Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed the media about attacks on merchant ships in the Persian Gulf, placing the blame on Iran. | Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images
But the administration is looking to pressure the clerical regime, not fight it, a senior official said.
The Trump administration and its domestic political allies are laying the groundwork for a possible confrontation with Iran without the explicit consent of Congress — a public relations campaign that was already well under way before top officials accused the Islamic Republic of attacking a pair of oil tankers last week in the Gulf of Oman.
Over the past few months, senior Trump aides have made the case in public and private that the administration already has the legal authority to take military action against Iran, citing a law nearly two decades old that was originally intended to authorize the war in Afghanistan.
Story Continued Below
In the latest sign of escalating tensions, National Security Adviser John Bolton warned Iran in an interview conducted last week and published Monday, “They would be making a big mistake if they doubted the president’s resolve on this.” Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan announced on Monday evening that the U.S. was deploying an additional 1,000 troops to the region for “defensive purposes.” And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo jetted to Tampa, home of Central Command, on Monday evening to huddle with military officials to discuss “regional security concerns and ongoing operations,” according to a State Department spokeswoman.
The developments came as Iran announced it was on course to violate a core element of its nuclear deal with major world powers, exceeding the amount of enriched uranium allowed under the agreement in 10 days unless European nations intervened to blunt the economic pain of American sanctions. And they came as U.S. officials promoted video footage and images showing what they say were Iranian forces planting explosive devices on commercial oil tankers.
Yet even as the president’s hawkish advisers have highlighted Iran’s alleged bad behavior, administration officials privately stressed that direct military action remained highly unlikely absent an Iranian attack on an American ship or an American citizen. The president, who campaigned against getting the U.S. bogged down in unnecessary foreign wars, is considered the primary internal obstacle to a counterattack, officials said, noting that Trump continues to press for an improved nuclear deal.
Still, to the alarm of Democrats and some Republicans, Pompeo has suggested that if the administration does take military action, it might rely on the 2001 congressional bill that greenlighted America’s military response to the 9/11 attacks to strike Iran. Asked Sunday by CBS host Margaret Brennan whether the administration believed it had the authority to initiate military action, Pompeo would say only, “Every option we look at will be fully lawful.”
And Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a close ally of the administration, urged the president to attack Iran outright — adding that he didn’t need permission from Congress. “Unprovoked attacks on commercial shipping warrant a retaliatory military strike,” Cotton told Brennan. “The president has the authorization to act to defend American interests,” he said.
But in a sign of some unease among other Republicans, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told POLITICO that she expected to discuss the legitimacy of that justification — and of military retaliation itself — with her Senate colleagues this week.
Trump has sent conflicting messages about his own intentions — one day signaling his desire to negotiate with the clerical regime in Tehran, the next dismissing Iran as unready for serious talks. “While I very much appreciate P.M. Abe going to Iran to meet with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” Trump tweeted last Thursday, “I personally feel that it is too soon to even think about making a deal. They are not ready, and neither are we!”
“The regime in Tehran is testing American patience with violence in the Gulf,” said Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “The administration now has to weigh its options.”
In some of Pompeo’s recent pronouncements, many on the left, and a few on the right, see the Trump team paving a path to war.
In April, the State Department named the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization, a legal designation that some fear could be used to link the elite paramilitary force with al Qaeda. Later, Pompeo also said Iran had “instigated” a May 31 suicide attack on a U.S. convoy in Afghanistan, even though the Taliban claimed credit for the incident.
Pressed by CBS’s Brennan on Sunday, Pompeo reiterated the claim. “[W]e have confidence that Iran instigated this attack,” he said. “I can’t share any more of the intelligence. But I wouldn’t have said it if the intelligence community hadn’t become convinced that this was the case.”
The secretary of state’s efforts to link Iran and al Qaeda and to terrorism more broadly have become a flashpoint in multiple congressional hearings this spring — and they have taken on renewed significance given the growing possibility of a military confrontation between the two countries.
