US Politics

The justice department on Thursday joined a lawsuit brought by California Republicans to block the state’s new congressional map, escalating a legal battle over a redistricting effort designed to give Democrats a better chance of retaking the House of Representatives next year.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, challenges the congressional map championed by Gavin Newsom, the state’s Democratic governor, in response to a Republican gerrymander in Texas, sought by Donald Trump. The justice department’s intervention in the case sets up a high-profile showdown between the Trump administration and Newsom, one of the president’s chief antagonists and a possible 2028 contender.“California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” said Pam Bondi, the US attorney general. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.”Democrats have expressed confidence that the newly approved maps will withstand a legal challenge.“These losers lost at the ballot box and soon they will also lose in court,” Brandon Richards, a Newsom spokesperson, said in a statement.Republicans brought the lawsuit the morning after California voters decisively approved the redistricting measure, known as Proposition 50, which suspended the maps drawn by the state’s independent commission and installed new House districts designed to help Democrats secure up to five GOP-held seats. It was the most significant counterpunch by Democrats in the unprecedented redistricting war that began in Texas and spread across the country as Trump attempts to secure House Republicans’ fragile majority for the final years of his second term.The plaintiffs assert that California’s map improperly used race as a factor to heavily favor Hispanic voters in violation of the US constitution. It asks a judge to block California from taking effect.“Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Prop 50,” Jesus Osete, the second-highest ranking official in the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement, quoting from the lawsuit. “Californians were sold an illegal, racially gerrymandered map, but the US Constitution prohibits its use in 2026 and beyond.”The plaintiffs are being represented by the Dhillon Law Group, which was founded by Harmeet Dhillon, who is now assistant attorney general overseeing the US Department of Justice civil rights division. The firm also represented California Republicans earlier this year in their unsuccessful attempt to prevent the special election from taking place.Dhillon has been recused from this case, the justice department said.Unlike elsewhere, where Republican state legislatures have enacted gerrymanders, California’s plan required voter approval, which it received last week, with nearly 65% of the vote.Democrats need to flip just a handful of Republican-held House seats to take control of the chamber in next year’s midterm election. The party that holds the majority will shape the final years of Trump’s second term in the White House, determining whether a unified Republican Congress will continue to deliver on his agenda or whether he will be met with resistance, investigations and possibly even a third impeachment attempt. More

