Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced plans to seize large sections of the Gaza Strip to create a new so-called security corridor that would cut off Rafah from the neighboring southern city of Khan Younis. Israel already controls some 17% of Gaza’s territory, according to an Israeli human rights group.

Israel’s reinvasion of Gaza came amid a wave of deadly missile and artillery attacks that killed at least 56 people since dawn. Among the dead are 19 Palestinians killed in an Israeli airstrike on a United Nations clinic in Jabaliya being used as a bomb shelter. Victims included children and at least one infant.

Survivor: “What are these crimes of the occupation? What are these crimes? Show it to the entire world. Show it to all of humanity and the world, in the east and west of the Earth. This is a 1-week-old baby girl.”

Other Israeli attacks today killed civilians in a displacement camp in Khan Younis that Israel had designated as a so-called humanitarian zone. Israel’s military has killed over 1,000 people in Gaza since unilaterally ending the ceasefire last month.

Israel launched a wave of airstrikes across Syria, including an attack on Daraa that killed at least nine civilians, according to a local official. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the strikes targeted Syrian military infrastructure, calling them a “warning for the future.” Syria’s Foreign Ministry called the attacks a “blatant violation of international law and Syrian sovereignty.”.

In Yemen, leaders of the Houthi movement say five people were killed in two waves of strikes on Hodeidah province Wednesday. The Trump administration has launched near-daily attacks on Yemen since mid-March, when the Houthis resumed attacks on ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Hungary announced it is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Budapest today for a four-day state visit. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November over war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Human Rights Watch said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s welcoming of Netanyahu despite the ICC warrant is just “Orbán’s latest assault on the rule of law, adding to the country’s dismal record on rights.”

Here in New York, Jewish students chained themselves to Columbia University’s gates Wednesday to demand the school reveal the names of trustees and Columbia officials who collaborated with federal immigration authorities in the arrest last month of student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil.

Carly: “We, as Jewish students, demand transparency in that process. … You know, as Jewish students and to the Jewish people at large, being political pawns in a game is not a new occurrence, and that’s something that we very much so are here to say, 'Hey, you cannot weaponize antisemitism to harm our friends and peers.'”

Students continued their action into the early hours of this morning, even after Columbia security and NYPD arrived on the scene to cut the chains and forcibly remove protesters. We’ll hear more of their voices later in the broadcast.

President Trump on Wednesday unveiled sweeping global tariffs, including a 10% blanket tariff on all imported goods. In addition, U.S. trading partners including the European Union, China and Japan will see even larger, country-specific “reciprocal tariffs.” China now faces a total 54% tariff. Trump invoked emergency powers so that he could bypass Congress.

President Donald Trump: “My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day — waiting for a long time. April 2nd, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed and the day that we began to make America wealthy again. We’re going to make it wealthy, good and wealthy.”

Markets plummeted following the news as analysts warned it will drive inflation, harm industry and could lead to a global trade war. World leaders decried the tariffs. This is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Ursula von der Leyen: “President Trump’s announcement of universal tariffs on the whole world, including the European Union, is a major blow to the world economy. I deeply regret this choice. Let’s be clear-eyed about the immense consequences. The global economy will massively suffer. Uncertainty will spiral and trigger the rise of further protectionism.”

In related news, four Republican senators joined with Democrats Wednesday to pass a resolution seeking to block Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canada. The measure is not expected to pass in the House but offered a rare bipartisan rebuke of Trump’s policies. The Republicans supporting the measure were Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul. Canada and Mexico were spared in Trump’s latest round of tariffs but remain subject to a previously imposed 25% tariff on many imports. We’ll have more on Trump’s trade war after headlines with economics professor and author Richard Wolff.

The Trump administration has abruptly fired the entire workforce at the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps more than 6 million people pay their home heating and cooling bills. The cuts came amid a mass purge of some 10,000 workers at the Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday.

Separately, leaders of the National Endowment for the Humanities say Elon Musk’s DOGE operation has recommended slashing NEH’s workforce by up to 80%. The independent federal agency provides grants to museums, universities, teachers, libraries, public radio and TV stations, nonprofits and more.
Meanwhile, disability rights groups have sued the Trump administration and Elon Musk over DOGE’s cuts to the Social Security Administration, which they say have disproportionately impacted their community, violating their constitutional rights.

This week, the Social Security Administration opened an investigation into a series of website crashes that prevented beneficiaries from accessing their online accounts at the MySSA portal at least five times last month, with some beneficiaries receiving inaccurate notices that they would no longer receive Supplemental Security Income. Elon Musk has called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and has proposed slashing up to $700 billion from Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and programs for the poor.

On Wednesday, the White House dismissed reports that Elon Musk might soon leave his role in the Trump administration, saying his work with DOGE will continue.

