More stories

  • in

    Judge gives Trump administration deadline to justify Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation

    An immigration judge ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration has until 5pm on Wednesday to present evidence as to why Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate, should be deported. She said that if the evidence does not support deportation, she may rule on Friday on his release from immigration detention.Khalil, a green-card holder and leader in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last year, was detained on 8 March. The Trump administration claims that his presence has adverse foreign policy consequences, an argument decried by his legal team as a blatant free speech violation. The government has not provided any evidence that he broke the law, a typical condition for revoking permanent residency.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can “either can provide sufficient evidence or not”, said the judge, Jamee Comans, from her courtroom in Jena, Louisiana. “If he’s not removable, I’m going to terminate this case on Friday.”A lawyer for DHS told the judge: “We have evidence we will submit.”During the hearing, Khalil sat beside an empty chair, his immigration attorneys and counsel appearing over video on a flatscreen TV. Behind him sat a handful of supporters, some of whom had been directed by security to remove keffiyehs. Khalil, in navy blue detention-issued clothes, sat calmly, sometimes fingering a set of prayer beads.The proceedings were delayed as Comans tried to pick the attorneys out of the nearly 600 people – media, supporters and observers – attempting to join the video call.“This is highly unusual,” began Comans, in reference to the number of people attempting to watch the hearing.“Your honor, I’d appreciate it if you could let my wife in,” Khalil said softly into the microphone. A moment later, the face of Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, appeared on the screen.“Your honor, there is obviously a lot of public interest in this case, and we would appreciate if there could be online access” granted to the public, began Khalil’s immigration lawyer, Mark Van Der Hout. Comans denied this request and added, seeming frustrated, that she was “very, very close” to making the rest of the legal team appear in person as well.Van Der Hout said they had requested DHS’s evidence of the allegations more than two weeks ago and had not received a response. “We cannot plead until we know the specific allegations,” he added.The DHS also alleges that Khalil failed to disclose on his visa application that he had previously worked in a Syrian office of the British embassy and for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), before becoming a member of a pro-Palestinian activist group at Columbia.Van Der Hout requested to postpone a follow-up hearing Comans had set for Friday, noting: “We may have to depose the secretary of state” due to the nature of the charges against Khalil.Comans declined, telling him: “You’re in the wrong court for that.” Indicating she wanted to move the case along, she added: “I’m like you, Mr Van Der Hout: I’d like to see the evidence.”Apart from his immigration case, Khalil is challenging his detention in a separate case before a federal judge in New Jersey. More

