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    One year after Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was killed, the US has not investigated. Her family wants answers

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    Özden Bennett’s first reaction after learning of her younger sister’s killing was disbelief. Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi had traveled to the occupied West Bank just three days earlier to volunteer with Palestinian communities facing violence at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers.But the shock and grief quickly gave way to dread – “that nothing would come of it, that she would have just died under that olive tree and that was it”, Bennett said this week, before the anniversary of Eygi’s death.Eygi, a 26-year-old American Turkish woman, was shot in the head on 6 September 2024 by an Israeli sniper. She had been attending a protest against settlement expansion near Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Eygi’s family feared that securing justice would be an uphill battle. Indeed, one year later, nobody has been held accountable. An Israeli military investigation concluded within days of the incident that it was “highly likely” Eygi had been hit “indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her” but rather at others whom it alleged were throwing rocks. (A Washington Post investigation found that Eygi was shot half an hour after any clashes between protesters and soldiers, and that she was standing 200 yards from the soldiers.)US officials called the killing “unprovoked and unjustified” but, despite her family’s repeated requests, never launched an investigation of their own. (The Turkish government did, concluding that Eygi had been “deliberately targeted”, and it submitted evidence to the United Nations Security Council, the international court of justice and the international criminal court.Eygi was one in a string of US citizens killed by Israeli forces in occupied Palestinian territory in recent years, including the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by a sniper while reporting on military raids in Jenin in 2022. Since 7 October 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have also killed at least four Palestinian Americans in the West Bank.View image in fullscreen“I’m heartbroken that there are so many families who have experienced the same thing,” said Bennett. “It’s infuriating because if something was done, and if Israel was held accountable … all those that have come after, they should still be here.”The absence of accountability has not been for lack of effort. When Eygi’s family first sat down with then US secretary of state Antony Blinken last December, they asked him: “What can you do?” recalled Hamid Ali, Eygi’s husband.The response, he said, amounted to “a lot of shoulder shrugging”.The state department told the family that launching an investigation would be a prerogative of the justice department, which wrote in a letter to the family that they would “carefully review” their request. They never followed up.A spokesperson for the state department said in a statement that the it had “no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens”, but referred the Guardian to the Israeli government for updates. The justice department and IDF did not respond to requests for comment.“There are no red lines when it comes to Israel,” Bennett said, noting that the family is nonetheless “determined to show up, year after year, making the same demand for an independent investigation – because that’s the bare minimum and the right thing to do”. Later this month, they will be in Washington along with the families of other US citizens killed by Israeli forces and settlers to collectively advocate for a more robust response from the US government.The experience of seeking justice for Eygi has been deeply disillusioning for Ali, who had been married to Eygi for three years before she died.In more than a dozen meetings with the state department and members of Congress, he said, Eygi’s family pointed to former attorney general Merrick Garland’s words following the killing of several US citizens during the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel. Garland said that the US government would investigate “each and every one of the brutal murders of Americans”.Ali condemned what he said were clear double standards. “We’re just holding them to their own words,” he said.Ali spoke from Eygi’s family’s home town in Turkey, where she was buried near her grandmother and where a ceremony was held on Saturday to commemorate her. She loved Turkey and had made it a condition before their wedding that they would visit at least once a year, Ali said.Growing up in a Turkish household, Eygi and her sister were more tuned into global news than their peers in the US, Bennett said, and they were always aware of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and the periodic escalations in bombing and violence in Gaza. But it was after 7 October that advocating for Palestinian liberation became Eygi’s “whole world”, she added.At the University of Washington, Eygi became involved with the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and with the student encampments. When she graduated with a degree in psychology, she hesitated about making her first trip to Palestine, concerned about the security risks. But she ultimately decided she needed to witness the occupation first-hand, and traveled to the West Bank as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement.Eygi, Ali said, had a knack for encouraging others “not to feel so hopeless”, he added.“I’m very cynical, and she kept reminding me that the exact function of these power systems is to make you feel like you’re just one against this mammoth,” he said. “But collectively, we’re able to take action and actually be effective.”“She had many sides to her,” Bennett said. “The part that gets focused on obviously is her activism and advocacy, and her passion for human rights in general, but especially Palestinians’ rights. But she was also a goofy 26-year-old. She was my little sister.” More

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      Donald Trump could stop Gaza’s famine. Instead he’s following Biden’s lead | Mohamad Bazzi