“It’s not surprising that you have a kind of revisitation of the AUMF because here you have what looks like the potential for a kind of real escalation,” said Dennis Ross, the veteran Middle East negotiator, referring to the 2001 bill that authorized military action against any national or individual involved in the 9/11 attacks.
“In the 2001 AUMF, there’s actually no real relationship to this,” Ross added. “It certainly didn’t name Iran and there comes a point where many in Congress want to have oversight over getting into a shooting war with Iran.”
As the president’s senior national security advisers huddled on Monday to consider how to respond to Iran, it was unclear how close the U.S. was inching to military action. Schanzer, for one, cast skepticism on an unattributed report in the Jerusalem Post on Monday that the U.S. had drawn up plans for a limited bombing campaign against an Iranian nuclear facility.
A senior administration official said Monday that the goal of the administration’s maximum pressure policy remains forcing the regime back to the table to negotiate a new and improved nuclear deal.
Iran has thus far been careful to avoid attacks on American vessels — an internal administration red line that would force a military response, this official said. Administration allies including FDD’s chief executive, Mark Dubowitz, said that while he expects U.S. sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to increase, it is less clear whether military action will result absent a direct attack against an American ship or an American citizen.
The president himself is caught between competing impulses: his disdain for the 2015 deal the Obama administration struck with Iran and his desire to strike a contrast, on the one hand, and his reluctance to get into another war in the Middle East on the other. He has long been more skittish than his hawkish advisers about ratcheting up tensions, but he sent a blunt warning to Iran’s leaders last month that “If they do anything it would be a very bad mistake.”
Last week, two lawmakers — Trump ally Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Democrat Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) — said that Pompeo had invoked the 2001 AUMF in a closed-door briefing with lawmakers about Iran, suggesting the administration could use it as a legal justification for war.
“We were absolutely presented with a full formal presentation on how the 2001 AUMF might authorize war on Iran,” Slotkin said. “Secretary Pompeo said it with his own words.”
Exiting an earlier closed-door briefing on May 21 by acting defense secretary Shanahan, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) told reporters, “What I heard in there makes it clear that this administration feels that they do not have to come back and talk to Congress in regards to any action they do in Iran.”
The Trump administration’s case against Iran has rested in part on the argument that it has supported al Qaeda. Announcing the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2017, for example, Trump said that the country “supports terrorist proxies and militias,” including al Qaeda.
“Iran’s connection to al Qaeda is very real,” Pompeo told lawmakers in April. “They have hosted al Qaeda, they have permitted al Qaeda to transit their country. There is no doubt there is a connection between the Islamic Republican of Iran and al Qaeda. Period. Full stop.”
When Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pushed Pompeo in that hearing to pledge that the administration would not rely on the 18-year old war authorization to attack Iran, the secretary demurred, saying that he would “prefer to leave that to the lawyers.”
“I can tell you explicitly you have not been given power or authority by Congress to have a war with Iran and in any kind of semblance of a sane world you would have to come back and ask us before you go into Iran,” Paul retorted.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who was the only member of Congress to vote against the AUMF back in 2001, included an amendment repealing the provision in the defense appropriations bill currently being debated on the House floor. Her legislation would repeal the AUMF eight months after the appropriations bill becomes law, providing time, she has argued, for Congress to properly debate and vote on a replacement bill.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last month that the administration could not rely on the 2001 law to take military action in Iran, and more than 100 House Democrats followed up on her remarks by penning a letter to the president making a similar case.
“They cannot call the authorization, AUMF, the authorization for the use of military force that was passed in 2001, as any authorization to go forward in the Middle East now,” Pelosi said at a press conference in May.
Several Democratic presidential candidates have made similar comments. “If the administration wants to go to war against Iran, then the Constitution requires them to come to Congress to ask for an authorization for the use of military force,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), told The Intercept on Friday, calling it “Constitutional Law 101.”
In his campaign’s maiden foreign policy speech, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg argued for repealing and replacing the 2001 law in order to narrow its scope — an idea that has gained traction among some Democrats.