  • in

    Trump signs orders to allow coal-fired power plants to remain open

    Donald Trump signed four executive orders on Tuesday aimed at reviving coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel that has long been in decline, and which substantially contributes to planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.Environmentalists expressed dismay at the news, saying that Trump was stuck in the past and wanted to make utility customers “pay more for yesterday’s energy”.The US president is using emergency authority to allow some older coal-fired power plants scheduled for retirement to keep producing electricity.The move, announced at a White House event on Tuesday afternoon, was described by White House officials as being in response to increased US power demand from growth in datacenters, artificial intelligence and electric cars.Trump, standing in front of a group of miners in hard hats, said he would sign an executive order “that slashes unnecessary regulations that targeted the beautiful, clean coal”.He added that “we will rapidly expedite leases for coal mining on federal lands”, “streamline permitting”, “end the government bias against coal” and use the Defense Production Act “to turbocharge coal mining in America”.The first order directed all departments and agencies to “end all discriminatory policies against the coal industry” including by ending the leasing moratorium on coal on federal land and accelerate all permitted funding for coal projects.The second imposes a moratorium on the “unscientific and unrealistic policies enacted by the Biden administration” to protect coal power plants currently operating.The third promotes “grid security and reliability” by ensuring that grid policies are focused on “secure and effective energy production” as opposed to “woke” policies that “discriminate against secure sources of power like coal and other fossil fuels”.The fourth instructs the justice department to “vigorously pursue and investigate” the “unconstitutional” policies of “radically leftist states” that “discriminate against coal”.Trump’s approach is in contrast to that of his predecessor Joe Biden, who in May last year brought in new climate rules requiring huge cuts in carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants that some experts said were “probably terminal” for an industry that until recently provided most of the US’s power, but is being driven out of the sector by cheaper renewables and gas.Trump, a Republican, has long promised to boost what he calls “beautiful” coal to fire power plants and for other uses, but the industry has been in decline for decades.The EPA under Trump last month announced a barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits, including seeking to overturn the Biden-era plan to reduce the number of coal plants.The orders direct the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium that paused coal leasing on federal lands and to require federal agencies to rescind policies transitioning the nation away from coal production.The orders also seek to promote coal and coal technology exports and to accelerate development of coal technologies.Trump has long suggested that coal can help meet surging electricity demand from manufacturing and the massive datacenters needed for artificial intelligence.“Nothing can destroy coal. Not the weather, not a bomb – nothing,” Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by video link in January. “And we have more coal than anybody.”Energy experts say any bump for coal under Trump is likely to be temporary because natural gas is cheaper and there is a durable market for renewable energy such as wind and solar power no matter who holds the White House.Environmental groups were scathing about the orders, pointing out that coal is in steep decline in the US compared with the increasingly cheap option of renewable energy. This year, 93% of the power added to the US grid will be from solar, wind and batteries, according to forecasts from Trump’s own administration.“What’s next, a mandate that Americans must commute by horse and buggy?” said Kit Kennedy, managing director of power at the Natural Resources Defense Council.“Coal plants are old and dirty, uncompetitive and unreliable. The Trump administration is stuck in the past, trying to make utility customers pay more for yesterday’s energy. Instead, it should be doing all it can to build the electricity grid of the future.”Clean energy, such as solar and wind, is now so affordable that 99% of the existing US coal fleet costs more just to keep running than to retire a coal plant and replace it with renewables, a 2023 Energy Innovation report found. More

  • in

    Thousands sign petition urging Avelo airline to halt deportation flights for Ice

    Several thousand people have signed a petition urging Avelo Airlines to halt its plans to carry out deportation flights in cooperation with the Trump administration.This comes as the budget airline company recently said it had signed an agreement to fly federal deportation flights for the administration from Mesa, Arizona, starting in May.Andrew Levy, the CEO of the Houston, Texas-based airline, said in a statement to the Associated Press that the company is flying for the US Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agency as part of a “long-term charter program” to support the department’s deportation efforts.The flights, the company said, will use three Boeing 737-800 aircraft based out of Mesa Gateway airport.“We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic,” Levy said in a statement to 12News KPNX in Arizona. “After significant deliberations, we determined this charter flying will provide us with the stability to continue expanding our core scheduled passenger service and keep our more than 1,100 crew members employed for years to come.”Recent job postings from the airline appear to advertise positions based in Mesa, Arizona.In one job listing for flight attendants, Avelo states that the “flights will be both domestic and international trips to support DHS’s deportation efforts” and that “Our DHS charter service may consist of local day trips and/or overnights.”A petition was launched by the New Haven Immigrant Heritage Coalition and as of Tuesday afternoon, it has garnered about 4,200 signatures.“We pledge to boycott the airline until they stop plans to profit off Ice flights that are tearing families and communities apart,” the petition reads.Individuals, including the mayor of New Haven, Connecticut – where Avelo Airlines said in December it has its largest base – have criticized the agreement.In a statement to the New Haven Independent, the mayor, Justin Elicker, a Democrat, called Avelo Airlines’ decision to run the charter operation for the deportation flights as “deeply disappointing and disturbing”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“For a company that champions themselves as ​‘New Haven’s hometown airline,’ this business decision is antithetical to New Haven’s values,” he said.Elicker said that he had called Levy over the weekend ​to express his objection to the deal and urged him to reconsider.“Travel should be about bringing people together, not tearing families apart,” he added. More

  • in

    What is the Israel lobby – and why is it so anxious?

