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    White House hits back after Democrats share alleged Trump ‘birthday note’ to Jeffrey Epstein – live updates

    The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, insists that a photograph of a sexually suggestive 2003 birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein, bearing Donald Trump’s name and signature, released by House Democrats and published by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, is evidence that the president has been framed.“The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire ‘Birthday Card’ story is false”, Leavitt wrote on X. “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it.”The president’s spokesperson added that his legal team “will continue to aggressively pursue litigation”, against the Journal, which first reported the existence of the note and drawing.Leavitt also referred to the reporting that Trump contributed the signed drawing and note to a birthday album for the late sex offender as an effort “to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!”Leavitt’s deputy, Taylor Budowich, chimed in on X with what he presented as definitive visual evidence that “it’s not his signature”, in the form of four images of Trump’s signature on cards inserted in copies of a book about the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year.However, it appears that all four of those signatures were from 2024, more than two decades after the 2003 birthday note, and it is a documented fact that people’s handwriting and signatures commonly change as they age.Andrew Feinberg, a White House correspondent for the Independent, posted two images of Trump’s signature from the years before 2003 on X, which appear closer to the one on the note to Epstein.Several speakers at the immigrants-rights news conference in Westlake quoted from Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent.“I dissent. We all dissent,” the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, said.Bass called the ruling “enraging” and said she had already directed the city to strengthen protocols prohibiting resources from assisting with federal immigration enforcement.“We will not and we will not participate in these cruel, inhumane tactics,” Bass said.She warned that undermining the personal liberties of Angelenos would impact all Americans.“The rule of law used to mean something not just to us, but to the Supreme Court, but now, with the stroke of a pen, the Supreme Court has undermined the rights of millions,” she said.She added: “And how ironic is it that this same Supreme Court that ruled colleges cannot use race in the admissions process has now ruled that law enforcement can use race to conduct raids and detain people.”Another speaker, representing the ACLU, also quoted a part Sotomayor’s dissent that stated the situation in stark terms: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job”.Outside a Home Depot in a heavily Latino neighborhood of Los Angeles, immigrant-rights advocates, joined by the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, warned that the supreme court had “effectively legalized racial profiling”.Cars honked in support as they passed signs that said “Keep Ice out of LA” and one that read simply: “fuck Trump.”“We are infuriated because the impacts will continue to show in our community”, Flor Melendez, the executive director of CLEAN Car Wash Worker Center and a plaintiff in the case. “We will continue to feel the pressure, because we could not depend on our legal system”.She said 81 car washes across the region have been raided since Trump’s crackdown began earlier this summer, some multiple times. At least 247 car wash workers were detained, she added.“The Supreme Court of the United States decided not to see this evil that has been visited on our people, not to hear the cries of all who have been victims and witnesses of these actions, and not to use the voice of the court to protect individual rights under the Constitution,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (Chirla), which was one of the organizational plaintiffs in this case.“Do the conservative justices not have eyes to see the video evidence, or are they not able to read our multiple collected declarations that we have provided”, Salas added. “Our evidence demonstrated that these are not calm and consensual engagements with individuals who voluntarily offer information about their immigration status”.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, insists that a photograph of a sexually suggestive 2003 birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein, bearing Donald Trump’s name and signature, released by House Democrats and published by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, is evidence that the president has been framed.“The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire ‘Birthday Card’ story is false”, Leavitt wrote on X. “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it.”The president’s spokesperson added that his legal team “will continue to aggressively pursue litigation”, against the Journal, which first reported the existence of the note and drawing.Leavitt also referred to the reporting that Trump contributed the signed drawing and note to a birthday album for the late sex offender as an effort “to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!”Leavitt’s deputy, Taylor Budowich, chimed in on X with what he presented as definitive visual evidence that “it’s not his signature”, in the form of four images of Trump’s signature on cards inserted in copies of a book about the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year.However, it appears that all four of those signatures were from 2024, more than two decades after the 2003 birthday note, and it is a documented fact that people’s handwriting and signatures commonly change as they age.Andrew Feinberg, a White House correspondent for the Independent, posted two images of Trump’s signature from the years before 2003 on X, which appear closer to the one on the note to Epstein.Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, has denounced the US supreme court ruling that permits federal immigration agents to demand proof of citizenship from anyone who appears to be of Latin American origin or is speaking a foreign language in Los Angeles, a city with a population that is 35% foreign-born and where 56% speak a language other than English at home, in a county that is nearly 50% Latino.Newsom said, of the 6-3 ruling by the Republican-nominated majority:
    Trump’s hand-picked supreme court majority just became the Grand Marshal for a parade of racial terror in Los Angeles. This isn’t about enforcing immigration laws – it’s about targeting Latinos and anyone who doesn’t look or sound like Stephen Miller’s idea of an American, including US citizens and children, to deliberately harm California’s families and small businesses. Trump’s private police force now has a green light to come after your family – and every person is now a target – but we will continue fighting these abhorrent attacks on Californians.
    Two Republican senators announced on Monday that they are opening a congressional investigation of “the preparation for and response to” the deadly Palisades fire in Los Angeles by state and local officials in California, who are Democrats.The senators, Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, said in a press release that the fire, which burned for 24 days in January and killed at least 12 people, “was more than just a horrific tragedy, it was an unacceptable failure of government to protect the lives and property of its citizens”.In a separate news release last week, Scott accused California Democrats of having “botched” the response to the California wildfires.However, the senate investigation appears to focus only on the fire in the affluent Palisades, where Scott was taken on a tour last month by a former reality TV star turned rightwing podcaster, Spencer Pratt, and not on the Eaton fire, which burned through Altadena, a less well-off suburb to the east.As soon as the investigation was announced, Pratt, a conservative Palisades resident, folded it into a partisan attack on California Democrats in a social media video. “Why is it that only Republicans are interested in finding out why a California city burned to the ground?” Pratt asked.The Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, announced three weeks ago that the city had been asked by the justice department to wait until federal investigation is complete to release its “after action report” on the Palisades fire.I’ve been speaking with Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, about the ruling from a federal appeals court today which upheld the defamation lawsuit by writer E Jean Carroll, and orders that Donald Trump still pay an $83m judgment.Tobias said that the ruling is significant because it affirms substantial “punitive damages” – which comprise around $65m of the total award to Carrol. These “send a message” to the president, according to Tobias, to avoid further defamation.While Tobias isn’t surprised by the ruling, characterizing Judge Lewis A Kaplan – who tried the case in the district court – as a “savvy, experienced jurist, who has resolved many high profile cases” – he fully expects the Trump administration to challenge the decision and attempt to appeal to the supreme court.Per my last post, Robert Garcia, a representative who serves as the ranking member on the House oversight committee, said that Donald Trump is lying about the existence of his birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein.In a video, posted to X, Garcia said that the president is “leading a White House cover-up”. The lawmaker from California added that committee members plan to review the documents that they received from the Epstein estate today.Democrats on the House oversight committee have released a scanned copy of a “birthday note” that Donald Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein, that was eventually compiled into an album of messages to celebrate Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003.The sexually suggestive note to Epstein includes a conversation between Trump and the late sex offender, with a naked female silhouette drawn around it. The president’s signature is at the bottom of the note.“Happy birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the note reads.The committee recently subpoenaed the Epstein estate for more documents as part of their investigation into the handling of the Epstein case. Trump has denied writing a letter for the birthday book, and even sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation when they first reported his contribution.Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin, of Illinois, called the “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago “a waste of money” and “another failed attempt at a distraction” in a statement today.Durbin, who also serves as the ranking Member of the Senate judiciary committee, said that the surge in immigration enforcement in the city is part of Donald Trump’s “campaign to arrest hardworking immigrants with no criminal convictions”.He added:
    To the hardworking immigrant families who are now scared to send your children to school, go to the hospital, or report crimes to the police: we stand with you … While the President exhibits disdain for immigrants, Chicago embraces them as family who help make our economy thrive and our city strong.”