Some Republicans, however, say the administration could respond without getting a stamp of approval from Congress, drawing comparisons to the Reagan administration’s decision in 1987 to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers from Iranian attacks in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war. Because U.S. law prohibits the use of Navy ships to escort foreign vessels, the Kuwaiti ships flew American naval flags.
“Reagan ended up sinking about half the Iranian Navy,” said Eric Edelman, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy in the George W. Bush administration. “Admittedly, it was a small navy, but they noticed.”
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has tested negative for the novel coronavirus, the White House announced on Saturday evening.
The president’s physician, Sean P. Conley, said in a memo released by the White House that Trump decided to get tested on Friday after they conferred about matter. The virus is officially called COVID-19.
“Last night after an in-depth discussion with the president regarding COVID-19 testing, he elected to proceed,” the president’s physician, Sean P. Conley, wrote in a memorandum released by the White House Saturday evening.
“This evening I received confirmation that the test is negative,” Conley wrote.
Trump announced at a press briefing on Saturday that he had been tested for coronavirus following his recent exposure to two Brazilian officials who later tested positive for the virus.
Trump, who said his temperature was “totally normal,” told reporters he took the test Friday night but that it would take a few days to get the results because the test was sent to a lab.
Trump took the test around the time a White House doctor issued a statement saying the president does not need to get tested or self-quarantined for coronavirus because he had not exhibited any symptoms.
Trump is at low risk for the coronavirus because his contacts with one of the officials “was extremely limited (photographs, handshake),” and his interaction with the second person “occurred before any symptom onset,” Conley wrote in a letter released late Friday.
The president had said earlier on Friday at a news conference in the Rose Garden that he would “most likely” be tested for coronavirus “fairly soon.” He was pressed on the matter after it emerged that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s communications secretary tested positive for the virus. During his remarks, Trump continued to grip hands with business executives and health officials who continue to tell Americans one of the first lines of defense against the spread is to stop shaking hands.
Moderate Democrats are fuming over New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s closed-door warning last week that Democrats who vote with Republicans are “putting themselves on a list” – a comment interpreted as a primary challenge threat.
Ocasio-Cortez has since downplayed her comments, made in the wake of 26 Democrats joining Republicans to vote for a provision requiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be notified if illegal immigrants attempt to purchase guns.
“Being unified means ensuring that Democrats aren’t primary-ing other sitting Democrats,” Gottheimer told The Washington Post. “Since when is it okay to put you on a Nixonian list? We need to have a big tent in our party or we won’t keep the House or win the White House.”
The brouhaha began last week when two-dozen moderate Democrats broke from their party’s progressive wing and sided with Republicans on a legislative amendment having to do with illegal immigrants and guns.
In a closed-door meeting afterward, according to The Washington Post, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scolded her wayward center-leaning colleagues, telling them: “We are either a team or we’re not.”
Ocasio-Cortez then told fellow Democrats that those who voted with Republicans were “putting themselves on a list.” Ocasio-Cortez later claimed she wasn’t talking about a list for primary challenges.
“I didn’t say that they were putting themselves on a list for primaries,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “I said that by Dems distinguishing themselves by breaking off on procedural…votes, they were inadvertently making a list of targets for the GOP and for progressive advocates on their pro-ICE vote.”
Reacting to Ocasio-Cortez’s comments, one party strategist who works for moderate Democrats argued Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t “respect” the views of other Democrats who don’t embrace her progressive politics.
“My main gripe about AOC is that while I respect her voice in the party, I don’t think she respects mine or anyone else’s who differs with her on policy or comes from a different political electoral reality,” said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster in Alabama.
There’s been speculation since she was elected to Congress that Ocasio-Cortez could get involved in Democratic primary fights in 2020, especially with the group Justice Democrats signaling plans to primary incumbent Democrats they see as insufficiently progressive. Ocasio-Cortez has been aligned with that group.
It’s a tactic that has been embraced by some conservative groups and politicians on the right, especially during the 2010 and 2012 elections, when incumbent lawmakers in the House and Senate were ousted in primaries by conservative challengers.