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      A global hunger-monitoring group declared last week that Gaza’s largest city and its surrounding area were suffering from an “entirely man-made” famine, mostly caused by Israel’s deliberate starvation strategy and continued siege of the territory. This news won’t surprise anyone who has paid even scant attention to the images and videos of emaciated children and desperate parents that have been coming out of Gaza for months.But the first confirmation of famine by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which includes the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization and other aid agencies, is an important institutional marker. Years from now, it will serve as a reminder of how Israel used starvation as a weapon of war while western powers did nothing. And it will be a source of shame for all those who will inevitably claim that they didn’t realize the extent of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, despite dozens of Palestinian journalists being killed for conveying that reality to the world.Donald Trump can stop this famine – the US is Israel’s largest weapons supplier and most important political supporter. But he has chosen not to. Instead, Trump is backing the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his latest plan to sow more death and destruction by invading Gaza City and displacing 1 million Palestinians. Last month, the US president said children in Gaza “look very hungry”, adding that scenes of suffering showed “real starvation”. Trump contradicted the Israeli government’s spurious claim that warnings about impending famine were fake news.Yet the Trump administration stayed silent after the IPC issued its latest report last week, confirming that Gaza City and its environs are in the midst of a full-blown famine. In order to declare a famine, the IPC requires that an area must cross three critical thresholds: at least 20% of households face an extreme shortage of food; at least 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition; and at least two adults or four children out of every 10,000 people die each day due to starvation, or disease and malnutrition. Since the IPC was founded in 2004 to warn of global food shortages, it had confirmed only three previous famines: in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and Sudan last year.By the time a famine is declared, it’s often too late to stop an exponential rise in deaths due to starvation and malnutrition. When a drought-driven famine hit Somalia between 2010 and 2012, about half of the 250,000 people killed had already died by the time the IPC found that the country had crossed famine thresholds.During past famines, the IPC’s declaration helped drive global attention and prompted international donors to rush aid to affected regions. But the world’s attention is already focused on Gaza, and the UN and other aid groups say they have enough food near Gaza’s borders to feed its entire population of 2.1 million for nearly three months. Israel simply refuses to allow much of that aid into the besieged territory – a deliberate starvation campaign supported by the Trump administration.As Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian aid chief, put it last week: “Food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel.” He added that the Gaza famine was “caused by cruelty, justified by revenge, enabled by indifference and sustained by complicity”. Fletcher then appealed to world leaders to pressure Netanyahu to lift the siege.That plea was ultimately intended for Trump, the only leader who can force Netanyahu to end Gaza’s suffering. But the Israeli prime minister and his government continue to defy global outrage, largely because they have Trump’s unwavering support.Since early 2024, the UN and international relief groups have been sounding alarms about the potential for widespread starvation in Gaza because of the Israeli military blockade that started within days of the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. As I wrote recently, Joe Biden ignored these warnings while his administration tried to undermine criticism of its unconditional weapons shipments to Israel. Throughout 2024, when parts of Gaza reached the brink of starvation, Israel would ease its siege allowing some food and supplies to reach desperate Palestinians – and averting a descent into full-blow famine.But Netanyahu abandoned that strategy in early March, when he imposed a new siege on Gaza, with Trump’s tacit approval, depriving Palestinians of food, medicine and other basic needs. Netanyahu, who worried that his extremist government coalition would collapse if he agreed to a permanent truce with Hamas, quickly resumed Israel’s war, breaking a ceasefire that was in place for two months. Since then, Israel has inflicted a more severe siege and starvation campaign on Gaza.On 18 August, Hamas announced that it had accepted a ceasefire deal that is virtually identical to one that Israel and the US had proposed a few weeks earlier. But as he has done for nearly two years, Netanyahu is dragging his feet and making new demands to obstruct negotiations and torpedo any potential deal. Ultimately, Netanyahu wants to prolong the war and stay in power.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt seems Trump has been seduced by Netanyahu’s promise of a decisive victory with his latest plan to conquer Gaza City and other parts of the territory that are not yet occupied by the Israeli military. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said the Gaza war would reach “a conclusive ending” in the next two or three weeks.Netanyahu has been promising – and failing to deliver – a “total victory” over Hamas for more than a year. “Total victory over Hamas will not take years,” he said confidently in a speech in February 2024. “It will take months.” Since then, Netanyahu expressed lofty ambitions to reshape the entire Middle East, but he continued to defy international and domestic pressure to specify Israel’s postwar plans for Gaza or how the war could end short of his amorphous goal of “total victory”. And that was a deliberate tactic: from the beginning, Netanyahu’s allies wanted a protracted war that would end with Israel occupying Gaza and ethnically cleansing its Palestinian inhabitants.Last week, a top Biden administration official confirmed in an interview aired by an Israeli TV channel that, soon after the October 2023 Hamas attack, Netanyahu was preparing for a grinding guerrilla war in Gaza which could last “for decades”. Matthew Miller, the former state department spokesperson who often defended the administration’s unconditional support for Israel, also said that Netanyahu had repeatedly sabotaged US-brokered ceasefire negotiations. (An Israeli TV report found the prime minister nixed deals or near-agreements seven times.) But the Biden administration consistently blamed Hamas for refusing to accept a ceasefire, and rarely called out Netanyahu for his obstinacy, thinking it would harden Hamas’s position.For 15 months, Biden provided the Israeli premier with political cover and billions of dollars in US arms, becoming more deeply complicit in Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon and other war crimes. Today, Trump is repeating the same ineffective and immoral strategy, enticed by Netanyahu’s empty promise of victory while famine spreads in Gaza.

      Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University More

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      Trump revokes Biden order promoting competition in the US economy

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      Donald Trump on Wednesday revoked a 2021 executive order on promoting competition in the US economy issued by Joe Biden, the White House said.The move by the Republican US president further unwinds a signature initiative by his predecessor, a Democrat, to crack down on anti-competitive practices in sectors from agriculture to drugs and labor.The justice department welcomed Trump’s revocation of the order, saying it was pursuing an “America first antitrust” approach focused on free markets instead of what it called the “overly prescriptive and burdensome approach” of the Biden administration.It said it was also making progress on streamlining the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (HSR) review process of mergers and reinstating more frequent use of targeted and well-crafted consent decrees.Biden signed a sweeping executive order in July 2021 to promote more competition in the US economy as part of a broad push to rein in what his administration described as a pattern of corporate abuses, ranging from excessive airline fees to large mergers that raised costs for consumers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe initiative, which was very popular with Americans, was championed by top Biden economic officials, many of whom had previously worked for or with the senator Elizabeth Warren, who played a key role in creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Barack Obama.Trump has attacked that agency since taking office, announcing plans to shrink its workforce by 90%.Those moves have cost Americans at least $18bn in higher fees and lost compensation for consumers allegedly cheated by major companies, according to an analysis released in June by the Student Borrower Protection Center and the Consumer Federation of America.Biden’s order said it aimed to “enforce the antitrust laws to combat the excessive concentration of industry, the abuses of market power, and the harmful effects of monopoly and monopsony”, focused on areas such as labor and healthcare. More

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      The US is complicit in genocide. Let’s stop pretending otherwise | Mehdi Hasan

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      Can we finally stop pretending that what we have been witnessing in Gaza over the past 22 months is a “war,” a “conflict,” or even a “humanitarian crisis”? Many of the world’s leading human rights and humanitarian groups – including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Doctors Without Borders – agreed months ago that what is being livestreamed to our phones on a daily basis is indeed a genocide.This week, Israel’s own leading human rights group announced that it had reached “the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip”. In other words, said B’Tselem, “Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.The debate over whether or not Gaza is a genocide is, effectively, over. So can we now also stop pretending that we are mere bystanders to this genocide? That our sin is one only of omission rather than commission? Because the inconvenient truth is that the US has not just looked the other way, as tens of thousands of Palestinians have been besieged and bombed, starved and slaughtered, but helped Israel pull the trigger. We have been complicit in this genocide, which is itself a crime under article III of the Genocide convention.As retired Israeli Maj Gen Yitzhak Brick acknowledged in November 2023: “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”In fact, given Brick’s assessment, I would argue that what we have witnessed in Gaza from the US government is worse than complicity. It is active participation in an ongoing genocide.Donald Trump has given Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his far-right government not only the green light to “clean out” Gaza and “finish the job”, but also the arms, intel and funds to do so. When Netanyahu launched his blockade of all food and aid going into Gaza in March, he emphasized it was done “in full coordination with President Trump and his people”. “Over the past six months,” Axios reported in late July, “Trump has given Netanyahu an almost free hand to do whatever he wants in Gaza.” An Israeli official told the site: “In most calls and meetings Trump told Bibi: ‘Do what you have to do in Gaza.’”Trump’s Republican allies in the House and Senate are even more gung-ho. Forget complicity; Congress is filled with GOP cheerleaders for genocide, from Senators Tom “bounce the rubble in Gaza” Cotton to Lindsey “level the place” Graham. The newest member of the House, Randy Fine, a Republican representative of Florida, has called for the nuking of Gaza and said just days ago that Palestinians in Gaza should “starve away” until the Israeli hostages are all released. (A reminder that incitement to genocide is also a crime under Article III of the Genocide convention.)But we cannot let Democrats off the hook either. The first 16 months of this mass slaughter unfolded on a Democratic president’s watch. From the get-go, Joe Biden gave Netanyahu and his cabinet of génocidaires everything they needed – 2,000-lb bombs to drop on refugee camps filled with Palestinian children? Check. UN security council vetoes to prevent the passage of resolutions calling for a permanent ceasefire? Check. The burial of internal US government reports warning of war crimes and famine in Gaza? Check.It wasn’t just Biden. The vast majority of Democrats in Congress spent much of 2024 casting vote after vote to keep arming, funding and whitewashing the mass killing of Palestinian civilians. Even now, in the summer of 2025, seven high-profile Democratic senators were happy to take a smiling photo with Netanyahu, including the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who claims talk of genocide is antisemitic and says his job “is to keep the left pro-Israel”.Then there is the US media’s complicity in this genocide. It isn’t just the Radio Rwanda wannabes over at Fox, where the morning host Brian Kilmeade has said it was hard “to separate the Palestinians from Hamas” and the primetime host Jesse Watters has said “no one wants” Palestinian refugees and “demographically [Palestinians] are a threat”.There are also genocide enablers in the liberal media. Those who repeatedly insist Israelis have a right to defend themselves while never asking whether Palestinians do. Those who parrot Israeli government talking points while sanitizing the violence inflicted on Gaza. Palestinians, remember, are not killed by Israeli bombs or bullets; they just “die.”US newsrooms have bent over backwards to present “both sides,” even when one side has been deemed genocidal by some of the world’s leading scholars on genocide. The New York Times, per an internal memo obtained by the Intercept, instructed journalists covering Gaza to limit the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when referring to the West Bank and Gaza.One study of media coverage, also published by the Intercept, found that “highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter’, ‘massacre’, and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around”. Another study, published in the Nation, found that “with one exception the Sunday shows covered and debated [Gaza] for 12 months without speaking to a single Palestinian or Palestinian American”.Go beyond the media. Elite US institutions are also disgracefully complicit in the annihilation of Gaza, from the Ivy League universities that punished anti-genocide protesters on campus; to the white-shoe law firms that disqualified anti-genocide applicants for jobs; to the big tech companies accused by a UN special rapporteur of profiting from the genocide.Most Americans, of course, don’t want to believe that our country is helping commit one of the 21st century’s worst atrocities. But, again, we must stop pretending. Our complicity and collusion are clear. As my Zeteo colleague Spencer Ackerman has written: “This is an American genocide as much as it is an Israeli one.”The US supplied and then resupplied the bombs and bullets used to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians; the US facilitated the destruction of homes and hospitals; the US signed off on the starvation of children. These are the undeniable facts.And so to the Biden and Trump administrations, to Democrats and Republicans in Congress, to the US media, I say this: history will judge you. For the bombs you sent, the votes you cast, the lies you told. This will be your shameful legacy when the dust finally settles in Gaza, when all of the bodies have been pulled from the rubble. Not defending your ally or fighting terrorism, but non-stop complicity in a genocide; aiding and abetting the crime of crimes.