    There have been a flurry of rulings today, with two particularly crucial decisions from the supreme court, in response to emergency requests from the Trump administration.

    First, the court allowed federal agents to proceed with raids in southern California targeting people for deportation based on their race or language – a victory for the administration’s hardline immigration agenda. Attorney general Pam Bondi praised the decision on social media, and said that immigration enforcement officers can “continue carrying out roving patrols in California without judicial micromanagement”.

    The supreme court also allowed Donald Trump to fire a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today. It’s the latest decision in a spate of high-profile firings of Senate-confirmed officials in recent months. Chief justice John Roberts issued the ruling, which blocks a lower court’s ruling for the president to reinstate Rebecca Slaughter while the case plays out. A federal district court judge said last week that the administration had violated a federal law which prevents FTC members from removal without cause. Slaughter was one of only two Democratic appointees on the five-member board.

    Meanwhile, a federal appeals court in New York did uphold the defamation lawsuit filed by writer E Jean Carroll, and the $83.3m award, after Trump denied her claim that he raped her. The panel of judges also rejected the administration’s argument that the president is protected by the supreme court’s immunity ruling last year.

    The administration also filed an emergency request to the supreme court on Monday to block a lower court’s ruling, which stopped the administration from withholding billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated foreign aid. An appeals court ordered the administration to spend the money, upholding the federal judge’s ruling last week, which ultimately prompted the request to the supreme court.

    Beyond DC, Trump has pledged more federal force in Chicago. It comes after weeks of deriding the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, and Illinois governor, JB Pritzker. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) posted on social media that an operation was under way to remove “dangerous public safety threats from American communities”.

    Trump goaded Pritzker on Truth Social earlier, and said that he wanted to “straighten” Chicago out while delivering remarks at the Museum of the Bible in DC. He also used the appearance to tout that DC was now a “safe zone”, since the federal takeover of the DC police and increased federal activity, citing Muriel Bowser’s compliance with the administration.
    Attorney general Pam Bondi called the supreme court’s decision to allow federal agents to proceed with raids in southern California targeting people for deportation based on their race or language a “massive victory”.She wrote on social media that immigration enforcement officers now can “continue carrying out roving patrols in California without judicial micromanagement”.US defense secretary Pete Hegseth and air force general Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, arrived in Puerto Rico today as the Trump administration steps up its military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean.The arrival comes more than a week after ships carrying hundreds of US marines deployed to Puerto Rico for a training exercise.Puerto Rico’s governor, Jenniffer González, said Hegseth and Caine visited the US territory to support those participating in the training.“We thank President Trump and his administration for recognizing the strategic importance of Puerto Rico to U.S. national security and for their fight against drug cartels and the narco-dictator Nicolás Maduro,” González said in comments reported by the Associated Press.Hegseth and Caine met with officials at the 156th Wing Muñiz Air national guard base in Carolina, a city just east of the capital, San Juan.González said Hegseth spoke to nearly 300 soldiers at the base and thanked those he described as “American warriors” for their work.The visit comes as the US prepares to deploy 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico for operations targeting drug cartels, a person familiar with the planning told AP on Saturday.Seemingly confirming earlier reports of incoming federal activity in Chicago, Ice has posted the following on X:
    CHICAGO: a sanctuary city that attracts and protects criminal illegal aliens to the detriment of law abiding citizens. In an ICE-led operation, we are here to remove these dangerous public safety threats from American communities.
    It comes as Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened an immigration enforcement crackdown and national guard deployment in the nation’s third largest city.Democrat Chuck Schumer returned to the Senate floor last week with some urgent questions. “Will Senate Republicans continue to kowtow to a leader they know is dragging the country down?” he demanded. “That they know is a pathological liar? Or will they, as the Founding Fathers intended, stand up to him? Will they help us fight America’s slide into authoritarianism?”It was a recognition of how Donald Trump has spent eight months seeking to expand presidential power at the expense of Congress and others. He has signed 200 executive orders – more than Joe Biden in four years – unleashed squadrons of national guard troops in Washington, turned investigators on his political foes and sought to bring academic, cultural, financial and legal institutions to heel.The capitulation has moved faster and further than even many of Trump’s critics expected and has left them looking for democratic guardrails that might yet constrain him. But as members of Congress returned to Washington this week, there were only flickers of hope that they might heed Schumer and reassert their usurped authority.Trump’s Republican party holds narrow majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate and remains overwhelmingly loyal to him. In May, during a debate on their signature tax and spending bill, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, called him “arguably the most powerful, the most successful, and the most respected president in the modern era of the United States”. Congress has in effect become his rubber stamp.Yet in recent days small fractures appeared in the edifice. Congressman Thomas Massie gained the support of fellow Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace on a discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files. Hours after Trump described the issue as a “Democratic hoax”, Greene shot back: “It’s not a hoax because Jeffrey Epstein is a convicted pedophile.”Some Republicans’ patience is also wearing thin with Trump’s health secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr, over his moves to undermine vaccines and purge leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Senator John Barrasso, a doctor, told Kennedy that he was “deeply concerned” about his leadership on vaccines.In addition, several Republicans have faced blowback from voters during town halls in their district over the summer. Opinion polls show that Trump’s tax and spending megabill is the most unpopular major piece of legislation in a generation. And Friday’s dismal jobs reports reflected uncertainty around his economic agenda.If the trend continues, swing-state Republicans might be tempted to distance themselves from him in next year’s midterm elections and then treat him as a lame duck as the race for 2028 heats up.Thom Hartmann, a political analyst and author of the upcoming book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink, suggests that Trump’s sway over Congress might be more fragile than it appears.
    The simple reality is that five or six Republicans in the House and two or three or four Republicans in the Senate could stop Trump in his tracks. They can put an end to this insanity.
    Increasingly, as public opinion is turning against him – he’s polling very negatively in virtually every aspect of his presidency, from the economy to the troops in the streets to destroying federal agencies – at some point some of these Republicans are going to look around and say, you know, maybe the way to ensure my own political survival is to challenge this guy. That day can’t come soon enough for me.
    Donald Trump launched a vitriolic attack against Tom Hanks for supposedly being “destructive” and “woke” after one of America’s most beloved actors was snubbed without much explanation by West Point last week.On his social media site on Monday, the US president applauded the alumni association of the US Military Academy (or West Point) for abruptly calling off a ceremony honoring Hanks, twice an Academy award winner who has played numerous military characters and also has a long history of advocating for veterans.Trump wrote: “Our great West Point (getting greater all the time!) has smartly cancelled the Award Ceremony for actor Tom Hanks. Important move! We don’t need destructive, WOKE recipients getting our cherished American Awards!!! Hopefully the Academy Awards, and other Fake Award Shows, will review their Standards and Practices in the name of Fairness and Justice. Watch their DEAD RATINGS SURGE!”Hanks had been scheduled to receive the 2025 Sylvanus Thayer Award later this month for his “service and accomplishments in the national interest”.Law enforcement officials on Sunday dismantled a peace vigil that had stood in front of the White House for more than four decades, an action taken on orders issued by Donald Trump two days earlier.The vigil targeted by the president was started in 1981 by William Thomas to promote nuclear disarmament and an end to global conflicts, and it is believed to be the longest continuous anti-war protest in the United States. For decades, volunteers would man the site, just in front of the White House gates in Lafayette Square, to prevent it from being taken down.A correspondent for the conservative network Real America’s Voice, Brian Glenn, asked Trump about the vigil on Friday. “Just out front of the White House is a blue tent that originally was put there to be an anti-nuclear tent for nuclear arms – it’s kind of morphed into an anti-America sometimes, anti-Trump at many times,” he said. Trump replied that he didn’t know about the tent and then turned to staff to say: “Take it down, right now.”Will Roosien, a 24-year-old who had been volunteering at the vigil on Sunday, told the Washington Post that officers arrived at 6.30am on Sunday and told him he had 30 minutes to remove a tarp under which he had been sheltering from the rain. He refused and told the Post he was detained while the officers dismantled the tent.“This is a disgrace, and you should all feel ashamed,” Roosien told the officers, according to video obtained by the Post. “Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for 44 years, someone has sat here, advocating for people around the world who we don’t know. Advocating for human rights. Advocating for peace.”Concurring with the decision, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” but it can be a “‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors”.He added: “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”Per my last post, the supreme court’s three liberal justices publicly dissented from the decision, directing pointed criticism at its conservative majority.The administration “has all but declared that all Latinos, US citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction”, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion.“Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” Sotomayor added. More