Fox News’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
Unfortunately as of today, on our seven-day rolling average for coronavirus positivity, New York City has hit exactly 3.0 percent. And as a result, we do need to close our schools for the coming days. No one is happy about this decision. We all, in fact, are feeling very sad about this decision because so much good work has been put into keeping the schools opened — and opening them up to begin with, let’s start there, opening the schools when almost no other major school system in America opened, making them so safe. But we set a very clear standard. And we need to stick to that standard. And I want to emphasize to parents, to educators, to staff, to kids, that we intend to come back and come back as quickly as possible. We are working right now with the state of New York. And that was a lot of what we talked about this morning. I had a number of conversations with the governor, and our teams have been talking throughout the morning on exactly what it would take to come back and bring our schools back quickly, and it will be a higher standard. I want that to be clear, we have a stringent health and safety standard right now. We’re going to have to raise that up even higher to be able to bring our schools back. But that’s exactly what we intend to do. The state, the governor and I spoke several times. Obviously he has laid out some of the additional measures the state likely will be taking quite soon in New York City, additional restrictions across the board that will affect a number of different industries, a number of different parts of life of this city because we are dealing with a bigger problem. All over New York City and state, all over the country, the region. We have to do more to fight back this second wave. So the state has made very clear, additional restrictions are coming and coming soon.
3. Durante el habitual programa de Jorge Lanata en Radio Mitre, la producción y sus compañeros le festejaron con un enorme despligue los 57 años al periodista, con la participación de La Mosca, que cantó en vivo, además de personajes disfrazados de Barney, Minion y princesas de Disney.
5. El presidente de Boca Juniors, Daniel Angelici consideró hoy “muy difícil” un inminente regreso de Carlos Tevez aún tras la marginación del equipo por parte del nuevo entrenador, aunque abrió expectativas de cara a fin de año.
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com.
DALLAS – Once again, the biggest draw will go last.
Just as he did at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando in February, former President Donald Trump will close this weekend’s CPAC gathering in Texas by delivering the event’s headliner speech.
The American Conservative Union, which organizes the largest and most influential annual gathering of conservative activists and leaders, says that the former president will be the last major speaker at the three-day CPAC gathering in Dallas. Trump is scheduled to address the crowd at 3:35 p.m. CT.
Asked about the former president’s address, Trump’s eldest son teased that “with my father, you never know, right.”
“I can assure you it’s going to be interesting. I can assure you people will be outraged,” Donald Trump Jr. said in an interview with Fox News on Friday, ahead of his own speech at CPAC.
The conference comes as Trump, five-and-a-half months removed from the White House, remains extremely popular with Republican voters and continues to hold sway over GOP politicians, as he plays a kingmaker role in party politics and flirts repeatedly with another presidential run in 2024.
The conference also comes amid Trump’s most active schedule of events since the end of his presidency.
The former president traveled to Ohio two weeks ago to hold his first campaign style rally since leaving the White House. And he held a second rally a week later in Sarasota, Florida.
He also teamed up with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott at an event along the U.S.-Mexico border, in front of an unfinished portion of the border wall begun during his tenure in the White House. And this past week he held a news conference at his golf club in New Jersey to announce a lawsuit against Facebook, Google and Twitter, which have banned him from posting on their social media platforms.
Former president Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
At his recent rallies, Trump took aim at his successor. He slammed President Biden, as he spotlighted the issues of crime and immigration, charging that “our streets are being overtaken by vicious thugs and bloodthirsty criminals,” and claiming that “our border is being erased before our very eyes.”
Trump also spotlighted the culture wars, arguing that “Critical Race Theory is being shoved down our children’s throats and into the ranks of our military.” And he zeroed in on the political battle over transgender rights, emphasizing that “men are allowed to play in women’s sports, so unfair, so crazy.”
Expect similar language on Sunday, as Trump addresses CPAC.