    Last May, on a trip to the United States, world-renowned Israeli–Jewish historian Ilan Pappe was detained by Homeland Security and held for two hours.

    Aged 69 at the time, he was, among other things, asked about his views on Hamas and whether Israel’s actions on the Gaza Strip amount to genocide (he said yes). He was then asked to provide phone numbers of his contacts in the Arab–American and Muslim–American communities.

    In December, months after his interrogation by Homeland Security in the US, Pappe was removed without explanation from the BBC podcast, The Conflict, about the Middle East on the day he was supposed to record his contribution.

    Review: Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic – Ilan Pappe (One World)

    Pappe is one of Israel’s “New Historians”, who look for the truth about the 1948 Israeli “war of independence”.

    The war began when Israel declared its independence following the partition of Palestine. Though it was quickly recognised by the US, the Soviet Union and other countries, it was immediately attacked by Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. When the war ended in July 1949, the new state controlled one-fifth more territory than the original partition plan, to which it refused to return.

    Palestinians mourn the 1948 war as the Nakba: their violent mass displacement and dispossession. (It created about 750,000 Palestinian refugees.)

    One of the world’s most prominent scholars of the entwined histories of Israel and Palestine, Pappe is an urgent advocate of Palestinian rights and author of a groundbreaking 2007 book on the formation of the state of Israel, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

    Jewish–Israeli historian Ilan Pappe is an urgent advocate of Palestinian rights.
    Hossam el-Hamalawy/Flickr, CC BY

    His latest book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, seeks to understand how a pro-Israel lobby has formed, both in his country of residence, the United Kingdom, and in Israel’s most powerful and ardent supporter, the US.

    Pappe’s book is worth heeding: he is both a scholar of the Israel lobby and a recent victim of its attempt to deplatform pro-Palestinian perspectives.

    An ‘aggressive’, anxious lobby

    This is the story of an “aggressive” lobby that eagerly seeks to stamp out narratives of Palestinian dispossession and suffering – in case they legitimise Palestinian claims for statehood, or attract sympathy for Palestinians’ lack of political and civil rights in the Occupied Territories.

    This lobbying force began in the 19th century and took on more concrete forms after 1948. Much of Pappe’s book is devoted to parliamentary lobby groups, such as Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) in the UK, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the US. The latter spends considerable resources ensuring the US government aligns with Israeli objectives.

    Donald Trump at the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, 2016.
    Shawn Thew/AAP

    In this book, Pappe argues the aggressive Israel lobby is beset by anxiety. Few other states are so keen to “convince the world and their own citizens that their existence is legitimate”.

    On the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, whose mother was born in Israel, wrote:

    To most outsiders, Israel is a regional superpower, backed by a global superpower. It is strong and secure. But that is not how it looks from the inside. Israelis see their society as small – the size of New Jersey – besieged and vulnerable.

    Explaining this discrepancy, he wrote that while Israel is “a state with a daunting military”, on October 7, Israeli Jews felt “powerless as their ancestors in the shtetl”.

    When Pappe writes about the Israel lobby, he is not describing a monolithic entity, but multifaceted “groupings of ideas, individuals and organisations”. When he speaks of the Zionist lobby, he means individuals or groups spreading pro-Israeli propaganda, while seeking to discredit anyone “condemning or criticising Israel or Zionism”. But these groups change their composition, orientation and methods over time, Pappe writes.

    His book tells a story of organisations and “committed” individuals who, from the 19th century on, worked to convince policymakers and governments of the need for a Jewish homeland.

    Colonialism and apartheid

    From the early 20th century, Zionism has adapted to contemporary circumstances. It presented itself as a movement for national self-determination, fitting a “minority rights” model.

    Pappe draws on the work of Palestinian–American critic and activist Edward Said to argue Zionism increasingly allied itself to the story of Western modernity and progress. In doing so, he argues, it helped perpetuate Orientalism: a Western understanding of the Arab and Islamic Middle East as underdeveloped and backward.

    From the late 19th century, Palestinians were perceived as “at best, an exotic spectacle and, at worst, an ecological nuisance”, Pappe writes. Recently, US President Donald Trump has dismissed Palestinians’ connection to the land in Gaza, calling it a “big real estate site”.