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    House Democrats share screenshot of apparent Trump birthday note to Epstein

    House Democrats on Monday shared a screenshot showing what appears to be a letter signed by Donald Trump, the very same letter Trump had denied writing after reports of its existence were published in the Wall Street Journal.The letter was included in a set of birthday notes sent to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003.The note depicts a conversation between Trump and Epstein inside the sketch of a woman’s torso. Trump’s signature appears just below the drawing’s hips in the pubic region.“HERE IT IS: We got Trump’s birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein that the President said doesn’t exist,” the House oversight committee’s Democratic minority wrote on social media when releasing the image.The screenshot mirrors the description published by the Wall Street Journal back in July, which first revealed the existence of the “bawdy” letter.According to the Journal’s reporting, the book and letter carried Trump’s name, with typewritten text framed by the outline of a nude woman. It ended with the words: “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”Beneath the waistline, a squiggly “Donald” appeared as the signature, stylized to resemble pubic hair.View image in fullscreenAttorneys representing the co-executors of Epstein’s estate handed over a copy of the so-called birthday book on Monday after receiving a subpoena from House oversight committee chair James Comer of Kentucky, a Republican.The request followed a 25 July letter from Democrats Sylvia Garcia and Ro Khanna, who urged the estate’s legal team to produce the material “to assist in bringing transparency and accountability”.The volume, a professionally bound collection presented to Epstein in 2003, three years before his first arrest, featured notes from numerous figures in his social circle at the time, according to the Journal.Contributors reportedly included Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and the billionaire Leon Black. While some entries offered routine well-wishes, others contained sexual innuendo, provocative sketches, or photographs.Trump vehemently denied having written or illustrated the note, dismissing it as “a fake thing” and insisting “these are not my words, not the way I talk”.He later filed a defamation lawsuit against the Journal’s reporters, publisher Dow Jones and parent company News Corp. In response, a Dow Jones spokeswoman said: “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting.” The lawsuit sought $10bn in damages and specifically named media mogul Rupert Murdoch.Meanwhile, the Trump administration has spent months shifting its position on whether Epstein-related files would be released or even if they existed at all, with Trump at one point calling them a “Democrat hoax”.The House oversight committee, with participation from Democrats and Republicans, continues to review Epstein-related records. Epstein, a wealthy financier with numerous powerful connections, died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. More

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    Supreme court lifts restrictions on Los Angeles immigration raids in win for Trump

    Federal agents can resume sweeping immigration operations in Los Angeles after the US supreme court lifted an order barring the Donald Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job.The court ruled in favor of Trump’s administration, granting a stay against a restraining order from another judge that found “roving patrols” of immigration agents were conducting indiscriminate arrests in LA. The ruling from the conservative majority is a win for the administration in its ongoing effort to enact mass deportations.US district judge Maame E Frimpong in Los Angeles had found a “mountain of evidence” that enforcement tactics were violating the constitution. The plaintiffs, who said the administration’s approach amounted to “blatant racial profiling”, included US citizens swept up in immigration stops. An appeals court had left Frimpong’s ruling in place.But the Trump administration argued the order wrongly restricted agents carrying out its widespread crackdown on illegal immigration.The supreme court’s 6-3 decision comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents also step up enforcement in Washington amid Trump’s unprecedented federal takeover of the capital city’s law enforcement and deployment of the national guard.The lawsuit will now continue to unfold in California. It was filed by immigrant advocacy groups that accused Trump’s administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people during a crackdown on illegal immigration in the Los Angeles area.The Trump administration has made California a center of its deportation campaign, sending federal agents near schools and workplaces and Home Depot stores. The large show of federal agents – along with the deployment of the military – has left southern California communities in fear.In its order granting the stay, the court majority wrote that the government sometimes makes stops to check the immigration status of people who work jobs in landscaping or construction, among others “that often do not require paperwork and are therefore attractive to illegal immigrants; and who do not speak much if any English”.“Immigration stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of US immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations,” the decision states.In a stinging dissent joined by her two liberal colleagues, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: “Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor. Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”Department of Homeland Security attorneys have said immigration officers target people based on illegal presence in the US, not skin color, race or ethnicity. Even so, the justice department argued that the order wrongly restricted the factors that Ice agents can use when deciding who to stop.The Los Angeles region has been a battleground for the Trump administration after its hardline immigration strategy spurred protests and the deployment of the national guard and the marines. The number of immigration raids in the Los Angeles area appeared to slow shortly after Frimpong’s order came down in July, but recently they have become more frequent again, including an operation in which agents jumped out of the back of a rented box truck and made arrests at an LA Home Depot store.The supreme court decision was condemned by LA mayor Karen Bass, who said it “isn’t just an attack on the people of Los Angeles, this is an attack on every person in every city in this country.“I want the entire nation to hear me when I say this isn’t just an attack on the people of Los Angeles, this is an attack on every person in every city in this country. Today’s ruling is not only dangerous – it’s un-American and threatens the fabric of personal freedom in the United States of America.”The plaintiffs argued that her order only prevents federal agents from making stops without reasonable suspicion, something that aligns with the constitution and supreme court precedent.“Numerous US citizens and others who are lawfully present in this country have been subjected to significant intrusions on their liberty,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “Many have been physically injured; at least two were taken to a holding facility.”The Trump administration said the order is too restrictive, “threatening agents with sanctions if the court disbelieves that they relied on additional factors in making any particular stop”.D John Sauer, the solicitor general, also argued the order can’t stand under the high court’s recent decision restricting universal injunctions, though the plaintiffs disagreed.The order from Frimpong, who was nominated by Joe Biden, barred authorities from using factors such as apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, presence at a location such as a tow yard or car wash, or someone’s occupation as the only basis for reasonable suspicion for detention. It’s covered a combined population of nearly 20 million people, nearly half of whom identify as Hispanic or Latino.Plaintiffs included three detained immigrants and two US citizens. One of the citizens was Los Angeles resident Brian Gavidia, who was shown in a 13 June video being seized by federal agents as he yelled: “I was born here in the States. East LA, bro!”Gavidia was released about 20 minutes later after showing agents his identification, as was another citizen stopped at a car wash, according to the lawsuit. More