American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp told Fox News that Trump will also use his speech to emphasize “the fight against Big Tech and the fight against illegal immigration – the fight to fire Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.”
“I think he’s got masterful plan to do that, and I think that he’ll be sharing that with folks,” Schlapp said.
Fox Nation is a sponsor of CPAC and will be streaming live speeches from the most influential conservatives at CPAC 2021: America Uncanceled. Sign up on foxnation.com to hear their message to America.
Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate in Houston confirmed what we already knew: Beto O’Rourke needs to sit down, face reality, and drop out.
From the beginning of his presidential campaign, O’Rourke has come across as smug rather than substantive. A mediocre man and example of “white privilege” if there ever was one, the sheer audacity of his campaign launch was astounding: Imagine losing a Senate race, but thinking you somehow then deserve to become president. And in the now-famous Vanity Fair cover story in light of his campaign launch, O’Rourke said he “was born to be in it.”
Too bad he wasn’t born with any qualifications or talent. O’Rourke’s inadequacies have never been more clear than after the most recent ABC debate.
Within 10 seconds of opening his mouth for the first time, O’Rourke invoked the recent El Paso, Texas, mass shooting to exploit the tragedy to stump on gun control and reinvigorate his campaign, blaming it on President Trump, to boot. That’s right: His first order of business was to attempt to cash in on a massacre to score political points. Party affiliation aside, all sensible Americans know that such a shameless man ought not be president.
Now add in O’Rourke’s reiterated disdain for gun owners and Second Amendment rights. On the debate stage, he said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” and continued to push his fake narrative of a “mandatory gun buyback,” aka forcible gun seizure.
When an ABC moderator asked O’Rourke, “Why are you the most qualified candidate to address the [political] divide?” he immediately pivoted back to the El Paso shooting and said that President Trump “poses a mortal threat to people of color all across this country.”
Yes, that’s right: O’Rourke’s answering to healing the divide is that Trump, and by implication, his supporters, are racist, evil, and a deadly threat to minorities. Then he basically called America a racist country, saying that the true start of the country was August 20, 1619, when the first slave was brought here. O’Rourke promised to sign a reparations bill to address this, because there’s nothing less divisive than “reparations” supported by less than a third of the country.
We get it. As a straight white dude in the Democratic Party of 2019, a certain amount of pandering is required. O’Rourke’s hands are basically tied. But this guy is obviously not capable of being a unifying president in any way, shape, or form, and it’s time for him to give it a rest.
Remember: In the lead-up to the debate, O’Rourke was averaging less than 3% in the polls. Voters just aren’t drawn to a mediocre white dude who thinks standing on a table is a personality, especially when it’s paired with radical policy, divisive rhetoric, and obnoxious grandstanding.
It doesn’t look like any of this is getting better. O’Rourke once again resorted to speaking his broken Spanish on the debate stage in a gross attempt to pander to Hispanic voters who he offensively assumes can’t understand English.
It’s never been more clear than after tonight: This man should never become president. Let’s just hope O’Rourke finally puts this joke to bed and stops subjecting us all to his midlife crisis of a campaign.
Incredible GoPro footage takes you inside the gunfire-heavy raid that ended drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s six months on the run.
The video, obtained from Mexican authorities, looks as if it’s from an action movie. The camera follows the armed men as they storm the house, unleash grenades and bullets, and search room to room.
The Friday raid was called “Operation Black Swan,” according to the Mexican show “Primero Noticias.” Authorities decided to launch the raid Thursday after they got a tip about where Guzman was sleeping, the show reported.
Seventeen elite unit Mexican Marines launched their assault on the house in the city of Los Mochis at 4:40 a.m., “Primero Noticias” said.
They were met by about one dozen well-armed guards inside who were prepared for a fight, the show said.
The Marines moved from room to room, clearing the house. Upstairs they found two men in one room and found two women on the floor of a bathroom. All were captured, “Primero Noticias” said.
After 15 minutes, the Marines controlled the entire house, according to “Primero Noticias.”