      Mehdi Hasan is the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of the media company Zeteo. More

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      Pentagon provided $2.4tn to private arms firms to ‘fund war and weapons’, report finds

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      A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was described as a “continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing”.The report from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War project at Brown University said that the Trump administration’s new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark.That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration such as JD Vance, the report said.The report is compiled of statistics of Pentagon spending and contracts from 2020 to 2024, during which time the top five Pentagon contractors (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman) received $771bn in contract awards. Overall, private firms received approximately 54% of the department’s discretionary spending of $4.4tn over that period.Taking into account supplemental funding for the Pentagon passed by Congress under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, the report said, the US military budget will have nearly doubled this century, increasing 99% since 2000.The rapid growth in military spending that began under the Bush administration’s post-9/11 and the “global war on terror” has now been continued on spending to counter China as the US’s main rival in the 21st century, as well record foreign arms transfers to Israel and Ukraine.“The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in September 2021 did not result in a peace dividend,” the authors of the report wrote. “Instead, President Biden requested, and Congress authorized, even higher annual budgets for the Pentagon, and President Trump is continuing that same trajectory of escalating military budgets.”That contradicts early indications from Trump in February that he could cut military spending in half, adding that he would tell China and Russia that “there’s no reason for us to be spending almost $1tn on the military … and I’m going to say we can spend this on other things”. Instead, the spending bill pushed by Trump through Congress included a $157bn spending boost for the Pentagon.The growth in spending will increasingly benefit firms in the “military tech” sector who represent tech companies like SpaceX, Palantir and Anduril, the report said, that are “deeply embedded in the Trump administration, which should give it an upper hand in the budget battles to come”.“High Pentagon budgets are often justified because the funds are ‘for the troops’,” said William D Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and an author of the report. “But as this paper shows, the majority of the department’s budget goes to corporations, money that has as much to do with special interest lobbying as it does with any rational defense planning. Much of this funding has been wasted on dysfunctional or overpriced weapons systems and extravagant compensation packages.”“These figures represent a continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing,” said Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War project.Calculated for inflation, the military spending dwarfs an approximate $356bn that Congress had appropriated for US diplomacy, development and humanitarian aid.The Trump administration has continued to slash money spent on aid. Last month, the Guardian revealed that a White House review of grants to the state department recommended a near total cut on democracy promotion programs.The Guardian has contacted the Pentagon for comment. More

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      FBI to reinvestigate 2023 White House cocaine find and leak of supreme court Dobbs draft