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    Chicago suburb warns residents that federal agents may be about to arrive

    A Chicago suburb has warned its residents that federal immigration agents may be present in the coming days as Donald Trump continues to threaten an immigration enforcement crackdown and national guard deployment in the nation’s third largest city.The city of Evanston issued a statement urging its residents to report sightings of federal agents, after local officials said they were informed over the weekend about the likelihood of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) activity.Evanston’s mayor, Daniel Biss, told the local outlet Evanston Now that he received information from the governor’s office suggesting the likelihood Ice agents would be deployed there “in the coming days”.“In Evanston, we welcome our immigrant and refugee neighbors and protect each other,” the statement read. “We will do all we can to safeguard our community and keep Evanston families together.”Within hours of the statement, Trump repeated his desire to send federal enforcement and national guard troops to “straighten” Chicago out.“You try and reason with people, like in Chicago, with the governor there, you try and reason with them, and it’s like you’re talking to a wall,” the president said during remarks at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.Furthermore, a social media post from the Trump-led Department of Homeland Security said the agency was “launching Operation Midway Blitz” in honor of an Illinois woman who authorities say was killed in January by a Guatemalan national who was in the US without permission.The suspect in the case was identified as 29-year-old Julio Cucul Bol, and authorities say he was drunk-driving.Invoking a term that historically has been associated with the intense, sudden military attacks waged by the Nazis during the second world war, Monday’s DHS post claimed the operation in Abraham’s name would target those who “flocked” to Chicago knowing it limits local law enforcement cooperation with Ice. The post also contained a tribute video to Abraham, who was killed in the crash alongside a 21-year-old woman named Chloe Polzin.Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson released a statement on Monday afternoon responding to the DHS announcement on X.“The city of Chicago received no notice of any enhanced immigration action by the Trump administration. We remain opposed to any potential militarized immigration enforcement without due process because of Ice’s track record of detaining and deporting American citizens and violating the human rights of hundreds of detainees,” he said.On Wednesday last week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that an advance team of at least 30 agents was undergoing crowd-control and flash-grenade training at Naval Station Great Lakes, north of Chicago. And 230 agents, most of whom work for Customs and Border Protection, were being sent to Chicago from Los Angeles, the outlet reported.Meanwhile, at a news conference last week, the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, expressed concern that Ice agents would target Mexican Independence Day events in the middle of September. The El Grito Chicago Mexican Independence Day festival was postponed due to concerns about Ice operations.Trump’s deployment of military troops to Los Angeles in July was deemed illegal in a ruling by a federal judge in California. And his federalization of Washington DC’s police department in August was unprecedented.Nonetheless, the Republican president has turned his focus to other major Democratic-led cities, threatening federal intervention over what he has purported is a “national crime emergency”.Despite falling crime rates nationwide, Trump has insisted his priority is “cleaning up cities” with a focus on violent crime and homelessness. And he has repeatedly suggested he next wants to deploy the national guard to Chicago – where, like in Washington DC, violent crime is at its lowest in decades.Calling Chicago a “hellhole”, Trump has boasted: “We’re going in. I didn’t say when, [but] we’re going in.”Trump has verbally attacked Pritzker, opining that the Illinois governor has been reckless for not asking for the president’s help.Earlier on his Truth Social platform, Trump insisted that he wants to “help the people of Chicago, not hurt them”.The post derided Democratic leaders in Chicago and Illinois, saying “the city and state have not been able to do the job”.“People of Illinois should band together and DEMAND PROTECTION,” Trump’s post continued. “IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE!!! ACT NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!”Shrai Popat contributed reporting More

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    John Oliver on Trump’s attack on higher education: ‘No capitulation will be enough’

    On the latest Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looked into the Trump administration’s assault on higher education in the US. “Trump has long held a grudge against higher education, and now that he’s in power, he’s acting on it,” Oliver explained. Among other things, Donald Trump has targeted the billions of dollars granted to universities for scientific research “in order to bend them to his will”.Trump’s “war on higher education” continues a long tradition of conservative distrust of universities. Back in 1972, Richard Nixon said “the professors are the enemy,” and as Oliver noted, Republicans have railed for years against higher education for supposedly wasteful spending on scientific research – think the Fox News fixation on the alleged “shrimp on a treadmill” study – and for being supposed bastions of liberal indoctrination. “Conservatives have long sought to orient universities sharply to the right,” he said. “And in recent years, they’ve seized upon a new justification for doing this – specifically, to ‘combat antisemitism’ in the wake of student protests over Gaza.”Of those protests, Oliver noted: “Multiple things can be true. You can think some critics of the protests were conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and that some are pointing out actual instances of antisemitism. You can also acknowledge that some Jewish students did feel unsafe because of the actions of some protesters and that some protesters were made unsafe by universities calling the police on them. You can also argue that many universities did themselves no favors by failing to figure out a coherent, consistent response.“But none of that nuance has been present in the White House’s response, which has been to suggest the wholesale destruction of certain universities.” Soon after taking office, Trump convened a “Task Force to Combat Antisemitism” backed by Stephen Miller with the goal of targeting certain schools with large protest movements and, to quote its lead Leo Terrell, “taking away their money”.“Look, if colleges were spending all of their federal money on inventing a big automatic antisemitism generator, then yeah, it would make sense to take their money away,” said Oliver. “But the thing is, they’re not doing that, partly because it seems to be Elon Musk’s project.“Instead, the money being taken away is largely going to research studies, and cutting those has nothing to do with antisemitism.”As Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, put it on Face the Nation: “The idea that you are attacking antisemitism by attacking universities, I think is a complete charade. It’s just an excuse for getting universities to conform.”“Right, it’s obviously bullshit,” Oliver confirmed. “The very idea that Trump’s actions are part of some great effort to defend the Jewish people is, as charades go, slightly less convincing than a toddler playing hide-and-seek.”Oliver considered a non-exhaustive list of “telltale signs that this isn’t really about antisemitism concerns”, including but not limited to the fact that Trump reportedly kept a book of Hitler’s speeches next to his bed, dined with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes this summer, brought people into his administration with records of antisemitic comments, reportedly said during his first term that “Hitler did a lot of good things”, and was endorsed in his first campaign by both David Duke and the KKK. “Hearing that Trump is suddenly waging war against antisemites is like hearing that Billy Joel is waging war against dads from Long Island,” he joked.Oliver then looked into exactly what the administration is doing, such as cancelling Columbia’s grants until the school stopped considering race in admissions, paid $200m in fines and reformed their Middle Eastern studies department, among other requirements. The university “caved in about five seconds”, Oliver noted, “officially solidifying Columbia’s reputation as the Little Bitch University, rather than what it was known for before: being the place that Timothée Chalamet went to for five minutes before realizing he didn’t need it”.The capitulation didn’t change anything, either; weeks later, the administration froze all of the university’s remaining funding from the National Institutes of Health, about $700m in total, and threatened the school’s accreditation. “There’s no guarantee the administration is going to stop making demands from Columbia, and why would they when they keep getting met?” said Oliver.The situation, which has caused a chilling effect on campus, “goes much further than Harvard and Columbia”, Oliver explained, as the administration has frozen hundreds of millions in research funds at several other private institutions, and slashed studies at several public universities. Even Northwestern, a school that tried pre-capitulating to the administration by releasing public steps taken to combat antisemitism, was targeted anyway, with over $790m in grants frozen. Those funds have still not been unfrozen, even though the university’s president, Michael Schill, the Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors, stepped down amid forced layoffs.That case, in particular, highlighted for Oliver what the government’s assault on universities was really about. He pointed to a clip of JD Vance from 2021: “We go to the universities, we use the hundreds of billions of dollars that we send to them as leverage and we say: ‘Unless you stop indoctrinating our children, unless you stop indoctrinating our entire society, you don’t get another dime of our money.’”“That is the exact same plan as now, just hastily remodeled to be about ‘fighting antisemitism’, expecting no one to notice,” said Oliver. “It’s basically the rhetorical equivalent of when a random business clearly used to be a Pizza Hut.”The end result, as one researcher put it, is that the “science in this country is going to be destroyed”, which is bad for future innovations as well as for the private sector. One study found that every dollar of medical research funded by the NIH delivered $2.56 in economic activity. “So even if you are someone who hates learning and loves money – and yes, I am talking to one guy in particular here – publicly funded research is just a no-brainer,” said Oliver. “But obviously that is not what this is really about. This is about the right being willing to sacrifice everything, up to and including a generation’s worth of scientific progress, to get what it wants.”“And it is not hard to see what that is. Because when the administration is launching investigations like ‘why aren’t there more white men teaching at Harvard?’, you know what they’re up to,” he continued. “Just like you know what the plan was when they suddenly canceled diversity grants awarded to PhD students who were members of certain racial or ethnic groups, disabled, or from disadvantaged backgrounds.”Where do things go from here? “I don’t really know, and I’m not sure this administration does either,” said Oliver. But “even if there is not a fixed destination, there is a clear direction. And that is they want to turn back a clock that, quite honestly, had taken way too long to move forward, and restore all of academia to being a training ground for those looking to uphold old systems of power instead of questioning them.”In conclusion, he added: “You can have problems with academia. You can think it’s too cloistered or too liberal. You can think it’s becoming too expensive or that its resources are misallocated. But the notion of the state suddenly executing a sweeping takeover of higher education to this degree is chilling.”Based on everything that has happened so far, “no capitulation will be enough, and they will never stop demanding more.” Given that, Oliver argued, universities should “stop yielding, stand firm and fight back” because although it is tempting to think one more capitulation will safeguard your independence, “it’s worth asking at what point have you compromised so much that the thing you’re supposed to be defending is gone.” More