In the end, five guards were killed and two men and two women were detained. One of the women was the same cook Guzman had with him when he was detained a couple years ago, according to “Primero Noticias.”
Eventually the marines determined that the only bedroom on the first floor was Guzman’s and they began pounding on the walls and moving furniture, finding hidden doors, the show said.
His room had a king-sized bed, bags from fashionable clothing stores, bread and cookie wrappers, and medicine including injectable testosterone, syringes, antibiotics and cough syrups, the show said. The two-story house had four bedrooms and five bathrooms. There were flat-screen TVs and Internet connection throughout the house, according to “Primero Noticias.”
The Marines eventually found a hidden passageway behind a mirror, with a handle hidden in the light fixture. The handle opened a secret door, leading down into the escape tunnel, the show explained.
The escape tunnel was fully lit and led to an access door for the city sewage system, “Primero Noticias” said, adding that Guzman had at least a 20-minute head start on the Marines.
The address where Guzman was captured had been monitored for a month, Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez has said. According to Gomez, Guzman and his lieutenant escaped through that drainage system.
“Primero Noticias” said it obtained surveillance footage showing Guzman and his lieutenant emerging from the manhole cover, where they then stole two cars to flee, the show said.
Guzman was finally caught when he and the lieutenant were stopped on a highway by Mexican Federal Police, the show said.
Authorities took them to a motel to wait for reinforcement. The men were then taken to Los Mochis airport and transfered to Mexico City.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP PHOTO
Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is escorted by soldiers and marines to a waiting helicopter, at a federal hangar in Mexico City, Jan. 8, 2016.
Guzman is now back in prison as his lawyers fight his extradition to the U.S.
The drug kingpin escaped from the Altiplano prison near Mexico City on July 11, launching an active manhunt. When guards realized that he was missing from his cell, they found a ventilated tunnel and exit had been constructed in the bathtub inside Guzman’s cell. The tunnel extended for about a mile underground and featured an adapted motorcycle on rails that officials believe was used to transport the tools used to create the tunnel, Monte Alejandro Rubido, the head of the Mexican national security commission, said in July.
Guzman had been sent there after he was arrested in February 2014. He spent more than 10 years on the run after escaping from a different prison in 2001. It’s unclear exactly how he had escaped, but he did receive help from prison guards who were prosecuted and convicted.
Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, was once described by the U.S. Treasury as “the most powerful drug trafficker in the world.” The Sinaloa cartel allegedly uses elaborate tunnels for drug trafficking and has been estimated to be responsible for 25 percent of all illegal drugs that enter the U.S. through Mexico.
Hamas has largely remained on the sidelines in the fighting in Gaza on Saturday, raising the chances that the current round of cross-border violence could be contained in both scope and duration.
The leader of Hamas’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, has made noncommittal statements, saying that Israel bears full responsibility for the latest escalation without elaborating on Hamas’s own intentions.
One reason may be jobs. Since the last major Gaza conflict in May of last year, Israel has shifted its policy toward Gaza in what officials have described as an effort to keep the peace, offering economic incentives to the 2 million civilians in the coastal enclave and raising the stakes for Hamas should it decide to join the hostilities.
Israeli security officials have issued thousands of permits to Gaza residents allowing them to enter Israel daily to work in agriculture and construction. About 14,000 Palestinian laborers from Gaza have been working in Israel over the past few months, the largest number since Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, and Israel has promised to raise the number to 20,000.
Beyond that economic incentive, the Israeli military also has been warning of the dire consequences of another major round of fighting in Gaza. Military officials have publicized what they describe as intelligence reports showing Hamas tunnels and other military infrastructure constructed in the heart of Gaza’s residential areas, suggesting civilian casualties would be almost unavoidable in a military campaign.
In addition to the job permits, Israel also has allowed improvements in recent months that have enlarged the water and electricity supply in Gaza and expanded the capacity for imports and exports.
More medical equipment has been imported, and exports of agricultural produce from Gaza and its fisheries, textile and furniture industries have nearly doubled in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year, military officials said.
