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The Trump administration announced on Wednesday it was issuing sanctions against an independent official tasked with investigating human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories, the latest effort by the United States to punish critics of Israel’s 21-month war in Gaza.

The state department’s decision to sanction Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, comes after a recent US pressure campaign to force the international body to remove her from her post failed.

Albanese, a human rights lawyer, has been vocal about what she has described as the “genocide” that Israel is waging against Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and the US, which provides military support, have strongly denied that accusation.

In recent weeks, Albanese has issued a series of letters, urging other countries to pressure Israel, including through sanctions, to end its deadly bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The Italian national has also been a strong supporter of the international criminal court’s indictment of Israeli officials, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes. She most recently issued a report naming several US giants among companies aiding what she described as Israel’s occupation and war on Gaza.

“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, posted on social media. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”

Albanese has been the target of criticism from pro-Israel officials and groups in the US and in the Middle East. Last week, the US mission to the UN issued a scathing statement, calling for her removal for “a years-long pattern of virulent anti-Semitism and unrelenting anti-Israel bias”.

The statement said that Albanese’s allegations of Israel committing genocide or apartheid are “false and offensive”.

It is all a culmination of an extraordinary and sprawling campaign of nearly six months by the Trump administration to quell criticism of Israel’s handling of the deadly war in Gaza, which is closing in on two years. Earlier this year, the Trump administration began arresting and deporting faculty and students of American universities who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and other political activities.

The war between Israel and Hamas began on 7 October 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people captive. Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which says women and children make up most of the dead but does not specify how many were fighters or civilians.

Nearly 21 months into the conflict that displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, it is nearly impossible for the critically wounded to get the care they need, doctors and aid workers say.

“We must stop this genocide, whose short-term goal is completing the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, while also profiteering from the killing machine devised to perform it,” Albanese said in a recent post on X. “No one is safe until everyone is safe.”

US President Donald Trump said he was planning to impose a 50% tax on goods made in Brazil, escalating his fight with the South American country.

He announced the plan in his latest tariff letter, which was shared on social media.

In it, Trump accuses Brazil of “attacks” on US tech companies and of conducting a “witch hunt” against former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing prosecution over his alleged role in a plot to overturn the 2022 election.

Trump sparred with Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva about Bolsonaro’s trial earlier this week.

At the time, President Lula said Brazil would not accept “interference” from anyone and added: “No one is above the law.”

He had also said Trump was “irresponsible” for threatening tariffs on social media.

Trump has posted 22 letters to countries around the world this week, including trade partners such as Japan, South Korea and Sri Lanka, outlining new tariffs on their goods which he says will come into force on 1 August.

The moves have largely served to revive plans he had put forward in April, but that were put on hold after financial markets recoiled at the measures.

But the message to Brazil was a far more targeted missive and threatened a significant increase from the 10% tariff the White House had previously announced on goods from the country.

Unlike many other countries, the US enjoyed a trade surplus with Brazil last year, selling more goods in the country than it purchased from it.

In the letter, Trump called the 50% rate “necessary … to rectify the grave injustices of the current regime”.

He said he would order the US Trade Representative to launch a so-called 301 investigation into Brazil’s digital trade practices.

Such a move would mark a turn towards a more established legal process that the US has used to impose tariffs in the past, toughening the threat. In his first term, Trump took a similar step over Brazil’s consideration of a tax targeting tech firms.

Trump, in the letter, accused the Brazilian government of “insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans” including the censorship of “US Social Media platforms”.

Trump’s social media company, Trump Media, is among the US tech companies fighting Brazilian court rulings over orders that suspending social media accounts.

The country had also temporarily banned Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, after the platform refused to ban accounts that were deemed by Brazil to be spreading misinformation about the 2022 Brazilian presidential election.

Last month, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that social media companies can be held responsible for content posted on their platforms.

In his letter, Trump also spoke favourably of former Brazilian president Bolsonaro, saying he “respected him greatly”. He added that the ongoing trial against him is “an international disgrace”.

Trump and Bolsonaro enjoyed a friendly relationship when their presidencies overlapped, with the pair meeting in 2019 at the White House during Trump’s first term. Bolsonaro is often dubbed “Trump of the Tropics”.

Both men subsequently lost presidential elections and both refused to publicly acknowledge defeat.

Bolsonaro, who governed Brazil between 2019 and 2022, is standing trial for allegedly attempting a coup with thousands of his supporters storming government buildings in the capital in January 2023 after Lula was victorious in the election.

Bolsonaro was in the United States at the time and has denied any links to the rioters or any involvement in the plot.

Earlier this week, Trump had compared Bolsonaro’s prosecution to the legal cases he has similarly faced.

“This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent – Something I know much about!” Trump had said. In response, Bolsonaro thanked the US president for his support.

President Lula fired back on Monday against Trump’s social media threats.

“He needs to know that the world has changed,” Lula said. “We don’t want an emperor.”