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    Trump’s strongman image got boos at the US Open, and perhaps that was the point | Andrew Lawrence

    It was just the authoritarian image Donald Trump hoped to project at the US Open: the president himself, looming from Arthur Ashe Stadium’s giant screens like Chairman Mao at Tiananmen Gate, as he stood at attention for the national anthem. But there was no denying that, while the picture was there, the sound clashed. The burst of cheers that went up for his stiff salute on Sunday was quickly drowned out by a chorus of boos made louder from the Ashe roof being closed for rain – perhaps fitting given that many fans had been left to stand in the wet and endure the long security lines that resulted from his attendance. In that awkward five-second moment, as the Stars and Stripes was unfurled on center court, the president smirked at the negative reaction. It surely rang so familiar.Trump’s presence at the US Open men’s final wasn’t just intended as a soft power grab, the kind of routine stunt Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and the other despots he admires pull all the time at sports events – except with recruitment ads for Ice playing across the US. No, Trump’s presence was intended as a distraction. Not a distraction for him; lord knows, he couldn’t care less about the actual match, a fact that was reinforced when Trump left his luxury box seat to step inside and kibitz with a phalanx of suck-ups. No, Trump’s visit was dropped like a flash bang to divert attention from klaxoning recession indicators, rumbling speculation about his health and, naturally, those files about that guy whose name must not be mentioned.If Trump was motivated by a patriotic love for tennis, he would have rocked up a day earlier for the women’s final. But for Trump the prospect of cheering on Jersey girl Amanda Anisimova and her epic comeback story clearly wasn’t juicy enough, much less the idea of actually sharing the spotlight with an American player. So Sunday’s match-up between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz was retrofitted for Trump’s calliope Maga stage. Before the tilt Alcaraz, a Spaniard, was asked about playing in front of the president, and stepped right into the trap. “For me, playing in front of him, I don’t want myself to be nervous,” he said, not realizing his words would soon become fodder for Fox and Friends. “I think it’s great for tennis to have the president into the final.”Former presidents have shown that you can appear at a US Open without making it about ego: the Obamas were clearly caught up in supporting a US player when they watched Frances Tiafoe battle Alcaraz in the 2022 semi-final. Bill Clinton was proudly Team USA, too. In 2000, in his final weeks as president, he broke away from the UN Millennium Summit for Pete Sampras’s semi-final against Lleyton Hewitt, joining John McEnroe in the commentary box and signing balls fans lobbed up to him as Secret Service minders looked on and snipers lined the stadium upper deck. Clinton also visited Sampras in the locker room after the loss to Hewitt, which postponed the American’s epic quest for a then-record 14th grand slam. In 2009 Clinton returned and gave the keynote speech for Arthur Ashe’s induction into the US Open’s Court of Champions. He remembered Ashe’s triumphs over segregation, apartheid and his efforts to open his sport up to under-resourced and represented communities.Trump’s presence on Sunday – under the Ashe stadium marquee, on grounds named for gender and LGBTQ+ pioneer Billie Jean King, at a tournament that makes a point of touting its unwavering commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion – didn’t just strike a marked contrast. It broke from the markedly lower profiles of past presidents and was over-the-top, even for a sport that regularly hosts royal families. But Trump simply couldn’t pass up the optics. Getting booed by a multicultural east coast crowd that laps up $23 cocktails and $100 caviar-dolloped chicken nuggets without irony is red meat his base would devour. And getting that last laugh would make for satisfying personal revenge, an urgent second-term theme.For 40 years Trump exploited the US Open for clout, calling attention to himself, his luxury box perch and all the bold-faced names who joined him inside. But the New York crowd – the heart of the Open – never cottoned to his faux-gold flash and didn’t hesitate to jeer his big screen pop-ups even then. After the golden escalator ride to kick off his 2015 presidential campaign and the fiery announcement speech hitting out at immigrants and foreigners, he effectively became spectator non-grata in Flushing. Months later he attended the US Open quarter-final between Venus and Serena Williams and heard more boos as he slunk away with Melania, out of the stadium’s “President’s Gate”. So it meant something for him on Sunday to be back 10 years later, at the same event that was once the crown jewel of CBS and a lead-in for 60 Minutes – two more institutions he is determined to get even with – and back in the hometown he has repeatedly threatened to invade. That is, when he’s not outright declaring war on Chicago.View image in fullscreenBefore Trump’s arrival in his native borough of Queens, as foot soldiers from homeland security and other federal agencies swept the US Open campus, the USTA seemed as if it might do more to accommodate him than Rolex CEO Jean-Frederic Dufour – who had reportedly invited the president to the company’s luxury suite in hopes of catching a break on US tariffs imposed on Switzerland. No doubt Trump would have sat in the umpire’s chair if that were an option. The day before the men’s final, news broke that the USTA had issued a memo to broadcasters urging them to avoid showing any dissent against Trump in a craven display of anticipatory obedience that the federation cowardly justified in an 11-word statement. (We thought the former reality show host was supposed to be against unfair editing …) In the moments Trump actually seemed to be paying attention to Sunday’s match, he didn’t really cheer or applaud – which is weird but not surprising. He had made the day about himself, after all.And yet: just when it seemed as if the USTA couldn’t bow down any lower, intentionally or not, it may have pulled off a canny rope-a-dope. Perhaps mindful of the president’s avarice for stolen valor, they set the US Open men’s trophy inside the Rolex box for Trump’s arrival, and then switched it for a doubles cup after the anthem. Breaking with its own edict, the USTA not only showed Trump on the big screen again during the changeover between the first and second sets, it pushed in and held the shot for 20 seconds. The crowd, much larger this time, booed him so long and lustily that it was hard not to be reminded of the harsh reception to Trump at the 2019 World Series. Later on Sunday, the camera cut to noted Trump bugbear Bruce Springsteen – triggering a roar of approval that nearly blew the Ashe roof off.Unlike Fifa at July’s Club World Cup final, the USTA ensured Trump’s Rolex perch became a prison by the end of the match, so Alcaraz could keep up the winner’s tradition of climbing into the crowd to embrace their support team. Trump could only watch, like a kid on punishment seeing his friends play outside, as someone other than him presented the trophy to Alcaraz – because, well, he’s no competition for Ivan Lendl and much better men than Trump have tried taking trophies from the former No 1. After the pomp and circumstance, Trump was gone – back on the road within minutes of match point and in the air not long thereafter, according to the White House pool report. The outsized security presence that turned Sunday’s showcase into an authoritarian spectacle disappeared in his wake, too. For many fans who had suffered through it all, his departure was more cause for celebration.Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice, once said of her father that “he wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.” But the line fits Trump even better. As long as there is attention to be had, you can bet he’ll find a way to make himself the center of it and make sport of self-aggrandizement, regardless of who, or what, he may trample over on his march. More