But in recent days, as Islamic Jihad threatened to retaliate from Gaza for Israel’s arrest of one of the group’s senior commanders in the West Bank, Israel closed the border crossings, preventing the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza. Israeli residents living close to the border were effectively placed under a curfew, with all roads closed in the areas close to Gaza.
Maj. Gen. Ghasan Alyan, the head of the military agency responsible for liaising on civilian matters in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, conveyed a stark message to Hamas on Friday, outlining the choice it faces regarding supporting Islamic Jihad or staying out of this round of fighting.
“The responsibility rests with Hamas,” he said, in a video released on the agency’s Arabic Facebook page. “Is it more concerned with helping the residents of Gaza, or with helping dissident organizations?”
Hamas’s decision to remain on the sidelines so far was reminiscent of a short round of cross-border fighting in 2019. That cycle, too, opened with an Israeli airstrike that killed a senior Islamic Jihad commander, Baha Abu al-Ata, along with his wife, Asmaa Abu al-Ata, and prompted Islamic Jihad to fire hundreds of rockets into Israel.
Over the next two days, Israel killed 34 people in Gaza, including about two dozen militants and several children. But Hamas chose not to join in, containing the scope of the hostilities.
By contrast, it was Hamas that initiated the last major Gaza conflagration in May 2021, when it fired a barrage of rockets toward Jerusalem after weeks of rising Israeli-Palestinian tensions and clashes in the contested city.
“In order to prevent a total, statewide blackout, which could take several days if not one or two weeks to restore, the system is having to be very surgical on taking people off the system to reduce that demand on that limited supply,” Turner said. “Otherwise, it could be considerably worse and this situation could be prolonged.”
The weather station at Bush Intercontinental Airport recorded an air temperature of 17 degrees Monday morning, the lowest reading since 1989.
Video: Houston Chronicle Photo Staff
Centerpoint said residents without power should not expect service to be restored before Tuesday at the earliest, leaving families to choose between bad options: Hunker down with layers of blankets or traverse icy roads to the homes of friends and relatives with electricity.
Michele Whitebread in Spring Branch said she is not eager to drive several miles to her parents’ home, but plans to do so with her husband and five children Monday afternoon, after losing power at 5 a.m. Staying put and bundling up would have been an option, she said, if not for her youngest daughter, Maggie, who has born just four weeks ago.
“My parents have power and we don’t,” Whitebread said. “The house can’t get too much colder with the newborn.”
A failing fire alarm woke Jared Berry at his northwest Harris County home around 2 a.m. when it lost power. His wife’s humidifier was out, too.
Hours later, after donning thermal underwear, he used a meat thermometer to see how cold his home was. The device stopped at 58 degrees.
“We were able to boil water and make a cup of coffee in our French press,” Berry said.
Running water was not available for Jamie Rangel at his west Houston apartment, along Interstate 10 and near Silbur Road. His power went out around the same time, too.
“It’s just me. I have a lot of bottled water to drink,” Rangel said, expressing a lack of worry.
He plans to subside off of cold sandwiches until the power comes back.
Ryan Sullivan spent his morning huddled in a comforter as the temperature continuously dropped inside his Spring Branch-area home. He wishes he had planned better.
“Honestly — we didn’t prepare well for this. I should have bought some groceries that I could cook without a stovetop,” Sullivan said. “I wasn’t thinking about losing power for the rest of the day.”
As the indoor temperature reached 45 degrees, he contemplated using a novelty burner for s’mores to cook food for his girlfriend and roommate.
Arwen Mallet’s two kids have been going in and out to play in the snow. The joy is waning, she explained.
“I’m trying to discourage them from going outside because it’s too hard to warm them up afterward,” Mallet said.
Her family’s home lost power around 3 a.m. near Memorial City Mall, just north of Interstate 10.
This is a widget area - If you go to "Appearance" in your WP-Admin you can change the content of this box in "Widgets", or you can remove this box completely under "Theme Options"