Seven people detained at California’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center have sued the US government, alleging they have been denied essential medications, frequently go hungry and are housed in a “decrepit” facility.The federal class-action complaint filed against ICE on Wednesday challenges the “inhumane conditions” at the California City detention center, which opened in late August inside a shuttered state prison. The suit alleges “life-threatening” medical neglect, with the plaintiffs saying they have been denied cancer treatment, basic disability accommodations and regular insulin for diabetes.The facility is run by CoreCivic, a private prison corporation, which is not a named defendant.Residents have raised alarms about the facility for two months, with some describing it as a “torture chamber” and “hell on earth” in interviews.California City is located in the remote Mojave desert, 100 miles (160km) north-east of Los Angeles. It can hold more than 2,500 people, increasing ICE’s California detention capacity by 36%. It currently detains more than 800 people, lawyers say.Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, said in an email that claims of “subprime conditions” at the detention center were “false”, writing: “No one is denied access to proper medical care.”The suit, which alleges constitutional violations, describes conditions as “dire”, saying: “Sewage bubbles up from the shower drains, and insects crawl up and down the walls of the cells. People are locked in concrete cells the size of a parking space for hours on end.”Temperatures inside are “frigid”, and detained residents who cannot afford to buy roughly $20 sweatshirts “suffer in the cold, some wearing socks on their arms as makeshift sleeves”, the complaint alleges; meals are “paltry”, and people who cannot afford to buy supplemental food go hungry.Even though residents are detained for civil immigration violations, not criminal offenses, California City “operates even more restrictively and punitively than a prison”, the lawyers say. Families are forced to visit their relatives behind glass, with parents denied the ability to hug or touch their children, and the facility “sharply limits access to lawyers, leaving people bewildered and largely incommunicado”, the suit alleges.McLaughlin of the DHS said detained people were provided three meals a day and dietitians evaluated the meals to “ensure they meet the appropriate standards”. She said they “have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers”, adding: “ICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons.”The residents are coming forward as the homeland security department continues to ramp up immigration raids nationally, bolstered by $45bn to expand ICE capacity, with the goal of detaining more than 100,000 people. Civil rights lawsuits have repeatedly raised concerns about detention conditions across the country.The plaintiffs are represented by the Prison Law Office, the Keker Van Nest and Peters law firm, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.Requests for medical attention “go unanswered for weeks or are never answered at all”, the complaint states. People with disabilities have allegedly struggled to access essential services, including wheelchairs. One man, whose glasses were confiscated at intake and had difficulty seeing objects in front of him, fell getting off his bunkbed and was hospitalized, the suit says.Jose Ruiz Canizales, a detained plaintiff who is deaf and does not speak, has been at California City since 29 August, but has only communicated once with staff through a sign language interpreter via video, the complaint says. When he tries to communicate, staff “often shrug their shoulders, walk away, or laugh at him”. The impact on his mental health was so severe, he was hospitalized for an anxiety attack.Yuri Alexander Roque Campos, another plaintiff, has a heart anomaly requiring daily monitoring and medication, but since he arrived at California City on 5 September, he has been denied medications “for days at a time”, his lawyers wrote, resulting in two emergency hospitalizations for severe chest pain. A hospital doctor allegedly told him “he could die if this were to happen again”, but the lawsuit says he has yet to see a cardiologist and still lacks consistent medication.Sokhean Keo, who previously spoke of his temporary hunger strike to protest about conditions, witnessed a friend’s suicide attempt at the facility and remains traumatized by flashbacks, lawyers wrote.