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      The FBI will launch new investigations into the 2023 discovery of a bag of cocaine at the White House during Joe Biden’s term, as well as into pipe bombs discovered at Democratic and Republican party headquarters before the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot by supporters of Donald Trump, and the leak of the supreme court’s draft opinion before the historic overturning of national abortion rights with the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.Dan Bongino, a rightwing podcaster turned deputy director of the FBI, made the announcement on X, where he said he had requested weekly briefings on any progress in looking into the old cases. The incidents have been popular talking points on America’s political right wing and among conspiracy theorists.Bongino said that he and the FBI director, Kash Patel, had been evaluating “a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest” and had made a decision “to either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention, to these cases”.The FBI deputy director made an appeal for “investigative tips on these matters”.The discovery of a small, zippered bag of cocaine in a cubby near the entrance to the West Wing two years ago drew excited commentary from Republicans, including then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has said it was implausible the drugs could belong to anyone beyond Joe Biden or son Hunter Biden – even though the Biden family was away from Washington at the time.Bongino has previously alleged, without presenting any evidence, that he was in touch with whistleblowers who told him they were “suspicious” that evidence from the White House cocaine bag “could match a member of the inner Biden circle”.A formal laboratory test confirmed that the powder found was indeed cocaine and the Secret Service said the substance was found in a “highly trafficked” area of the White House and it was reviewing visitor logs to determine how it had gotten there.Then White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that public tours of the West Wing had taken place over the weekend when the discovery was made, prompting an evacuation of the executive mansion.“We have confidence that they will get to the bottom of this,” Jean-Pierre later said, referring to the Secret Service. A White House spokesperson said that the allegations that Hunter Biden was involved was “incredibly irresponsible”.But in his first interview as a president in February this year, Trump returned to the subject, arguing that forensic analysis should have revealed fingerprints but the evidence appeared to have been deliberately wiped clean. He described the cocaine discovery as a “terrible thing”.The pre-emptive publication of the supreme court’s opinion ending the constitutional right to abortion in Politico on 2 May 2022 provoked condemnation from Trump, who called the source of the leak “slime” and demanded that the journalists involved be imprisoned until they revealed who it was.Eight months later, the supreme court released a 23-page report into the leak saying the investigative team “has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence”.Investigations into both cases ended without identifying who was responsible for the cocaine or the leak.Bongino also announced more resources for the FBI’s investigation into the placement of pipe bombs at the Democratic national committee and the Republican national committee in Washington.The bombs, which were later defused, had been planted the night before Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      As key Israel allies threaten action over Gaza catastrophe, Washington is largely unmoved

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      As Israel orders Palestinians to evacuate Khan Younis in advance of what it calls an “unprecedented attack” on Gaza, much of Washington remains largely unmoved, even as Canada and European countries threaten “concrete actions” if Israel does not scale back its offensive.Despite reports of growing pressure from the Trump administration to increase aid into Gaza, where widespread famine looms, the White House continues to publicly back Israel. National security council spokesperson James Hewitt told the Guardian in an email: “Hamas has rejected repeated ceasefire proposals, and therefore bears sole responsibility for this conflict,” maintaining the policy stance inherited from the previous Biden administration despite mounting evidence of humanitarian catastrophe.The Israeli military on Monday instructed residents of southern Gaza’s Khan Younis to “evacuate immediately” as it prepares to “destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations” – signalling plans for intensified bombardment in a war that has already claimed more than 53,000 Palestinian lives, according to Gaza’s health ministry.Despite Israeli promises to “flatten” Gaza, opposition from Congress – and mainstream Democrats more broadly – has been largely muted. While the besieged territory faces what the World Health Organization (Who) calls “one of the world’s worst hunger crises”, more than three dozen members of Congress from both parties recently appeared in an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) video in celebration of Israel’s 77th birthday. In New York, leading mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo held up an Israeli flag in the city’s annual Israel Day Parade on Sunday.This political genuflection comes as a March Gallup poll shows American support for Israel has dropped to 46% – its lowest point in 25 years – while sympathy for Palestinians has risen to a record 33%. Democrats reported sympathizing with Palestinians over Israelis by a three-to-one ratio.On a recent episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Senator Bernie Sanders blamed Washington’s reluctance to change course on the financial muscle of lobbying groups. “If you speak up on that issue, you’ll have super Pacs like Aipac going after you,” Sanders said, noting Aipac’s record $14.5m campaign to unseat Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman after he accused Israel of genocide.A small contingent of progressive lawmakers continue to voice opposition despite being largely iced out from public discourse in Washington. Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois condemned the “lethal, unaccountable, extremist duo” of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump. “Americans have said they do not want to be complicit in their barbaric campaigns. It is time for us in Congress to exercise our power and take action. Not one more cent, not one more bomb, not one more excuse,” she told the Guardian.Representative Ilhan Omar similarly decried the latest chapter of the lopsided war on Gaza, calling it “another unconscionable moral stain”.“Despite the fanfare of Donald Trump’s trip [to the Middle East last weak], they’re not closer to a ceasefire,” Omar said. “It is deeply shameful that innocent civilians are continuing to pay the price.”Vermont senator Peter Welch recently led 29 Senate colleagues in introducing a resolution calling on the Trump administration to end the blockade of humanitarian aid. “It’s been over two months since the Israeli government has been using its power to withhold food, medicine, lifesaving cancer treatments, dialysis systems, formula, and more from starving and suffering families across Gaza,” he said.Resolutions, however, are symbolic gestures meant to publicize opinions and do not have the force of law.While the lawmakers voice their concerns, their impact on policy remains limited, representing the growing disconnect between Washington policymakers and public sentiment. That the grassroots movement for Palestinian rights in the US has grown more subdued – in large part due to an aggressive crackdown by the Trump administration against the universities that were host to last year’s protests – may take some of the pressure off for them to act.One insider familiar with discussions between the US and Israel told the Washington Post that the Americans have been hitting Israel with a tougher stance over the last few weeks. Haaretz has also reported growing pressure by the US on Israel to agree to a framework for a temporary ceasefire.“Trump’s people are letting Israel know: ‘We will abandon you if you do not end this war,’” the insider said. Trump and JD Vance both skipped over Israel on recent trips abroad, widely interpreted as a snub of Netanyahu.Netanyahu has announced the resumption of “minimal” humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the UN said on Monday that nine aid trucks were authorised to enter Gaza, a “drop in the ocean” given the scale of desperation.Whether US voices calling for change in US policy and a wind-down of the catastrophic war are just shouting in the void, may become clearer in the coming days. More