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed New York Mayor Eric Adamss’ corruption case, granting a request from the Justice Department that was widely seen as a quid pro quo in exchange for Adams’s implementing Trump’s mass deportation agenda. But U.S. Judge Dale Ho dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be later revived — going against the wishes of the Justice Department, which sought to leave the door open for potential future prosecution.

During a press conference Wednesday, Eric Adams celebrated his legal victory by pitching a book written by new FBI director and prominent conspiracy theorist Kash Patel called “Government Gangsters.”

Mayor Eric Adams: “Jesus stepped in, and he uses who he uses. And New Yorkers stop me all the time in trying to find the rationale behind this. And I found it in this book. I’m going to encourage every New Yorker to read it. Read it and understand how we can never allow this to happen to another innocent American.”

Eric Adams also announced he is leaving the Democratic Party and will seek reelection as New York mayor as an independent.

A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily restore legal aid to tens of thousands of vulnerable, unaccompanied immigrant children. Plaintiffs who represent the children say Trump’s halting of the legal assistance violated a 2008 anti-trafficking law.

Meanwhile, members of the small New York community of Sackets Harbor are demanding the return of three children who were taken last week by ICE agents during a raid at a dairy farm. At least seven community members, including the children’s mother, were arrested in that raid. We’ll have more on this later in the broadcast.

Burma’s ruling military junta has declared a temporary 20-day ceasefire as the death toll from last week’s earthquake hit 3,085 people. Armed resistance groups had previously also announced a temporary ceasefire. Rescue and relief efforts have been hampered by the recent slashing of U.S. foreign aid under President Trump. Many survivors in Mandalay, near the earthquake’s epicenter, are in difficult-to-access areas and remain without homes, power and phone service.

Daw Win Mar: “For now, we sleep on the ground with mattresses. Some people who still have mosquito nets set them up, while those who don’t just sleep under the open sky.”

At least 22 people died in Thailand, most of them killed in the collapse of a high-rise that was under construction when the earthquake struck.

Authorities in Pakistan have given undocumented Afghan immigrants until next week to self-deport or face mass arrest, as officials seek to deport 3 million Afghans this year. It’s a crackdown that’s been widely condemned by the U.N. and human rights groups. Tens of thousands of Afghans were forced to flee to Pakistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021, including many prominent women’s rights activists. Some 20,000 Afghans who were approved for resettlement in the United States remain in limbo after Trump paused U.S. refugee admissions.

Mediators from the African Union have arrived in South Sudan for urgent talks amid growing fears of a new civil war following the recent arrest of First Vice President Riek Machar, which ended a fragile power-sharing agreement. The government of President Salva Kiir has accused Machar of attempting to ignite a new rebellion. Rights groups are urging South Sudan’s rival leaders to immediately deescalate amid mounting insecurity. This is U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

Secretary-General António Guterres: “Let’s not mince words. What we are seeing is darkly reminiscent of the 2013 and 2016 civil wars, which killed 400,000 people. … All the dark clouds of a perfect storm have descended upon the people of the world’s newest country and one of the poorest.”

President Trump is reportedly considering a deal that would avert a ban on TikTok by allowing the Chinese parent company ByteDance to keep control of the app’s algorithm but lease it to a new U.S. spinoff entity. Lawmakers have claimed TikTok poses a national security concern, but critics of the ban say it’s motivated by anti-Chinese bias and is a threat to free speech and some users’ livelihoods. The pause on the ban expires on Saturday. Amazon also made a late bid to buy TikTok, though some reports say it’s been rejected by Trump officials.

In Arizona, hundreds of community members gathered to mourn Emily Pike, a murdered 14-year-old Indigenous girl, as she was laid to rest over the weekend on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, where she was from. Emily Pike was reported missing in January after running away from her group home. Her remains were found a few weeks later, on Valentine’s Day. Emily Pike’s loved ones are demanding answers and justice for the Indigenous teen.

Mario Joseph, a prominent Haitian human rights lawyer, has died in a car accident at the age of 62. Joseph was an attorney at the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and represented many political prisoners and other victims of human rights abuses. He led the prosecution in the trial of the 1994 Raboteau massacre, which saw military and paramilitary forces attack and kill at least two dozen people who’d taken part in demonstrations supporting Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been overthrown in a coup three years earlier.

Democracy Now! traveled to Haiti in 2010 following the devastating earthquake, where we spoke with Mario Joseph.

Mario Joseph: “The way the earthquake hit, it didn’t discriminate. That’s a good example for us to look at in Haiti and stop with this exclusionary system. It’s true a lot of poor people were touched by this, but even people with big houses or small houses, everybody is living in the street now. This is why we have to begin to end the system of exclusion, for everybody to participate in the country’s life.”

Click here to see our interviews with Mario Joseph, as well as our coverage of Haiti over the years.