“I’m bringing this lawsuit to try to help end the suffering and pain that I see in here,” Keo said in a statement shared by his attorneys. “ICE is playing with people’s lives, and they treat people like they’re trash, like they’re nothing.”When residents do see doctors, “the care they receive is dangerously poor”, according to the complaint, with providers failing to document exams, address abnormal lab results or order timely treatment.Fernando Viera Reyes, a plaintiff transferred to California City in late August, had a pending biopsy appointment to formally diagnose and begin treatment for prostate cancer, but his request to see a doctor went unanswered for weeks, and he still has not seen a urologist nor received testing for his condition, the suit says. His bloodwork and bleeding with urination suggests his cancer may have metastasized, his lawyers said.Plaintiff Fernando Gomez Ruiz, a father of two and LA resident for 22 years, was arrested by ICE in early October while at a food truck outside a Home Depot, the complaint says. Since his arrival at California City in mid-October, he has not received regular insulin for his diabetes, leading to elevated blood sugar and a “large, oozing ulcer on the bottom of his foot”, the suit says. He says he has been forced to cover his wound with “soiled bandages and bloody shoes” and is worried he will need amputation.The DHS did not respond to the detailed healthcare claims in the lawsuit, but McLaughlin said ICE provided “comprehensive medical care from the moment” people are detained: “This includes medical, dental, and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.” She said ICE “provides necessary accommodations for disabilities”.Ryan Gustin, a CoreCivic spokesperson, declined to comment on the litigation and specific claims, but said in an email on Thursday after publication that the “safety, health and well-being of the individuals entrusted to our care is our top priority”. CoreCivic’s ICE facilities follow federal detention standards, are “monitored very closely by our government partners” and are required to undergo regular reviews and audits to “ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for all”, he said.“We’re proud of our dedicated team at [California City] who work hard every day to keep those in our care safe while providing for their needs,” he said, adding “staff are held to the highest ethical standards” outlined in the company’s “human rights policy”. The company told the Guardian in September that it provided “high-quality healthcare, available 24/7”.The plaintiffs also accused staff of “abusive” behavior and “unreasonable use of force”. On 29 September, staff entered the cell of a person detained in “administrative segregation”, a form of restricted housing, and hit him with riot shields, even though he was already handcuffed, and held him down with their knees on his back, the complaint says.On 3 October, Gustavo Guevara Alarcon, another plaintiff, said he witnessed an officer pepper-spraying a man who did not speak English, after the man did not understand the officer and turned to walk away.In another alleged incident on 9 October described in the lawsuit, people were screaming for help due to an attempted suicide, and a person stepped out of his cell to observe. A staff member, who was holding a drill for maintenance work, ordered the person to get his “ass inside”, threatening to “make a hole in your chest”, and the man allegedly got a disciplinary write-up for being outside his cell.“California City’s punishing conditions are punishing by design,” said Tess Borden, a supervising staff attorney at the Prison Law Office. “ICE and DHS are using detention as a threat to immigrants who decide to stay in America, and they’re making good on that threat at California City. Many people have agreed to deportation, and some even attempt to take their own lives, because the conditions at the facility are so unbearable.”McLaughlin did not respond to accounts of the specific incidents, but said ICE placed people in segregation for “their own protection or protection of others”, adding: “Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority … ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards.” More