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      Go-to author on White House reverses take on Biden and slams former president

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      “Biden was mentally sharp, even if he appeared physically frail,” Chris Whipple wrote in The Fight of His Life, his 2023 book on the 46th president, who was then warming up his re-election bid at the age of 80.In that book, Whipple quoted Bruce Reed, a senior aide, describing a long-distance flight. When others appeared exhausted, Biden was raring to go, Reed said. Biden showed “unbelievable stamina”.Speaking to the Guardian in January 2023, Whipple said Biden’s “inner circle” was “bullish about Biden’s mental acuity and his ability to govern. I never heard any of them express any concern and maybe you would expect that from the inner circle. Many of them will tell you that he has extraordinary endurance, energy.”Put it this way: much has happened since.Obviously, there was that whole 2024 election thing. You know – the one when Biden dropped out after a disastrous debate exposed his decline for all to see. There was also the day in February, before the campaign kicked off, when the special counsel Robert Hur declined to charge Biden with mishandling classified documents, because he found him too addled and sympathetic a prospective defendant.Hur wrote: “He did not remember when he was vice-president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘If it was 2013 – when did I stop being vice-president?’) and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘In 2009, am I still vice-president?’) … He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”Whipple, a former CBS producer, has emerged as a go-to author on the White House and those who work there. In The Gatekeepers, he examined the lives of chiefs of staff. Then came The Fight of His Life. With hindsight, Whipple seems to have missed key evidence of Biden’s decline.But Whipple is back with a vengeance. Uncharted, his third book, hits Biden and his aides like a bludgeon. Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee after Biden withdrew, fares little better: Whipple depicts a candidate who never should have been there, a sentiment repeatedly expressed by senior Democrats.Whipple had access. People talked. Ron Klain, Biden’s first chief of staff, is a key source – and demonstrates startling cognitive dissonance about Biden’s mental and physical decline. Klain says Biden should have stayed in the race – but also gives an absolutely withering account of debate prep at Camp David.At his first meeting with Biden in Aspen Lodge, the president’s cabin, Klain describes Biden as “startled”. Whipple writes: “He’d never seen him so exhausted and out of it. Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. Halfway through the session, the president excused himself and went off to sit by the pool.” He fell asleep.“‘We sat around the table,’” says Klain in the book. “‘And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with Nato leaders.’” Klain, Whipple writes, “wondered half-seriously if Biden thought he was president of Nato instead of the US”.Come the debate against Trump, Biden gave perhaps the worst performance of all time. He shuffled, he stared, he made verbal stumbles and gaffes. He handed Trump the win.Klain also tags Biden for skipping a post-debate meeting with progressives in favor of a family photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz.“‘You need to cancel that,’” Klain says he told Biden. “‘You need to stay in Washington. You need to have an aggressive plan to fight and to rally the troops.’” Biden rebuffed him and instead held a Zoom call with the progressives. It went badly.“‘All you guys want to talk about is Gaza … What would you have me do?’” Biden said. “‘I was a progressive before some of you guys were even in Congress.’”How do you remind people you’re old without saying you’re old?Whipple also pays attention to Trump. Susie Wiles, now Trump’s chief of staff, and Karl Rove, a veteran of the George W Bush White House, speak on the record. So does Paul Manafort, a campaign manager in 2016, later jailed and pardoned.“Democrats wanted to know why Harris had lost to Trump and his MAGA movement,” Whipple writes. “Susie Wiles wanted to know why Harris and her team had run such a flawed campaign.”Wiles did not view a Trump victory as inevitable. Whipple asks Wiles: “‘Did that mean Harris couldn’t have won?’”Trump’s campaign chair didn’t mince words.“‘We’ll never know,’” she replies, “‘because it didn’t seem like she even tried.’“‘Voters want authenticity … and they didn’t get that from her.’”Leon Panetta, chief of staff to Bill Clinton, echoed Wiles.“‘I thought they were thinking they could tiptoe into the presidency without getting anybody pissed off at them,’” he tells Whipple. “‘Baloney. You’ve got to make the American people understand that you’re tough enough to be president of the United States.’”Rove does take a jab at Trump and Chris LaCivita, the ex-Marine who became a senior adviser. Rove introduced LaCivita to Trump, via the late megadonor Sheldon Adelson, but didn’t think LaCivita would take the gig. “‘I’m surprised because I know what he thinks of Trump,’” Rove tells Whipple. “‘He thinks Trump’s an idiot.’”LaCivita condemned January 6, after which he “liked” a tweet that urged Trump’s cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment and remove him from power. LaCivita deleted the post – but did not join the second Trump administration.Back in 2023, in The Fight of His Life, Whipple wrote: “Presidents do not give up power lightly.” Andy Card, chief of staff to George W Bush, weighed in: “‘If anybody tells you they’re leaving the White House voluntarily, they’re probably lying. This applies to presidents, of any age, who are driven by vast reserves of ego and ambition.’”Biden did go – but not voluntarily. In Uncharted, in merciless detail, Whipple shows he should have gone much sooner.