    As antiracism has become a cultural norm in the West, Israel, like other nations, has become wary of comparisons to apartheid South Africa. However, those comparisons have existed for a long time. In recent decades, the Israel lobby has amplified claims of antisemitism as a defence against them, “weaponising anti-Semitism to procure public support for Israel”, Pappe argues.

    Israel had a close military alliance with apartheid-era South Africa, before the anti-apartheid African National Congress came to power in 1994. Last year, South Africa argued at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that Israel is responsible for apartheid against Palestinians.

    In a searing account, Pappe charts an intensive campaign by the Israel lobby against former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who called for the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state.

    The newspaper The Jewish Chronicle, for example, accused Corbyn of associating with “Holocaust deniers, terrorists and some outright anti-Semites”, he writes. Corbyn stepped down in 2019.

    In 2020, a report by the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found the culture within the Labour Party under Corbyn “at best, did not do enough to prevent anti-Semitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it”.

    Antisemitism in the UK Conservative Party gets much lighter treatment, Pappe argues. For example, former frontbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg described Jewish members of his party as “illuminati who are taking power to themselves”. Pappe believes the reason for this discrepancy in treatment is that Corbyn was in a position of power “that could affect British policy towards Israel”.

    The Israel lobby intensively campaigned against former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (pictured with now prime minister Keir Starmer), Pappe writes.
    Matt Dunham/AAP

    The lobby and the US

    In the book’s second half, Pappe shifts his attention to the US, now Israel’s major geopolitical sponsor. He argues the US is intent on exempting Israel from any reckoning with international law.

    He details the emergence of the American Zionist Emergency Council, a forerunner of AIPAC that emerged in the 1950s. These organisations’ early successes included US recognition in 1947 of the UN’s Assembly Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem as a separate, internationally governed entity.

    This led to the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, which ended with an enlarged and consolidated state of Israel. Rapid US recognition of the new state was another early success for the lobby. Signature achievements include the constant flow of arms and aid to Israel. Another is the US using its position on the United Nations Security Council (and its power and influence more generally) to enable Israel to avoid complying with numerous UN resolutions.

    Refugees stream from what was then Palestine on the road to Lebanon, fleeing fighting in the Galilee region in the Arab Israeli war, 1948.
    AAP

    However, Pappe shows the lobby has by no means always had its way. Since its inception, it has come up against the more sceptical, “pro-Arab” US State Department, which employs Middle East experts who are more sympathetic to its various populations. There have been periods of friction with Israel, including in the 1950s, when the US temporarily suspended economic aid.

    Lobbying strategies developed since the 1950s are noteworthy. If the US executive branch of government wavers on unconditional support, the Israel lobby cultivates the Congress. In the UK, the lobby curries favour with MPs in the Labour and Conservative parties, including organising trips to Israel through allied groups, such as Labour Friends of Israel and Conservative Friends of Israel.

    In the US, AIPAC funds the campaign of pro-Israel candidates and holds lavish conferences, high on pomp and display, at which legislators and politicians (including Trump, former president Joe Biden and former vice president Mike Pence) profess their identification with Israel.

    Mike Pence addresses the annual American Israel Public Affairs Conference in Washington DC, in 2020.
    Erik S. Lesseri/AAP

    The lobby vs civil society

    Pappe argues that the lobby’s cultivation of political elites threatens to widen the gap between political and media elites on one side, and global civil society (trade unions, churches, academic associations, non-government organisations, and activist groups) on the other. We can certainly see this happening today against the backdrop of the current war in Gaza.

    In recent decades, dissent over Israel’s actions has also increased within the US Jewish community. A significant segment of the Jewish diaspora is reasserting itself and its progressive values, derived from the Jewish experience of victimisation and statelessness, in relation to Israel.

    Pappe draws attention to the emergence in 1996 of Jewish Voice for Peace, which calls itself “the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world”, and the liberal Zionist lobby J Street, which works towards a democratic Jewish homeland in Israel, with a negotiated resolution, agreed to by Israelis and Palestinians.