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It is 20 years since Florida police first investigated the financier Jeffrey Epstein for the sexual abuse of underage girls; six years since he killed himself in prison following his arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges; and more than a year since Donald Trump said that he would have “no problem” with releasing the FBI files on the offender.As the Democratic politician Ro Khanna noted, releasing the files “was core to Trump’s promise … It was his central theme that the American corrupt elite had betrayed forgotten Americans”. The question is not only what Epstein’s associates did, but also what they knew and what they did not do. It is not only about their own behaviour, but about any knowledge or suspicion of his crimes, and willingness to overlook them.Yet the Maga base is still waiting. Mr Trump has said that he had “no idea” about Epstein’s crimes. On Wednesday, questions were reignited by the Democrats’ release of emails in which Epstein described Mr Trump as “that dog that hasn’t barked”, adding that “[victim’s name redacted] spent hours at my house with him”. Republicans said the victim was the late Virginia Giuffre, who told lawyers that “I don’t think Donald Trump participated in anything”. Separately, Epstein wrote that “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine [Maxwell] to stop” and that “Trump knew of it” but “he never got a massage”.Mr Trump, who has mainstreamed and legitimised conspiracy politics and the championing of emotion over fact, attacks the issue as a “hoax”. The very people who urged Maga supporters to pursue this story – such as Kash Patel, now FBI chief – abruptly changed their minds this year without adequate explanation. Republicans released thousands of documents in response to the emails published by Democrats. But Mr Trump faces a bipartisan demand for the full release of the files, with members of the Maga far right joining Democrats.The Republicans took a drubbing in off-year elections last week, and Mr Trump’s approval rating is the lowest of this term. The ending of the longest government shutdown in history – after a handful of Democrats folded on Wednesday – relieved the White House, but opens the way for a vote on releasing the files, expected next week.Mr Trump has shaken off troubles that would have ended any other political career – including E Jean Carroll’s successful civil suit against him for sexual abuse (which he is again asking the supreme court to dismiss) and two dozen allegations of sexual assault, which he denies. The full release of documents might aid him: the slow drip of information has kept the scandal running and made it look, rightly or wrongly, as if the administration has something worse to hide.For the Maga base, previously fired up by lurid and false “Pizzagate” claims of a paedophile ring connected to the Democratic political elite, this remains a burning issue. Their claims about Epstein’s circle have at times been partisan, provably wrong and antisemitic. Yet it’s hard to deny that the mills of justice usually grind slower when the rich and well-connected are involved, and that powerful figures who benefited from a relationship with Epstein, such as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson, have sought to avoid scrutiny and minimise their ties. It took the courage of victims and dogged reporting to make Epstein accountable, and it took far too long. A fuller reckoning for his associates – from across the political spectrum – is overdue.

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

Is this justice or retribution? More

In recent weeks, Donald Trump’s supporters have begun to align around the idea that a Democrat-led “grand conspiracy” – potentially involving former president Barack Obama – has been plotting against the US president since 2016. The narrative is that the 2016 Russia investigation, which resulted in the Mueller inquiry was part of this deep-state opposition to Trump, as was the investigation into the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.