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      ‘Shock to the system’: farmers hit by Trump’s tariffs and cuts say they need another bailout

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      Farmers across the United States say they could face financial ruin – unless there is a huge taxpayer-funded bailout to compensate for losses generated by Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts and chaotic tariffs.Small- and medium-sized farms were already struggling amid worsening climate shocks and volatile commodities markets, on top of being squeezed by large corporations that dominate the supply chain.In recent weeks, farmers in Texas and across the midwest have suffered millions of dollars of crop losses due to unprecedented heavy rainfall and flooding.The climate crisis-fueled extreme weather is compounded by the US president’s looming trade war and the administration targeting popular federal programs and staff, leaving farmers reeling and resigned to needing another bailout.“There’s a lot of uncertainty around and I hate to be used as a bargaining chip. I am definitely worried,” said Travis Johnson, who lost more than 1,000 acres of cotton, sorghum and corn after a year’s rain fell within 48 hours in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in southern Texas last month, turning parched fields into lakes.RGV farmers sell sorghum, wheat, corn and vegetables to Mexico among other crops, while buying fertilizer and equipment – and relying on Mexican farmhands for cheap labor. Mexico is the US’s largest trading partner, while China is the main buyer of American sorghum and cotton. All US products destined for China face a 125% tax thanks to Trump’s tariff war, and could cut farmers off from core markets.View image in fullscreen“I can see how some tariffs might help us compete with Mexico but are we really getting targeted by every other country or are we on the wrong side of this? We’ve already had two years of absolute disaster with falling prices and weather patterns … no farmer wants this but without a bailout this could be devastating and a lot more people could go under,” Johnson said.Rural counties rallied behind Trump in 2024, giving him a majority in all but 11 of the 444 farming-dependent counties last year, averaging 78% support, according to analysis by Investigate Midwest.Trump’s vote share rose among farming communities, despite his last trade war which required a $23bn taxpayer bailout for farmers in 2018-19.Yet anxiety is mounting among the agricultural base.First came widespread cuts to oversubscribed and chronically underfunded federal climate and conservation schemes designed to reduce costs and greenhouse gases, and improve yields and environmental health.Trump is also shuttering local food programs which provide farmers with stable domestic markets like public school districts and food banks, helping make farms more resilient to global economic shocks. The USAID, which purchased about $2bn every year in agricultural products particularly wheat, sorghum and lentils for humanitarian aid programs, has been dismantled.The loss in federal programs alone would have been tough to cope with, but then came the trade chaos. Trump’s tariff announcements began when most farmers already had spring crops in the ground – or at the very least had prepared the land and purchased inputs such as seeds and pesticides, making it impossible to switch to crops that could potentially find a market domestically.View image in fullscreenConsensus is growing among experts that the turmoil represents an opportunity for rival agriculture economies – and disaster for US farmers.“It’s all happening so fast and in the middle of the growing season, it’s a shock to the system that’s going to be tough for farmers, especially those growing commodities for export,” said Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). “Tariffs are not magical, they need to be used strategically as part of wider reforms to the domestic economic agenda.”“The volatility of the tariff policy decisions, with new tariffs frequently being announced, paused and placed will take a toll on the American agricultural industry,” writes economist Betty Resnick in an article for Farm Bureau, a right-leaning lobby group. “Without direct support from USDA or a farm bill with an updated safety net, farmers will almost certainly bear the brunt of these tariffs.”Ben Murray, senior researcher with the consumer advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said: “Without a bailout, we can only imagine how bad this will be for farmers and what an opportunity for Brazil – and this is all being done for a tax cut for the wealthy.”For decades now, US farmers have been heavily incentivized through the Farm Bill to grow commodity crops destined for export such as wheat, corn, soy, sorghum, rice and cotton, rather than produce for domestic consumption. The price of commodities is tied to the global market, even if sold domestically. Meanwhile US imports of fruits and vegetables mostly from Latin America have risen, now accounting for more than 50% of consumption, according to USDA data.This globalized agricultural system favors large and corporate-owned operations, as smaller farms struggle more with boom and bust prices, and access to government subsidies and other credit. The number of farms continues to decline, while the average size continues to rise. Market consolidation and corporate profits tend to surge in the agriculture industry after every economic shock including the Covid pandemic, Trump’s last trade war and the banking crisis.Biden implemented a range of modest, imperfect policies to try to ease the pain for smaller-scale farmers including a greater focus on anti-trust, local and regional food systems, and climate resilience – all of which are under attack by the Trump administration.The vast majority of a $19.5bn funding package by the Biden administration for evidence-based conservation practices that improve soil health, air quality and reduce the use of costly fertilizers, pesticides and water will not be honored. The 10-year fund allocated through the Inflation Reduction Act was an addendum to money ring-fenced in the Farm Bill for four oversubscribed programs, after years of pressure from farmers to expand access to the initiatives.Two Biden-era healthy eating schemes worth a combined $1bn to local farmers have been canceled: the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program matching producers to food banks, and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program which helped public schools add healthy, locally grown produce on to lunch menus. (The USDA recently agreed to unfreeze funding