    J Street wants to normalise Israel as a democratic Jewish state committed to a two-state solution, and is uncomfortable with Israel as an occupying power. In its own words, it “rejects any proposal to have Israel and the United States forcibly displace the people of Gaza and/or occupy the Strip”.

    Demonstrators from the group Jewish Voice for Peace protest inside Trump Tower in support of Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, in March 2025.
    Yuki Iwamura/AAP

    Pappe notes that active support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is strong in UK civil society. Perhaps this is due to Britain’s postcolonial guilt, after enabling the creation of the state of Israel before then largely vacating the diplomatic field. The UK Israel lobby, which is frequently given voice in the Murdoch media in particular, consistently attempts to align antisemitism and criticism of Israel in the public consciousness.

    Disenchanted up close

    Despite its current influence, Pappe does not think the lobby’s future as a political force is necessarily guaranteed.

    Throughout the book, he insists the Israel lobby is driven, at its heart, by his country’s lack of ethical foundations. As a careful historian, he tellingly believes most of the lobby’s efforts are at war with truth itself.

    The Israel lobby, for example, likes to present supporters of the rights of Palestinians as antisemitic. But in fact, they are typically driven by a sense of injustice at the Palestinians’ occupation, and an understanding of their struggle for civil and political rights.

    Of course, that’s not to say antisemitism doesn’t exist. And it can exist alongside criticisms of Israel. As Dennis Altman wrote last year, “the passions aroused by Israel’s escalating response to the Hamas attacks have revived centuries-old stereotypes of Jews as both alien and all-powerful” and sometimes “the distinction between opposition to Israel and hatred of Jews becomes blurred”.

    Ta Nehisi Coates.
    Nina Subin

    But the ranks of the disenchanted have included former US President Jimmy Carter and John Lyons, global affairs editor of the ABC and a former Middle East foreign correspondent. Lyons reflected in his book, Balcony Over Jerusalem, on once being “exposed to all the myths pushed by Israel’s lobby groups”. Now, he is a vocal advocate for the rights of Palestinian people, after covering the conflict at close quarters.

    For African American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, a May 2023 trip to Palestine opened his eyes to a system he compared to both apartheid and America’s Jim Crow South.

    No more plucky underdog

    There can be no more talk, Pappe suggests in the final chapter, of an Israeli plucky underdog David, fighting for its life against an Arab Middle Eastern Goliath. Of course, this talk has sustained many of Israel’s supporters since the Holocaust. It relies on a conception of Jewish people as actual or potential victims, regardless of evolving power dynamics.

    One of the world’s most respected Holocaust historians, Israeli-American Omer Bartov, warned in November 2023 of “genocidal intent” increased by dehumanising political rhetoric, in Israel’s actions in Gaza.

    South Africa’s prosecution of the case of genocide against Israel and recent initiatives by the International Criminal Court to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are further signs the international “shield” that protects Israel from its “violations of justice and humanitarian law” has serious cracks in it, as Pappe argues in the book’s afterword.

    In a January interview with Al Jazeera, Pappe described events of the past 15 months as “an attempt by a new leadership of Zionism to complete the work that they started in 1948, namely of taking over officially the whole of historical Palestine and getting rid of as many Palestinians as possible”.

    He believes Israel’s military supremacy will increasingly rely on the “extreme right of the Global North”, including the Trump administration, as well as authoritarian and dictatorial regimes in the Global South.

    As Israeli colonialism, suppression of the Palestinians and military activity to depopulate Palestinian areas intensifies, Pappe believes Israel will be almost entirely abandoned by what remains of progressive civil society and the educated intelligentsia, including renowned scholars of genocide whose reflections and warnings we should heed. I agree.