The focus of the fightback by Trump’s supporters is in Miami, where a Trump-appointed US attorney, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, has begun to issue subpoenas to a wide range of former officials.

This has included former CIA director John Brennan, former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, former FBI attorney Lisa Page and former director of national intelligence James Clapper, all of whom were involved in the federal investigation into alleged links between Russian intelligence and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The way the so-called conspiracy is unfolding will feel familiar to anyone who has watched US politics closely in the past decade. There’s been a constant stream of allegations and counter-allegations. But the narrative from the Trump camp is that the powerful “deep state” forces have been arrayed against the president. The “two-tier” justice system that has persecuted Trump can only be rebalanced by pursuing those who investigated him in 2017 and 2021.

The Grand Conspiracy contains similarities with other prominent conspiracy theories and how they spread. The QAnon movement, whose most famous claim is of a global paedophile ring run out of a Washington pizza parlour involving senior Democrats, is one where disparate claims are sporadically and partially evidenced. The political potency of these claims does not sit in the individual pieces of evidence but in the overarching story.

The story is that hidden government and proxy networks manipulate the truth and judicial outcomes and that only through pressure from “truthers” (what many people in the US who believe conspiracy theories call themselves) will wrongdoers be brought to account. Once these ideas are popularised, they take on a momentum and a direction that is difficult to control.

Campaign of ‘lawfare’

Soon after his inauguration, Trump set up a “weaponization working group” within the Department of Justice. Its director, Ed Martin, said in May that he would expose and discredit people he believes to be guilty, even if the evidence wasn’t sufficient to charge them: “If they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them. And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed.”

In the US the norm has been to “charge crimes, not people”, so this modification fundamentally changes the focus of prosecutors.

Former FBI director James Comey responds to his indictment by grand jury in September.

The recent subpoenas in Florida show this principle at work, effectively making legal process into the punishment. Even without full court hearings on specific charges, being forced to provide testimony or documents creates suspicion around those who are targeted. Criticism from legal officials that this is a “indict first, investigate second” method suggests that this is a break from historical norms.

Lawfare, defined as “legal action undertaken as part of a hostile campaign”, doesn’t require a successful prosecution. It merely requires enough investigative activity to solidify a narrative of suspected guilt and enough costs and pressure to seriously inconvenience those affected by it. In the new era of digital media, it’s enough to degrade the standing of a political opponent.

In that way, political retaliation has become a prosecuting objective. This is clear from what the US president has indicated in his frequent posts on his social media platforms for his enemies, such as former FBI director James Comey, who investigated his alleged links to Russia, or Adam Schiff, the senator who led his impeachment in 2019.

Hardball politics or authoritarianism?

Political scientists argue that authoritarianism is something that happens little by little. Some of these steps involve using state power to target political opponents, degrading checks and balances and making loyalty a legal requirement.

There are reasons to believe that the US seems to be tracking this trajectory currently, certainly when it comes to using the Justice Department to harass the president’s political enemies and pushing back against court judgments while attacking the judges that have issued them.

Further slides towards authoritarianism are possible because of the political potency of contemporary conspiracy movements. The right-wing QAnon movement, for example, has been exceptionally agile. It has offered its followers identity, community spaces and a logic that encourages active participation, exhorting believers to “do your own research”, for example.

Many of the people who stormed the US capitol on January 6 2021 were believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory.
EPA/Jim Lo Scalzo

In the wake of the near daily addition of material from the investigations into the allegations that the late financier, Jeffrey Epstein, ran a sex trafficking ring, involving some influential US citizens, many American citizens have concluded as a general truth that their elites do hide things. This makes it far simpler for broader conspiracies to gain traction and more difficult for politicians and journalists to work out what is conspiracy and what is evidence. This is creating a problematic feedback loop – hints of wrongdoing fuel public suspicion, and public suspicion fuels the idea of a further need for investigation.