for existing contracts.)View image in fullscreen“My farm will survive because we’ve been working with school districts for 20 years, but for others in our coalition the funding cliff is very real,” said Anna Knight, who owns an 80-acre citrus farm in southern California.Piling on further misery are mass layoffs within the USDA that were seemingly orchestrated by the billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk.More than 10% of USDA staff have already reportedly agreed to voluntary buyouts, with more expected in coming weeks. This is in addition to several thousand probationary employees who were laid off last month – a move which disproportionately hit local offices beefed up under the Biden administration, and is being challenged in the courts.USDA field offices play a crucial role in rural communities, the place where farmers go for tailor-made technical help from agencies including the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Farm Service Agency (FSA) on the latest pest control and planting practices, conservation programs, loans and disaster assistance programs.“It makes no sense taking billions of dollars off the table for programs that improve long-term farm viability and resilience – and which farmers have been lining up for years for – and then spend billions bringing back farmers from financial collapse,” said Jesse Womack, policy expert at the National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition. “It’s looking really bleak with a lot of pain ahead for farmers.”A coalition of environmental and agricultural groups is suing the USDA after it purged an array of climate-related online resources including information on the NRCS website helping farmers access federal grants for conservation practices, and technical guidance on cutting emissions and strengthening resilience to extreme weather like floods and drought.Even if there is a bailout, getting the money to farmers in time to avoid bankruptcy will be much more complicated this time, according to Lilliston from IATP.“Another bailout seems inevitable but there are serious questions about how quickly it could be implemented with such a dysfunctional Congress, local USDA offices shuttered and fewer staff. It’s a very messy situation and farmers are already experiencing harm.”And in the medium and long term: “The US reputation has taken a huge hit. We can no longer be considered a reliable trading partner which is terrible for farmers,” added Lilliston.Even before the current mayhem, almost two-thirds of US rural bankers surveyed in March expected farmer income to decline in 2025, with farm equipment sales dropping for the 19th straight month, according to the latest Rural Mainstreet Economy survey by Creighton University. Grain and cotton prices have plummeted since 2022.View image in fullscreen“We were already in a precarious situation but now, unless there’s a bailout or this trade war is resolved by harvest time, it will be disastrous and a critical mass of farmers could go out of business,” said Adam Chappell, 46, a commodities farmer growing corn, cotton, soybean and rice in Arkansas, where dozens of local USDA staff have reportedly been furloughed or fired in recent weeks.Chappell’s town Cotton Plant was hit with 13in of rain in early April, causing crop losses for many farmers. Chappell’s fields survived the rain but he spent a nervous few weeks after the USDA froze all conservation funds, unsure whether the government would reimburse him, as agreed, for an upfront investment in cover crops and a compost operation. Eventually, after a backlash, the administration backtracked and agreed to honor existing contracts.“The weather is getting stranger and more challenging to deal with every year, while big monopoly corporations are allowed to manipulate the system and squeeze us at every part of the supply chain. Farmers like me lean heavily on the NRCS conservation programs to improve soil health and reduce input costs,” said Chappell. “The tariffs are like adding salt on the wound.”Despite last week’s partial U-turn, Trump’s ongoing and increasingly chaotic trade war risks causing irreparable harm to international markets for farmers, especially but not exclusively China, as well as pushing up the cost of agricultural imports such as pesticides, fertilizer and machinery.China is the US’s third biggest agricultural export market, worth $24.7bn in 2024, down 15% from 2023, as soybean, corn and sorghum sales fell amid rising competition from South America, according to USDA data. China’s top imports from the US are oilseeds and grains. US exports to China supported almost a million US jobs in 2022, according to the US-China Business Council, mostly around agriculture and livestock production.As of Friday, at least 15 agricultural department programs worth billions of dollars to American farmers and rural communities remain frozen, according to Politico, more than two months after they were halted for review to ensure compliance with Trump’s priorities opposing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts as well as his crackdown on climate change initiatives.This includes the Biden-era partnerships for climate-smart commodities (PCSC) program – a five-year $3.2bn real-life study into the effectiveness of conservation practices such as cover cropping and reduced tillage for commodity farms.“PSCS was about increasing our evidence base on climate benefits that also help commodity farmers improve soil health, air and water quality – and their bottom line,” said Omanjana Goswami, a scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Abandoning this will come at a cost to American farms and the taxpayer.”On Monday, the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, defended dismantling PSCS, claiming it amounted to a Biden-era “climate slush fund” of which less than half the money went to farmers.A spokesperson added: “The USDA has a variety of programs available to producers who have been impacted by recent disasters … [and] is currently building a framework to deliver over $20bn in congressionally appropriated funds to producers who suffered losses during the 2023/2024 crop year. With 16 robust nutrition programs in place, USDA remains focused on its core mission: strengthening food security, supporting agricultural markets, and ensuring access to nutritious food.”And some Trump supporters are keeping the faith.“There are some concerns out there but our farmers are willing to make sacrifices for long-term gains,” said Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner. “Tariffs are a temporary tool, they won’t be permanent, China needs our grains, they are prideful but will come around like last time.” More