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    Mahmoud Khalil on exile, liberation and Ice detention: ‘It was a clear act of cruelty’

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    View image in fullscreenWhen a history of resistance to the lurching authoritarianism of Donald Trump’s second presidency is written, it could well begin on 11 April 2025, inside a small immigration courtroom in remote, central Louisiana.It was there, in the early afternoon, that a slight young man dressed in a blue uniform jumpsuit spoke calmly but directly to the new administration – away from the gaze of television cameras and 1,000 miles (1,610km) from his friends and family. Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organiser, had been arrested a month earlier – snatched from the lobby of his Manhattan apartment building as he returned home with his wife. Now, detained in the small town of Jena, he sat before a judge who had just ruled that he was eligible to be deported from the United States purely for his political views.Khalil asked for permission to speak. He paused for a moment, before sharply rebuking the jurist who continued to hold his fate in her hands by throwing her own words back at her. He reminded her that she had guaranteed that the court would ensure him “due process” and “fundamental fairness”.“Neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process,” he told her, in effect branding the venue a kangaroo court. “This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family.”I was one of a handful of journalists in Jena that day. It was a period of particular distress in the US, his arrest being the first of a spate of high-profile detentions of students seized off the streets by immigration agents over their political views. In that moment of fear, when so many were going silent, I was taken aback by the quiet courage that seemed to come so naturally to Khalil even as formal political opposition to Trump’s iron fist had largely faltered.Four months on, and now bailed from detention and back in New York, I ask Khalil where it had come from and whether he would define it as an act of bravery.“No. I have always believed in standing up against injustice,” he says in his gentle voice. “I knew that it was predetermined. That it was a play. It was theatre. I did not want to play within their rules.”On a bright summer’s day in Brooklyn, Khalil invites me to his new apartment that commands a towering view over the borough’s low-rises. The walls are freshly painted white – he had moved in just a few weeks earlier – and we sit on a grey sofa by the window. His four-month-old son, Deen, is crying softly in the next room as Noor Abdalla, his wife, soothes him.It is an archetypal scene of a young New York family: a baby rocker sits beside a large TV, white tulips lean against a ceramic vase, bright artwork adorns the walls. Khalil is warm and candid, he offers me chocolate and water before we start talking. But the grim reality of his situation soon lingers as we dial an attorney from his legal team who listens in to our three-hour conversation as a precaution.Although he is free from detention, the Trump administration’s case against him is still winding through the courts. While he is a legal permanent resident, he acknowledges deportation could still be the ultimate outcome.View image in fullscreen“This administration is trying to do everything in its power – and beyond its power, in fact – to punish me and deport me,” he says. “Up until very recently, they were trying to rearrest me.”He is working on contingency plans for if and when that happens, he acknowledges, without describing specifics. For now, he has attempted to return to a degree of normality. He spends his days with baby Deen, learning to be a father after he missed the birth while detained. He recently rode the subway for the first time since his release, but still finds himself looking over his shoulder. The move to Brooklyn was partly to create distance from Columbia’s campus and all the past wounds of its recent history. But still, it remains difficult to focus.A Palestinian refugee, intimately familiar with the experience of repeated displacement, he remains resolute in the face of a prospective fresh exile.“Even if I am deported, I would continue to speak out for Palestine,” he says.Khalil’s life was changed forever when agents in plainclothes came to his old apartment back in March. His arrest, captured on video by Abdalla, marked a turning point as Trump ramped up his era of mass deportations and began a censorship campaign against the campuses that saw large protests of Israel’s war in Gaza. Khalil remained calm as he was placed in handcuffs and driven away, with his wife – heavily pregnant – left on the sidewalk, desperately calling their lawyer.I wonder if he has ever watched the video back?He shakes his head.“It is a moment I would never want to remember,” he says. “It was one of the most difficult, scariest moments in my life. I do not want to watch a moment where I was helpless to support Noor.”His overwhelming memory of that night is his fear that Abdalla, a US citizen, might also face arrest. He repeated her phone number in his head so as not to forget it. But he also remembers making “chill” small talk with the arresting agents as he was driven away. They spoke about the iftar dinner, the breaking-fast meal taken during Ramadan, he had just eaten.“I did not fear them whatsoever,” he recalls. “I saw them eye to eye.”Shortly after the arrest, he overheard an incoming phone call from the White House, requesting an update. He was then presented with a document that accused him of no crime, but argued his presence in the US compromised foreign policy interests. (A memo signed by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, disclosed later, argued this was due to participation in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities”.)He read it and laughed in disbelief.“Are they really going this far in coming after me?” he thought.After 36 hours of travel under guard, he ended up in Jena, the sprawling centre four hours from New Orleans, hidden away in a pine forest by a country road. It is known as one of the harshest immigration jails in the US. Inside his large detention dormitory, the TV was blaring and he saw Trump at a press conference on the White House lawn perusing Teslas with Elon Musk.The president was asked about Khalil’s arrest.“We ought to get him the hell out of the country,” Trump replied.It was at this point he started to realise the enormity of it all – a public narrative about him spiralling out of his control, laundered through a vast rightwing disinformation infrastructure branding him an antisemite and terrorism supporter.“Who I am has been skewed so much,” he recalls thinking. “I was like: ‘Damn my future is basically done … my reputation, my career aspirations.’”But through the horror, he says he knew his record would ultimately speak for itself. “That was my salvation,” he says. “I was 100% confident I had a very clean history. They would be able to get no dirt on me.”He spoke to Abdalla by phone. She was safe. She told him about an outpouring of support across the world. He sighed with relief.That quiet courage, which Khalil has carried throughout this ordeal, has been forged since childhood, at the multiple junctures he was forced to upend his life.He was born in a small Palestinian refugee camp named Khan Eshieh on the outskirts of Damascus, the youngest of four brothers. His paternal grandparents were displaced from their farmland outside of Tiberias, in what is now Israel, during the Nakba of 1948. His father was a welder who left school at the age of 10. His mother, a low-level civil servant, ended her education at 16.His Palestinian identity was omnipresent growing up; most of his neighbours were displaced from the same region as his grandparents. And his grandmother, who was illiterate, would tell stories of her life in Palestine, always with a view to eventual return.View image in fullscreen“You could see the struggle in her face,” he says.His parents, both largely apolitical, instilled in him the values of a formal education and he excelled, graduating with aspirations to become a commercial pilot. But the forces of history had other plans. The final few years of his schooling in Syria coincided with the pro-democracy movements that swept across the region during the Arab spring. One of his first forays into formal activism came on 15 May 2011, as part of a series of “Nakba Day” demonstrations at Israel’s borders. At least a dozen protesters were killed during the clashes with Israeli forces. Dozens more were injured.Khalil was one of them. Aged 16, he was shot in the leg and spent a number of days in hospital. “That was the first real encounter of violence, direct violence, by Israel against me,” he says.The experience propelled him further into the tumultuous politics of the era – initially heady and full of promise before quickly deteriorating into state brutality and civil war. He witnessed the crackdowns of the Assad regime on close friends and family who helped provide shelter to Syrians fleeing Damascus. Khalil became involved in organising smaller acts of resistance: street protests, spray painting and posting anti-Assad comments on social media.