But to suggest that anyone has control over this would be wrong. These movements can just as easily consume those seen as supporters as they do those seen as enemies. Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s determination to release the full and unredacted Epstein files could well produce negative outcomes for some Maga supporters, including prominent ones.

So, the transformation of legal process into public spectacle in America is suggestive of a drift towards authoritarianism. America’s famous “constitutional guardrails” of separation of powers, independent courts, juries and counsels will be pivotal in preventing this. They will need to stand firm.

The grand conspiracy theory might be more about seeking to isolate, and financially and emotionally exhaust opponents, while at the same time destroying America’s system of checks and balances. It might work. More

Would you like to buy a crumbling shack for $2m? Well then, you’re in luck, because that just about sums up the state of the housing market right now. Housing, particularly in places with a decent job market, has become increasingly unaffordable in the US. That’s partly thanks to quantitative easing during the pandemic, which supercharged housing inflation. The median American home price in January was $418,000, about a 45% increase from $289,000 five years ago, per Redfin data. Wages haven’t gone up at the same rate, and housing prices compared to income have reached an all-time high.In post-pandemic America, there are three groups of people. First, there are those who own their home outright and those who bought a house before the pandemic, then refinanced during the historically low interest rates we saw in 2020 and 2021. Many of those homeowners are now sitting on large piles of equity.Then you’ve got the people who bought their first home during the pandemic, with super-low interest rates. They’re not quite as fortunate as group one, but having a 30-year-mortgage that is under the rate of inflation (currently about 3%) means they are also in a very privileged position.Finally, you’ve got group three: people who are completely and utterly screwed. Unless you’re earning big bucks, have generous parents, or want to live in the middle of nowhere, good luck buying a first home right now. Indeed, nearly a quarter of millennials say they expect to rent forever. Prices are historically high and mortgage rates, while still far lower than they have been in the past, are about 6.3%. The difference between buying a $500,000 home with a 6.3% mortgage v a 2.5% interest rate (which some lucky people got during the pandemic) is about $900 a month. And things will only get worse; Trump’s tariffs, including a 50% tariff on steel, could raise the cost of building and renovating a home.But don’t worry. You’re not going to have to rent a $700 sleeping pod (yes, these are a thing in San Francisco) for the rest of your life. Our great president is on it. Donald Trump has a plan – or perhaps more accurately, “concepts of a plan” – to fix housing affordability: 50-year mortgages. The Federal Housing Finance Agency director, Bill Pulte, who reportedly promoted this genius idea to Trump, called the proposal “a complete gamechanger”. You know what else is a complete gamechanger, Bill? Jumping in a pile of toxic waste.Even many of Trump’s allies are said to be aghast at the idea of a 50-year mortgage. This week, Politico reported that the White House was furious Pulte planted the idea in Trump’s head. Per Politico, “one of the two people familiar [with the situation] said there is more fallout from this idea than almost any other policy proposal of the second term, including from the MAGA base.” Another source told Politico: “During Trump 2.0, the last time anything got as much pushback as this was over the ‘Epstein Files’.”The problem with a 50-year mortgage, to be clear, is that it does nothing to solve the root issues. Yes, you’ll have a lower monthly payment since the timeline is longer, but it’ll take you longer to build equity and you’ll pay double the amount of interest as someone with a 30-year mortgage, according to one analysis. Fifty-year mortgages could also increase housing prices in the long run by encouraging people to buy more expensive homes.If you’re reading this from somewhere that isn’t the US, even the idea of a 30-year mortgage might seem odd. The US is an outlier when it comes to mortgages. In most countries you can only get a fixed rate for a few years before it adjusts according to current interest rates.President Franklin D Roosevelt helped usher in 30-year mortgages after the Great Depression, when about 50% of mortgages, which were then only fixed for a short term, were in default. The Roosevelt administration wanted to ensure this didn’t happen again in the future by helping people become homeowners via more predictable repayment plans with reduced risk. Trump, it would seem, fancies himself another Roosevelt. Over the weekend he floated his new housing idea with a Truth Social post titled “Great American Presidents”, which included the words “50-year mortgage” above a photo of himself and “30-year mortgage” over a photo of Roosevelt.Thirty-year mortgages have worked out very well for a lot of individual homeowners in the US. However, many experts believe they exacerbate inequality by creating a system of winners and losers. Lock in a low interest rate for 30 years and you are, to a large degree, insulated from many economic headwinds. If you’ve got a low interest rate, it’s also hard to give it up when rates are rising. That means people who might otherwise downsize will stay in place. Or they might rent out a house they would normally sell in order to keep their interest rate. Long-term fixed-rate loans help contribute to a frozen housing market, which helps erode housing affordability. A 50-year mortgage would make these issues even worse.It’s unclear whether the 50-year-mortgage idea will ever progress to more than just a social media post. However, the fact that we’re even discussing it says a lot about the short-term thinking that plagues modern politics. And it speaks volumes about Trump’s focus on flashy bandages rather than long-term solutions.You can see all the same issues, for example, in Trump’s recent plan to send Americans tariff rebate checks. “People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday. “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.” Like 50-year mortgages, this would be a quick fix that might give people some immediate relief while exacerbating higher prices in the long term. Trump has also brainstormed sending Americans money to help with health insurance rather than doing anything substantial to fix the US’s broken healthcare system. Turns out that electing a showman whose companies have filed for bankruptcies multiple times might not have been the best idea.Anyway, since hare-brained ideas seem to be all the rage in American politics right now, let me take the opportunity to introduce my own plan to increase housing affordability: we kick Trump out of the White House and we turn it into condos.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