    It is important Pappe’s book is not ignored, and that we clearly see the Israel lobby’s challenge to free expression and solidarity with the oppressed. More

  • in

    US supreme court blocks ruling that 16,000 fired federal workers must be rehired

    The US supreme court has handed Donald Trump a reprieve from a judge’s ruling that his administration must rehire 16,000 probationary workers fired in its purge of the federal bureaucracy.A day after ruling in the White House’s favor to allow the continued deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, the court gave the White House a less clear-cut victory in halting the order by a California court that dismissed workers from six government agencies must be rehired.The court struck down by a 7-2 majority last month’s ruling by US district court judge William Alsup because non-profit groups who had sued on behalf of the fired workers had no legal standing.It did not rule on the firings themselves, which affected probationary workers in the Pentagon, the treasury, and the departments of energy, agriculture, interior and veterans affairs.“The district court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case,” the unsigned ruling read. “But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing. This order does not address the claims of the other plaintiffs, which did not form the basis of the district court’s preliminary injunction.”Two of the court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.The victory, though limited, is likely to embolden the Trump administration in the belief that the spate of legal reverses it has faced since taking office can be eventually overturned in the supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, due largely to three rightwing judges Trump nominated to the bench during his first presidency.The extent of Tuesday’s victory was qualified by the fact that it does not affect a separate order by a judge in Maryland applying to the same agencies plus several others. Judge James Bredar of the Maryland federal district court ordered the administration to reinstate workers in response to a case brought by 19 states and the government of Washington DC.In the California ruling, the court heard how staff were informed by a templated email from the office of personnel management that they were losing their jobs for performance-related reasons. “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” the email said.While accepting that workforce reductions were acceptable if carried out “correctly under the law”, Alsup said workers had been fired for bogus reasons.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee, and say it was based on performance, when they know good and well, that’s a lie,” he said.In filings to the supreme court, the acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, argued that Alsup had exceeded his powers.“The court’s extraordinary reinstatement order violates the separation of powers, arrogating to a single district court the executive branch’s powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines,” she wrote. “That is no way to run a government. This court should stop the ongoing assault on the constitutional structure before further damage is wrought.” More

  • in

    To my husband, Mahmoud Khalil: I can’t wait to tell our son of his father’s bravery | Noor Abdalla

    Exactly a month ago, you were taken from me. This is the longest we have been apart since we got married. I miss you more and more every day and as the days draw us closer to the arrival of our child, I am haunted by the uncertainty that looms over me – the possibility that you might not be there for this monumental moment. Every kick, every cramp, every small flutter I feel inside me serves as an inescapable reminder of the family we’ve dreamed of building together. Yet, I am left to navigate this profound journey alone, while you endure the cruel and unjust confines of a detention center.I could not be more proud of you, Mahmoud. You embody everything I ever hoped for in a partner and the father of my children. What more could I ask for as a role model for our children than a man who, with unwavering conviction, stands up for the liberation of his people, fully cognizant of the consequences of speaking truth to power? Your courage is boundless, and now more than ever, I am in awe of your strength and determination. Your voice, your belief in justice, and your refusal to be silenced are the very qualities that make you the man I love and admire.We will not forget those who have orchestrated this injustice, the government officials and university administrators who have targeted you without cause, without any shred of evidence to justify their actions. They sit in their ivory towers, scrambling to fabricate lies and distort the truth, throwing accusations like stones in the hope that something will stick. What they fail to realize is that their efforts are futile. Their wrongful detention of you is a testament to the fact that you have struck a nerve. You’ve disrupted the false narratives they’ve worked so hard to maintain, and spoken a truth that they are too terrified to acknowledge. What more do we have than our fundamental right to free speech, when they constantly attempt to strip us of our dignity, telling us we are unworthy of life, of respect, of voice? Now, they seek to punish that very speech, to silence the words that challenge their corrupt and oppressive systems.They are trying to silence you. They are trying to silence anyone who dares to speak out against the atrocities happening in Palestine. But they will fail. We will not be silenced. We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children – until Palestine is free. I eagerly await the day when I can tell our son the stories of his father’s bravery, of the courage that courses through his veins, and of the pride he should feel to carry Palestinian blood … your blood. And, more than anything, I pray that he will not have to grow up fighting the same fight for our basic freedoms.We will be reunited soon. Until then, I will continue to fight for you, for us and for our family. Your resilience and your courage will guide us through the storm. You are my best friend, my comrade, the very air that sustains me when it feels as though there is none left. I know your spirit is unwavering, that they cannot break you, and that you will emerge from this stronger than ever. I have no doubt that, when you are finally released, you will raise your hands in the air, chanting: “Free Palestine.”