“These things were the very minimum we could do,” he says. “In a time where you know that injustices are happening around you, staying silent is complicity. Pure complicity.”It all intensified after graduating high school. He had been set to study aerospace engineering at the University of Aleppo, but the city was burning as the civil war raged. On 11 January 2013, a week after he turned 18, two of his childhood friends and co-organisers named Bashar and Ali were snatched off the street by Syrian intelligence officers. He feared he would be next.The same night he made plans to flee, crossing the border into Lebanon the next day. “I left everything behind,” he says. “I fled without a plan. My biggest worry was that they would confess the names of the people around them. And you wouldn’t blame them to confess under such torture by the regime.”Bashar and Ali were murdered after their arrest, their deaths confirmed only a few months ago after the Assad regime collapsed at the end of 2024.Khalil recognises the different shades of authoritarianism he has faced throughout his life.“What shocked me at the very beginning, when I was kidnapped [by US immigration], was just how reminiscent that was to cases I witnessed in Syria,” he says. “You would have plainclothed officers without any warrant come and take you just because of your political speech.”View image in fullscreenKhalil languished in Jena for more than 100 days. He had known little about the US’s deportation machine, and the detention center’s reputation as a legal black hole, until he experienced it all.He slept in a large dorm room lined with bunkbeds, holding about 70 men. He spent time dictating well-written dispatches over the phone to his legal team. He read literature: Out of Place, the autobiography of the Palestinian academic Edward Said; Man’s Search for Meaning, the psychologist Viktor Frankl’s memoir of surviving the Holocaust. But mostly he shared stories with the other men detained with him. Many had been picked up during routine check-ins with immigration officials. Others were recently apprehended at the southern border. A few had been detained in Jena for more than a year. The majority of people who pass through immigration court in Jena have no lawyers as mandatory legal representation is not guaranteed.One man, a Georgian national, had been held for about eight months, picked up with his wife in California. Held in separate detention centres about two hours apart, the couple, who were fleeing Georgia’s new pro-Russia government, had not been able to speak to each other since their arrest. The man, a carpenter, spent hours fashioning improvised rosaries from commissary items, including crayon, ground coffee and bread – hardened into beads by heat in a microwave. Khalil shows me a set, still impressed by the ingenuity.Many of the men, Khalil says, have since been removed from the US.For Khalil, the lowest moment came on the night his son was born. His requests for a furlough to attend the birth were denied and so he was forced to listen on the phone in the middle of the night, whispering quiet words of encouragement as Abdalla laboured. The line cut around 2am, and by the time he called back he heard his newborn son crying in the background. He whispered the call to prayer down the line to welcome baby Deen into the world.“It was a very difficult moment that I don’t wish anyone to go through,” he says, his eyes drifting. “It was a clear act of cruelty just to punish me.”Abdalla emerges to say hello with Deen in her arms. Khalil’s face lights up. At four months, his son has a full head of hair, deep dimples and expressive brown eyes that follow his father around the room.I ask her how it feels to have her husband back.“Not having him for the first two months of Deen’s life was hard,” she says. “We missed a lot of milestones that you can’t get back. So we are catching up on lost time.”The new apartment is their “safe space”, she says. The couple have been largely welcomed with open arms here, receiving spontaneous acts of kindness: an unexpected free lunch, smiles on the street. I am the first journalist they have invited over.Khalil met his future wife, now a dentist, in Lebanon in 2016, while working for a non-profit helping educate Syrian refugees. She visited on an exchange program. He had worked his way up from nothing after fleeing Syria, taking construction jobs during the day and volunteering for a refugee charity in the evenings, which granted him free room and board in their office. Eventually he attended university to study computer science and took remedial English classes. He gradually let go of his dream to fly commercial jets, becoming more immersed in the work of government and bureaucracy.View image in fullscreenKhalil and Abdalla bonded over games of backgammon and stayed in touch after she returned home to Flint, Michigan. He was attracted to her kindness and gentle nature. She found his intellect and ambition appealing, and eventually pushed him to apply for a job at the British embassy, where he worked on Syria policy until moving to New York in 2023. Their long-distance relationship lasted seven years.I ask how fatherhood has changed him since he returned home.“It absolutely makes me think [more] about risks,” he acknowledges. “When you have someone depending on you, you want them to have as normal a life as possible. But at the same time it pushes me towards advocacy. When I see Deen I always remember the children who are being killed because of Israel, who don’t have the luxury of being in New York. [I think of] immigrant children who don’t have the luxury of having an American passport that would somehow protect them.”But Palestinian liberation is never far from his imagination.“I want Deen to be able to visit his home town, his ancestors’ town, and live equally with everyone,” he says.View image in fullscreenThe pro-Gaza protests at Columbia marked the first time Khalil had ever assumed a public-facing role. Having set his sights on a behind-the-scenes job in government bureaucracy, he was instead thrust into a spring of campus tumult in 2024 as students constructed encampments, staged rallies and, in late April, occupied the university’s Hamilton Hall, leading to an overwhelming police response.Khalil served as a negotiator with the university’s administration, presenting students’ demands, including divestment from companies with ties to Israel. He was not present on campus during the Hamilton Hall occupation.The negotiations were protracted but civil. A Columbia administrator, anonymously quoted in the New York Times, later described Khalil as “thoughtful, passionate, and principled, sometimes to the point of rigidity”. It strikes me as apt, but I wonder if he agrees?“Pretty much,” he says, smiling. “I don’t know about rigidity though, because it was not my position, it was the students’.”Unlike many of those on the protest frontlines, Khalil did not wear a face mask, leaving him vulnerable to online doxing from hardline pro-Israel groups, which have supplied the Trump administration with lists of candidates for deportation.“I have never worn a mask during a protest because I knew that the purpose of doxing was to intimidate us, to silence us,” he says. But the campaign ramped up again after the election of Trump, shortly before Khalil’s arrest. He had not foreseen how dangerous it might become.The allegations of antisemitism have never been substantiated with hard evidence. Khalil says Jewish students played an “integral” role in organising the campus protests and argues it is Israel and the Trump administration’s policies that fuel global antisemitism through their policies.So how does he visualise a free Palestine?“I imagine it as a place where everyone lives in dignity, freedom, equality, regardless of who they are, where they come from,” he says. “I don’t think there’s an alternative to that, to have a lasting and just peace in the Middle East.“Liberation doesn’t mean throwing anyone out. Liberation means liberating everyone, whether the oppressed or the oppressors.”Khalil remains scathing of Columbia’s response to the protests and its later capitulation to the Trump administration’s demands it suppress pro-Palestinian protest. Yet he expresses an honest sadness that he was unable to walk the stage to collect his master’s degree in May this year. He is the first in his family to graduate from university. His parents had planned to travel from Germany, where they now live, to witness it. He had bought his gown a year in advance.“I know it would have been an incredibly important moment for my parents, who have fought and sacrificed so much for me to get to this point,” he says. Instead, he received the accolade as an emailed PDF file.View image in fullscreenIt was late June when Khalil emerged from Jena on a sweltering humid afternoon. He raised his fist in the air to celebrate and walked towards a small group of journalists. He had lost about 15lbs (6.8kg). A federal judge in New Jersey had just ordered his release, having found the Trump administration’s foreign policy argument was likely unconstitutional.I had asked him that day to respond in his own words to the “threat” label that Trump had branded him with. “Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this,” he told me.I had not fully comprehended what he meant by “the wrong person” at the time. But as our conversation comes to a close, it becomes clear. The adversity that Khalil has faced – from displacement to detention – in such a short span of life has only fuelled his sense of mission. He will not be forced into submission or silence. He views his past and future as inextricable from the wider Palestinian struggle stretching from 1948 to the current slaughter in Gaza. “It is a drop in the sea of Palestinian sorrow and grief, where families are being erased, children are being killed, houses being raided and dignity is eroded,” he says.He takes a moment before we wrap up, seemingly a little exhausted.“My story is just a small story,” he says. “A story of how violence against Palestinians can be transported around the world.” More