Al-Haq, a leading Palestinian human rights organization based in the West Bank, is not new to adversity. But since the group was sanctioned by the Trump administration in September, its world has shrunk.Today, staff work without pay because their banks closed their accounts. US-based funders have pulled away. YouTube has pulled hundreds of the group’s videos documenting Israeli forces’ human rights abuses against Palestinians. Perhaps most upsetting, US-based groups that had long collaborated have gone quiet, fearful that communications with Al-Haq may draw the attention of an administration that has made clear they are a target.“I feel a deep, deep pain in my heart,” said Shawan Jabarin, Al-Haq’s director, of the silence from US-based organizations in the human rights and social justice sector. “Most of them – if not all – they stopped working with us or engaging with us formally and openly.”Speaking to the Guardian, Jabarin called on US-based rights groups to take a more defiant stance against the Trump administration. “Standing on the side of human rights and justice doesn’t mean that you have to respect draconian orders or laws,” he said. “You have to fight back with all means.”The Trump administration announced sanctions against Al-Haq over the group’s support for investigation of Israeli crimes in Palestine by the international criminal court (ICC). The sanctions marked an early strike in a broader campaign against civil society, a campaign disproportionately focused on groups championing Palestinian rights that also threatens to sweep up climate, democracy and racial justice groups.View image in fullscreenIn a statement announcing the sanctions, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “the United States will continue to respond with significant and tangible consequences to protect our troops, our sovereignty, and our allies from the ICC’s disregard for sovereignty, and to punish entities that are complicit in its overreach”.Israel and the US – which are not members of the ICC – have long attacked the court and maintain that it has no jurisdiction over them. But the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian groups is hardly limited to their connection to the ICC.Last month, the administration instructed US attorneys across the country to investigate the Open Society Foundations (OSF), the philanthropic network founded by liberal billionaire George Soros, over unfounded allegations that it has sponsored groups promoting political unrest and suggesting charges as severe as material support for “terrorism”. In a presidential memorandum signed in September, Trump also instructed law enforcement to “disband and uproot” organizations and networks that the administration says promote “domestic terrorism” and “organized political violence”.Groups and individuals critical of Israel, both in the US and abroad, are under particular scrutiny. The Trump administration has also detained foreign nationals for pro-Palestinian speech and sanctioned the UN special rapporteur for the occupied territories and senior ICC officials.Palestine-based groups like Al-Haq, which do not enjoy the constitutional protections their US-based peers do, are among the easiest targets. But as a Palestinian, Jabarin said, he knows something about standing in defiance of a repressive regime.“Maybe it’s our nature and our essence as Palestinians, because we are fighting for every aspect of our life,” he said. “Our culture is not to give up, and to continue fighting for justice. Maybe other societies haven’t reached this point yet.”But the group’s continued advocacy has come at a steep price.Since the sanctions were announced, Al-Haq and its roughly 45 staffers have lost access to their bank accounts as three banks the group works with dissolved their accounts in October. (Even banks overseas not explicitly affected by sanctions are often jittery about working with people and groups sanctioned by the US.) The group is currently unable to receive donations or pay its employees, and two American funders have stopped their donations. US staff had to resign. Other staff have continued to work for free, Jabarin said, aided by former colleagues and supporters abroad. In addition to YouTube, Meta and Mailchimp have restricted or pulled their services. (The three companies did not immediately respond to request for comment.)Al-Haq has lost allies, too.Among the organizations now fearing Trump’s crackdown are scores of US-based non-profits. While more draconian efforts to silence civil society with so-called “non-profit killer” legislation have so far failed, and experts say Trump’s efforts against Soros will struggle to stand up in court, such groups have for months been on high alert, fearing attacks on their tax-exempt status and the prospect of costly litigation.US-based human rights and Palestinian advocacy groups that have collaborated with Al-Haq in the past are now afraid to do so. (Jabarin declined to name them.) The sanctions the US imposed on Palestinian rights groups – one of the only measures available to the administration in the absence of congressional action – make working with them a liability for their US peers. US-based organizations that worked with Al-Haq in the past declined to speak on the record about their relationship with the group when contacted by the Guardian, but some noted that maintaining professional communications with a sanctioned organization exposed them to significant risk.Coordinated advocacy with sanctioned organizations could expose US groups to civil and criminal enforcement, some noted, with possible consequences ranging from loss of fiscal benefits to jail time. Some US non-profits are so risk-averse they avoided public criticism of the sanctions altogether.Leena Barakat, a co-founder of the Block and Build Funder Coalition, a network of funders she described as “committed to resisting authoritarianism”, said that US-based groups and donors who support the work of sanctioned Palestinian organizations find themselves in a “devastating” position.“We should be fighting back and I think right now there’s absolutely the desire and the will to do it. The question on the table is what is the best and the most strategic fight,” she said. “We’re thinking about that every day.”Al-Haq has documented Israel’s human rights abuses in Palestine for half a century. Alongside other organizations that the US has also sanctioned – Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and Addameer, which is focused on the rights of Palestinian prisoners and detainees – the group played a key role in demanding and later supporting the ICC’s investigation.In 2021, Israel designated Al-Haq and five other Palestinian rights groups as “terrorist organizations”, alleging links between the groups and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftwing political party the US and other countries consider a terrorist organization. Reporting at the time revealed that Israel had no concrete evidence to back the designations, and the CIA was unable to corroborate Israel’s claims about the groups. Months later, Israeli soldiers raided Al-Haq’s office.View image in fullscreenThe designations and raids were widely condemned by international rights groups and the Biden administration distanced itself from them. But Jabarin always feared the possibility the US might at some point follow Israel’s lead and seek to punish the group.Jabarin dismissed the latest US sanctions as a “political attack” and pledged that Al-Haq would continue its documentation of human rights violations and its work with the ICC.“They want to silence any voice calling for accountability, calling for ending the culture of impunity, anyone speaking about the rights of Palestinians and justice for Palestine,” he said. “We will continue doing our work, we will continue fighting for justice and for human rights, and we will continue going after the criminals and holding the criminals accountable.” Al-Haq’s submissions to the court, he added, are “legal” and “peaceful”.Jabarin says he understands the constraints imposed on his US colleagues but is frustrated by what he views as a reluctance to more openly defy Trump beyond issuing statements. What Trump wants is for organizations to comply without putting up a fight, and how global civil society responds to this moment will have lasting implications, Jabarin added.“Palestine is the test” for all people of conscience, he said.“The US administration, they are supporting the rule of the jungle, not the rule of law,” he said. “And what’s going on, globally speaking, is a war between the rule of the jungle and the rule of law.” More