of who is carrying what. Bottega Veneta Cassette, green padded leather, Soho, 20-something woman. Louis Vuitton Pochette Métis, logo canvas, Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway stop, 40-ish woman. For 10 years, these data points informed my obsessive, detailed coverage of the luxury-handbag market. Now they just accumulate. Rarely do I see something I can’t place.
The situation might be merely crass if not for the shadow of violence hanging over it.
For months now, it has been apparent that Donald Trump might well become the first former president of the United States to be indicted. Now the once unthinkable has taken place. A grand jury in Manhattan has handed up an indictment of Donald Trump over his alleged coordination of hush-money payments in advance of the 2016 election. The indictment itself remains under seal.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. For one thing, it wasn’t supposed to happen today. Trump himself had announced earlier this month that he expected to be “arrested” on March 21; on the basis of what information was never clear. For another, of all the ongoing investigations into Trump—and there are many—the Manhattan probe is one of the least legally and factually straightforward. And yet, as is so often the case with Trumpian matters, the most outlandish outcome has somehow managed to come true.
It is hard for me not to think of my father’s death as a kind of negligent homicide, facilitated and sped by the United States’ broken safety net and strained systems of care.
His death certificate doesn’t tell me how he died. The causes of death are listed as “end-stage renal failure,” “diabetes mellitus,” “hypertension.” Yet I have no idea what forced my father’s body to shut down, his heart to stop, on that given night.
He’d had a cold, my mother told me, and had gone to bed early in the spare bedroom so he wouldn’t keep her awake with his coughing. Did his cough give way to a silent heart attack? she wondered. We know more about what did not happen than what did. At no time did he shout for help, or cry out in pain. There was no harsh death rattle, no deep gasps for a final breath he couldn’t find. My mother sat not 10 feet away from him on the other side of a thin wall, reading a book; if he had called out for her, made any sound of distress, she would have heard, and gone to him.
A man of borderless corruption must prepare to face the consequences.
We can’t seem to escape his dark shadow.
Donald Trump has added another shameful chapter in the life of this nation. On Thursday he became the first ex-president to be indicted, by a New York grand jury investigating alleged hush-money payments to a porn star.
The wisdom of the indictment depends in large part on the facts of the case, which right now we know very little about. Is this a selective prosecution, which would be a grave injustice, or is the evidence in this case strong and the indictment, if made against a Donald Jones rather than Donald Trump, defensible? We’ll learn more about the answers to these questions in the days and weeks and months ahead.
If the full ramifications of the indictment are impossible to know at this point, there are some things we can count on. One of them is that in the short term, the indictment will inflame our politics, further outrage the former president’s supporters, and create in them an even greater sense of grievance and vengeance. This will become their rallying cry; Trump will become their martyr.