    Dr Noor Abdalla is a dentist and a soon-to-be mother. She is the wife of Mahmoud Khalil More

  • in

    The Guardian view on the US immigration crackdown: what began with foreign nationals won’t end there | Editorial

    While running for president, Donald Trump promised voters “the largest deportation operation in American history”. Now he wants to deliver. Thousands of undocumented migrants have been rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials since he returned to the White House. On Monday, the US supreme court lifted a judge’s ban on deporting alleged gang members to Venezuela under an 18th-century law, though it said deportees had a right to judicial review. Even the Trump-backing podcaster Joe Rogan has described as “horrific” the removal of an asylum seeker – identified as a criminal because he had tattoos – under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.What’s truly new is that the administration is also targeting those who arrived and remained in the US with official approval, such as the Palestinian activist and student Mahmoud Khalil. Normally, green card holders would be stripped of their status if convicted of a crime; he has not even been accused of one. But Mr Trump had pledged to deport international students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests that his administration has deemed antisemitic, and Mr Khalil was a leading figure in the movement at Columbia University. The president crowed that his arrest last month was “the first of many”. Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish student at Tufts, was detained by masked agents in the street, reportedly for an opinion piece she co-wrote with other students. Unrelated to the protests, dozens if not hundreds more students have had visas revoked, often for minor or non-criminal offences.This crackdown is exploiting legislation in ways that were never intended. The Alien Enemies Act was previously invoked only in wartime – but Mr Trump casts mass migration as an “invasion”. Mr Khalil and others are targeted under a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows deportations when the secretary of state determines that a foreign national’s presence “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”. And while this campaign is indiscriminate in many regards, Mr Trump’s offer of asylum to white Afrikaners facing “unjust racial discrimination” in South Africa speaks volumes about who is and is not wanted in his America.The current fear among migrants, with all its social costs, is not a byproduct of this drive, but the desired result. The Trump administration is trying to push undocumented individuals into “self-deporting”, which is cheaper and easier than using agents to hunt people down. It reportedly plans to levy fines of up to $998 a day if those under deportation orders do not leave – applying the penalties retroactively for up to five years. Fairness, never mind mercy, is not relevant. The administration admits an “administrative error” led to the expulsion to El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia – who is married to a US citizen and was working legally in the US – but fights against righting that wrong.This crackdown should frighten US nationals too, both for what it says about their nation’s character and for what it may mean for their own rights. The Trump administration wants to remove birthright citizenship and is ramping up denaturalisation efforts. “I love it,” said Mr Trump, when asked about El Salvador’s offer to jail US citizens in its infamous mega-prisons – though at least he conceded that he might have to check the law first. The chilling effect of Mr Khalil’s arrest on dissent is already being felt by US nationals too: the first amendment’s protection of free speech is not exclusive to citizens.“The friendless alien has indeed been selected as the safest subject of a first experiment; but the citizen will soon follow,” Thomas Jefferson wrote when the alien and sedition laws were passed. That warning now looks more prescient than ever.

    Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

  • in

    Far-right activist Laura Loomer cements her influence after White House firings

    The US president, Donald Trump, met with far-right activist Laura Loomer in the Oval Office last week. Loomer is a figure so extreme that she is shunned by many, even in Trump’s “make America great again” (Maga) movement.

    Hours after their meeting, Trump fired a string of national security officials, including General Timothy D. Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, apparently at Loomer’s request. Trump has said Loomer was not involved in the firings, but also praised her judgment.

    Even for a president who has always listened to – and, indeed, echoed – fringe voices, the incident stood out. It served as a reminder that Trump is less constrained than ever before, and that his White House is responsive to his personal whims rather than any deliberative policy-making process.

    Gone are the days of Trump’s first administration, when aides would at least try to block the most extreme conspiracy theorists from having access to the president. Now, apparently, even a four-star general (the highest officer rank) like Haugh serves only at the pleasure of figures such as Loomer.

    So, who exactly is Loomer? She is, first and foremost, a media influencer – someone who made her name in far-right circles by spreading hate and conspiracy theories.

    She calls herself a “proud Islamophobe” and “pro-white nationalism”. She has endorsed claims that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an “inside job”, alleged that the “deep state” manipulates the weather to influence elections, and spread conspiracy theories implying that the FBI let school shootings happen in election years to help the Democrats push gun control.

    Loomer’s claims, and her open racism, have sometimes proven too much even for other prominent Maga figures, who prefer to be slightly more subtle in their messaging.

    When Loomer said in 2024 that if Kamala Harris won the election, the White House “will smell like curry” and speeches will be “facilitated via a call centre,” she drew push-back from the now vice-president, J.D. Vance, and far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

    Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has previously called Loomer ‘mentally unstable’ and a ‘documented liar’.
    Michael Reynolds / EPA

    But Trump seems to have appreciated Loomer’s commentary all the same. The president has repeatedly praised her in public and backed her unsuccessful run as a Republican candidate for a US House of Representatives seat in Florida in 2020.

    Like many other Maga media figures, Loomer has realised that her antics give her direct exposure to a television-obsessed president, and that this exposure can be transformed into access and, ultimately, political power.

    Loomer, who is only 31, is entirely a product of the Trump era. As an adult, practically the only conservatism she has known is the conservatism of Maga – openly prejudiced, vindictive, and more a stew of grievance and hatred than a coherent political platform.

    Insofar as Loomer advocates for particular policies, they are a crude channeling of these impulses. She has campaigned for a ten-year immigration moratorium and has called for the death penalty for Democrats who oppose Trump.

    On a podcast in June 2024 about whether Democrats should be prosecuted and jailed if Trump wins the election over alleged “unscrupulous behaviour,” Loomer said: “Not just jailed, they should get the death penalty. You know, we actually used to have the punishment for treason in this country.”

    But the chief way in which Loomer personifies modern American conservatism is her single-minded loyalty to the president. Loyalty to Trump, and fury at the disloyalty of others, is the central component of her identity.

    Deep loyalty

    This loyalty seems to be both a deeply felt emotion and also a shrewd way of recommending herself to the president. And, more than anything else, it was what landed her in the Oval Office last week.

    Loomer’s apparent recommendation that Trump fire a slew of national security officials had its roots in this obsession with loyalty. Many people serving in national security positions in the Trump administration are not card-carrying members of the Maga movement.

    This reflects the fact that such positions require deep expertise developed over long apolitical careers in the civil service or military. As the product of a movement that disdains expertise and rationality, few Maga die-hards have the requisite knowledge to do these jobs.

    For Loomer, such figures pose a threat. It ought to be emphasised that this is not because people like General Haugh have ever shown open disloyalty to Trump. It is merely that they are not, like Loomer, his fanatical adherents. In her worldview, anything less is unacceptable.

    General Haugh was dismissed after Loomer had accused him and his deputy of disloyalty.
    Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA

    Trump seems to agree, which opens the way to more firings in the future. Sensing her opening, Loomer has declared that she will establish an organisation dedicated to investigating executive branch officials for suspected disloyalty to the president.

    Government officials will have to live in fear of being targeted, creating a chilling atmosphere in which pushing back against Trump’s whims becomes impossible.

    Loomer’s growing influence also suggests that the Trump White House is becoming more chaotic and unpredictable.

    The president’s aides have long claimed that the White House would be run in a controlled fashion this time around, with clear chains of command and questionable outsiders kept away. Loomer’s presence in the Oval Office – at Trump’s personal request – blows that story away.

    For her part, Loomer seems to have what she has always wanted: the president’s attention. Where might she direct it next? More