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    Donald Trump’s ‘Department of War’ will just deliver bloodshed and destruction | Judith Levine

    On Friday, Donald Trump signed an executive order restoring the Department of Defense to its original name, the Department of War.That name “had a stronger sound”, Trump told reporters in August. “As Department of War we won everything,” he added, “and I think we’re going to have to go back to that.” In June, at the Nato summit, he called Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, his “secretary of war”.In the Department of War, Trump and Hegseth see the embodiment of a revived “warrior ethos” purportedly lost to overweening “woke-ness” in the armed forces. Hegseth has opined that women don’t belong on the battlefield and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) has rendered American fighting forces “effeminate”. Introducing a bill last week to the same effect as Trump’s order, Greg Steube, a Florida Republican senator, said the new-old name would “pay tribute” to past fighters’ “renowned commitment to lethality”.And the president, who fashions himself a dealmaker for peace, now has a department named to reflect his excellence as warrior king.In a way, an administration that habitually calls things the opposite of what they are – the 20 January executive order Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government; the waste-and-chaos-generation “department of government efficiency” – is, for once, speaking truth. The Department of War, created in 1789, became the defense department in 1949, with an amendment to the National Security Act of 1947 unifying the branches of the military. But the Department of Defense has never been a department of defense. It is a department of war.The last time the US declared war – or had to defend itself, for that matter – was in 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Still, since it’s been the “defense” department, the Pentagon has waged at least four undeclared wars. Trump is right: we haven’t won much. The Korean War was a draw. In Vietnam, we lost outright. And after hundreds of thousands of deaths, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan left those countries and the region more unstable and plagued by terrorism. The US has engaged in more than 200 military interventions, more than half of them since the end of the cold war in 1989.Trump was going to be the peace president. “I’m not going to start a war,” he promised in his 2024 victory speech. “I’m going to stop the wars.” It didn’t take long to break that vow and keep totting up those interventions.Ten days into his second term, Trump undertook the next chapter of the war on terror, launching airstrikes in north-western Syria and, a day later, in Somalia. In March, he initiated strikes in Yemen against Houthi militants, who had taken control of shipping routes in the Red Sea. The operation – blemished by the inadvertent deaths of dozens of immigrants in a detention center and the loss of a $67.4m fighter jet, which fell off an aircraft carrier into the sea – was halted 51 days later. The Houthis, Trump allowed, didn’t “want to fight anymore”, an allegation a Houthi leader disputed soundly.In late June, after Israel shot missiles into Iran and Iran responded in kind, the US bombed three Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. The president, who had withdrawn the US from the multilateral – or, as he put it, “one-sided” – 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement during his first term, had weeks earlier entered into new nuclear negotiations with that country. Over bipartisan objections, he attacked anyway.Hours later, in a televised address from the White House, Trump claimed that the objective of the strikes had been the “destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity”, and pronounced the salvo a “spectacular” success. At the same time, he warned on Truth Social that any Iranian retaliation that killed Americans would “BE MET WITH FORCE FAR GREATER THAN WHAT WAS WITNESSED TONIGHT”. While the world braced for a region-wide conflagration, Trump boasted to Nato: “Now this incredible exercise of American strength has paved the way for peace with a historic ceasefire agreement late Monday.” July clocked in as the deadliest month of the Gaza war. In August, as Israel continued to starve the Palestinians, UN-backed experts declared Israel’s “man-made famine” engulfing northern Gaza.A few weeks after the attacks, US intelligence concluded that they had barely made a dent in Iran’s nuclear capability. Needless to say, this displeased the commander-in-chief, and in August, Hegseth fired the general whose agency made those assessments.This summer, the US “war on drugs” was unofficially militarized, including incursions into other countries. Last week, the president announced that a navy ship – one of three deployed to waters outside Venezuela – had “shot out” a vessel originating there, carrying narcotics and piloted by members of the Tren de Aragua trafficking gang. Eleven people were killed. Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, whom the US has charged as a narco-trafficker, called the ships an “extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral, and absolutely criminal and bloody threat”, and put his own military on alert for attacks closer to home. Last month, Trump directed the military to pursue drug cartels inside Mexico, which Claudia Sheinbaum, the president, called an “invasion”. And then there’s Greenland, which Trump has vowed to annex, one way or another.To realize “peace through strength”, Trump’s 2026 budget proposed more than $1tn for defense, a 13% increase from the previous year. Even the defense department requested less: a mere $961.6bn. The $831.5bn war chest Congress finally approved includes funding for the project closest to Trump’s, um, heart – the continent-wide Golden Dome space defense system, which he said last week would protect the “homeland” for “hundreds of years”. Talking it up in May, Trump and Hegseth said the system could be built in three years and cost $125bn; Congress allocated about $13bn for initial development. But other calculations put the figure between $2.5tn and $6.2tn. And aside from its dubious feasibility and cost, experts warn that the project would accelerate the arms race. Strength, maybe. Peace, not so much.In a 1936 speech justifying his reluctance to join the war in Europe, Franklin Delano Roosevelt insisted that the US “could best serve the cause of a peaceful humanity by setting an example”. FDR had served as assistant secretary of the navy during the first world war, and the trauma was fresh in memory. He had seen “blood running from the wounded”, “cities destroyed”, “children starving”, “the agony of mothers and wives”, he said: “I hate war.”By contrast, Trump, who takes credit for ending seven wars and believes he deserves a Nobel prize, skirted military service and has seen war only on television. Yet he relishes it – and, most of all, revels in being commander-in-chief. His first military self-celebration – which marked the ceremonial birth of a new American fascism – was a bust, so now he’s planning another one.Trump’s Department of War burnishes his vanity, but it is not just a vanity project. It is extravagantly expensive. It will occupy US cities. And now, in word as in deed, it celebrates the nation and the president as aggressor, conqueror, unrestrained international lawbreaker and flouter of anything so “woke” as peace.

    Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism More