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      in US Politics

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

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

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      in World Politics

      FO° Podcasts: Why Has Trump Deployed Thousands of National Guard Troops in Washington, DC?

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      Fair Observer Founder, CEO & Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh speaks with Ankit Jain, a voting rights attorney and the shadow senator of Washington, DC. Together, they discuss the city’s unusual political status, US President Donald Trump’s interventions in the capital and broader questions about crime, governance, statehood and the future of American democracy.

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      What is a shadow senator?

      Jain begins by clarifying his unusual role as one of DC’s two elected shadow senators. Unlike other states, Washington, DC, has no voting representation in Congress. To push for statehood and defend its autonomy, the city created two non-voting senators and one non-voting representative. Jain, elected in November 2024 and sworn in this January, explains that his position is part-advocate, part-lobbyist and part-symbolic lawmaker. His chief responsibility is to fight for DC to become the 51st state and secure full representation for its 700,000 residents.

      Turmoil in Washington, DC?

      Singh turns the conversation to Trump’s controversial policy decisions in the capital. Jain describes how Trump took control of the Metropolitan Police Department for 30 days, placing it under a presidentially appointed official. Trump also sent in hundreds of federal agents and more than 2,000 National Guard troops. The stated aim was to reduce crime, but Jain argues the real goal was to reshape policing “in his own image,” encouraging brutality and overriding DC laws on cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He points to raids that terrified the Latino community and recalls seeing federal troops idling around tourist sites like the National Mall rather than addressing real problems.

      DC’s governance structure

      Jain then explains how fragile DC’s self-government really is. While the city elects a mayor and council, the federal government controls the judiciary and prosecution of adult crimes. Judges are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and the US Attorney — also a presidential appointee — handles prosecutions. Right now, one in five local court seats sits vacant, slowing trials and fueling more crime. The US Attorney’s office, meanwhile, suffers from mass firings that gutted its capacity. Even when DC passes its own laws, Congress can block or repeal them within 30 to 60 days. To Jain, this makes self-rule an illusion, unlike London or other world capitals, where residents govern their own affairs.

      Crime in DC

      Trump has repeatedly claimed that crime in Washington is spiraling. Jain challenges this, citing objective data: Crime is down 25% year-on-year, violent crime is at a 30-year low and overall rates remain below pre-COVID-19 levels. He accuses Trump of spreading lies to justify costly deployments that burn “millions of [taxpayer] dollars a day” without solving problems.

      Jain acknowledges DC still faces crime and homelessness, but argues solutions require smarter police deployment, housing reform and more funding for mental health. It does not need troop surges and headline-grabbing raids. He also notes that federal restrictions like the Height Act prevent the city from building enough affordable housing, driving rents higher and fueling homelessness.

      Trump’s attacks on DC

      Jain sees Trump’s interventions as part of a larger pattern. By stripping money from DC’s budget, firing federal workers and blocking judicial nominations, Trump is deliberately weakening the city. These moves deepen DC’s “mini-recession” and leave essential services, from schools to emergency response, undermanned. In Jain’s view, Trump’s goal is not to fix urban challenges but to create crises, then claim sweeping authority to impose his preferred policies.

      Should Washington, DC, be a state?

      For Jain, it is clear that Washington, DC, should be a state. He argues that nearly every problem facing the capital — crime policy, housing shortages, budget manipulation — stems from the fact that DC is not a state. Its residents pay taxes, serve in the military and number more than Wyoming or Vermont, yet they lack voting representation. Jain calls it a modern case of “taxation without representation,” pointing out that no other democratic nation in the world denies its capital city’s residents the vote. Statehood, he insists, is the only path to justice.

      The National Guard in other cities?

      Singh raises Trump’s threats to send the National Guard into Los Angeles, California, and Chicago, Illinois. Jain warns this is no idle talk — DC is simply the test case. Because it is not a state, it was an easy target. If successful, Trump could expand the model to cities like Chicago, Detroit, Michigan, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, coercing them into repealing policies or cutting federal funds. Jain calls this a “dangerous precedent” and urges Senate Democrats to resist using every tool available, including the filibuster, to stop such power grabs.

      Democrats need an upgrade

      Finally, Singh raises a broader critique: Democrats have failed urban America. Jain concedes there is truth in this. Democrats, he says, often rely too much on the “old guard” and resist fresh ideas. Still, he pushes back against Republican attacks, noting that Grand Old Party-led cities often have higher crime rates, largely because of permissive gun laws. He argues that Democrats need to show a new vision while Republicans must stop blocking gun control measures and sabotaging agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

      To Jain, Trump’s actions in DC reveal a deeper threat: an authoritarian drift that undermines American democracy itself. If left unchecked, he warns, it could spread from Washington to the rest of the nation.

      [Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

      The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

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

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

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      in US Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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      Need I list all the reasons why Trump shouldn’t get a Nobel peace prize? | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s thuggish campaign to bully his way to the Nobel peace prize should not be the cause for the committee to reject him. There are many more substantial grounds that render him patently unqualified to receive the award.Among the numerous reasons that make him one of the least deserving people in the world who should be honored, he has single-handedly destroyed the United States Agency for International Development, which has saved hundreds of millions of people from hunger and disease, and promoted democracy and the rule of law around the world. In an executive order issued on his inauguration day, 20 January, Trump slandered USAID as “not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values” and claimed that its workers “serve to destabilize world peace”.That act of malice by itself should be sufficient to erase Trump from the longest long list.Clearly, the worthiest candidate for the Nobel peace prize, whether its name was submitted before the deadline or not, is USAID. Since its founding under John F Kennedy in 1961, USAID has supported extensive programs on global health, food security, education and democratic development that, by addressing the root causes of instability and poverty, had promoted a more free, peaceful and prosperous world for 64 years until Trump destroyed it.As a general rule, there should be no shame attached to an organized effort to win the prize by Trump or others. Trump’s lobbying, though, is stained, as is much else about him, by perverse statecraft that has fostered conflict where none previously existed and his unquenchable need for cult-like worship.Several world leaders, such as Benjamin Netanyahu, have written in support of Trump’s nomination at his behest, cynically calculating that it would curry favor for their own often nefarious and warlike purposes. Trump personally pressured India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, to write a letter based on the lie that it was Trump who had “solved” a recent military conflict with Pakistan. Modi was alienated by the improper request. After his refusal to submit a false statement, Trump imposed a 50% tariff on India, which sent Modi flying into the arms of China. There is no existing international prize for this sort of willfully destructive behavior.The encomiums from Trump’s closest aides hailing him as the best candidate are symptoms of the sycophancy that is the eternal mark of authoritarian regimes. Fitting the historical pattern, obsequiousness within a cult of personality substitutes for honesty, fact and evidence. Trump punishes and purges forthright counsel, suppresses factual intelligence and expert information that is not falsified or distorted to achieve predetermined results, and dismisses evidence regarding medicine, the environment and energy derived from the scientific method.The tenor of unctuous servility was perfectly voiced by Steven Witkoff, Trump’s all-purpose international representative, speaking at an August cabinet meeting. “There’s only one thing I wish for,” he said, “that the Nobel committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since this Nobel award was ever talked about.”The phrasing of Witkoff’s praise is eerily reminiscent of the words uttered in the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate by the character of Major Ben Marco, played by Frank Sinatra, who has been brainwashed as a prisoner of war held by the North Koreans. He repeats over and over again his admiration for an army sergeant from his unit who has been programmed to be a political assassin on behalf of both the communists and the American far right. “Raymond Shaw,” says Major Marco, “is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.” In the movie, Shaw is awarded a prize – the Congressional Medal of Honor – based on the brainwashed testimony of his fellow soldiers.“No matter what I do, they won’t give it up and I’m not politicking for it,” Trump said. He suggested the efforts to grant him the prize were spontaneous: “I have a lot of people that are.” When he was handed a nomination letter that Netanyahu had submitted, Trump said: “They will never give me a Nobel peace prize. I deserve it.”But Trump’s ludicrous hypocrisy about not pulling levers behind the curtain to solicit nomination also is not a conclusive reason to deny him the prize.Trump’s rancor about not receiving the prize that has not yet been awarded is exactly the same as his resentment that he did not get an Emmy for his reality TV show The Apprentice. For years he ranted: “Should have gotten it.” “I got screwed out of an Emmy.” “The Emmys are all politics.” “Con game.” “Irrelevant.” Then, like the Emmy, he claimed the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and organized an insurrection to overthrow the democratic result. In his paranoid chain of things wrongly denied him, now it’s the Nobel. Fill in the blank.Trump’s longing for the prize also reflects his anger that Barack Obama received it. Trump’s animus against Obama about the Nobel followed his viciously contrived birther campaign. “Affirmative action,” said Trump. “Rigged.” “He had no idea why he got it.” “If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel prize given to me in 10 seconds.”The diplomatic and political friction that Trump has gratuitously produced between the US and Norway with his offensive remarks should also not be the decisive issue that affects the judgment of the committee. In 2018, Trump said: “Why do we want all these people from Africa here? They’re shithole countries … We should have more people from Norway.” His comment evoked nationwide disgust in Norway. “On behalf of Norway: thanks, but no thanks,” tweeted a politician representing Norway’s Conservative party.Trump’s recent 15% tariff levied on Norway, despite its insignificant trade deficit, has damaged its fishing industry. His antipathy toward renewable forms of energy, throwing the entire wind power industry into chaos, has cost the Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor, which had an ongoing wind project off New York, about $1bn. In July, Trump called the Norwegian finance minister, Jens Stoltenberg, the former head of Nato, “out of the blue”. “He wanted the Nobel prize – and to discuss tariffs,” a Norwegian newspaper reported. But none of these offensive, obnoxious and even malign actions should be dispositive in whether Trump receives the prize.The reasons for denying him the award are much more fundamental and salient. His disqualification for the Nobel is not that he an inveterate liar, transparent faker and bungling schemer. It is that he meets other much more germane and dangerous criteria that were engraved for humankind epochs before the peace prize was ever conceived.Within mere months since reassuming office Trump has become a harbinger across the globe of war, famine, disease and death. The standards by which he should be judged are those described in the Book of Revelation (6:1–8) by the appearance of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Trump rides or presumes to ride all of those dreaded emblems of destruction, which do not foretell any glorious coming of peace, a new heaven and new earth, or prophesy a cleansing moment for repentance, but instead carnage followed by dictatorship and plagues without end.Specifically, rather than biblically, Trump has been an enabler of war. By his actions, he has supported Netanyahu’s offensive war for the complete ethnic cleansing and destruction of Gaza. Through his refusal to put conditions on $17.8bn in military assistance, Trump has made it possible for Netanyahu to ignore the advice of the Israeli army and intelligence leadership not to continue and expand that war.Trump has called for the US to “take over” and “own” Gaza to turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”. This entity would generate profits through a US-led trusteeship, private investment in mega-construction projects and the “voluntary” relocation of Palestinians. Trump has held a White House meeting about a plan dubbed the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust – or “Great Trust” – that envisions building the “Gaza Trump Riviera and Islands” and the “Elon Musk Manufacturing Zone” and paying Palestinians $5,000 to relocate. Under this plan, Trump would personally profit in violation of the emoluments clause of the constitution.On Ukraine, Trump initially agreed to the European proposal for a ceasefire that would result in new sanctions if Vladimir Putin did not comply. But as soon as he was face to face with Putin at their summit in Alaska, Trump crumbled to take Putin’s side. The consequence has been the intensification of Russian bombing of Ukrainian civilian targets – as well as the European Union headquarters in Kyiv. Trump’s undermining of the ceasefire initiative was his latest gesture toward Putin of admiration and deference.The Trump White House has said it will “not rule out” military action to seize Greenland, a semi-independent territory of Denmark, a Nato member. Meanwhile, Denmark reports that Trump has deployed political personnel close to the White House to Greenland to agitate for a US takeover and to prepare for possible US military operations there. On 28 August, Denmark’s foreign minister summoned the top US diplomat to warn the Trump administration against its covert influence operation.Trump has repeatedly laid claim to the territory of the Panama Canal Zone and threatened to use military force to seize it. These threats were apparently made in part to pressure the government of Panama to reduce or eliminate the bill for taxes on Trump Organization properties that they were accused of evading there. In 2017, a joint Reuters-NBC News investigation reported that the Trump Ocean Club International hotel and tower in Panama City was a front for international money laundering for narcotics trafficking, dubbed Narco-a-Lago. The Trump Organization asserted it bore no responsibility for the activity within its units.Trump has also repeatedly laid claim to the entire nation of Canada, another Nato member, to be occupied by and added to the United States as a single state. The White House has refused to rule out the use of military force for that purpose.On 21 June, Trump ordered Operation Midnight Hammer, a surprise, coordinated air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan and other locations. The mission involved B-2 bombers dropping massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) “bunker buster” bombs on the Fordow site and other weapons against the other facilities. When Lt Gen Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, reported a preliminary intelligence assessment that Iran’s nuclear capability had not been “obliterated”, as Trump had boasted, he was summarily fired.Trump has claimed to have brokered a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia, after the parties came to the White House for a ceremony to sign a peace treaty. Both governments, however, subsequently acknowledged that this was a publicity stunt designed to help Trump with his campaign for the peace prize and that no peace agreement was actually concluded.Trump’s claim to have brokered a peace agreement between India and Pakistan was yet another stunt to burnish his credentials for the prize. When he was snubbed by Modi, Trump used it as a pretext for imposing a punitive tariff. His claim to have brokered a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the withdrawal of Rwandan forces from DRC soil was similarly false. Rwanda-controlled M23 rebels remain on DRC soil, committing massacres in 14 villages in July, and the peace agreement is a fiction.Trump has also enabled the Netanyahu government’s campaign of famine against the population of Gaza, granting Netanyahu impunity for his starvation project, while ordering the US representative to the United Nations not to sign a statement from all 14 other members of the security council that the famine in Gaza is a “man-made crisis” and in violation of international law.A huge famine also rages in Sudan, connected in significant part to the proxy war fought there by a US ally, the United Arab Emirates. Trump’s decision to stop all USAID relief operations as part of his administration’s wholesale demolition of the agency has made the Sudan famine far more acute. As a result, more than 80% of emergency food kitchens have shut down. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) have stated that the funding cuts are directly contributing to deaths from starvation and disease. The NRC warned that inaction has allowed Sudan’s crisis to worsen “beyond measure”.Besides creating the conditions for famine, Trump’s decision to terminate USAID could lead to more than 14 million additional preventable deaths globally by 2030, according to an authoritative July 2025 study in the British medical journal the Lancet – “a staggering number of avoidable deaths”.According to the report, “USAID funding was associated with a 65% reduction in mortality from HIV/Aids (representing 25.5 million deaths), 51% from malaria (8 million deaths), and 50% from neglected tropical diseases (8.9 million deaths)”, among significant decreases in many other diseases. But Trump has wiped out all these programs.At home, Trump has eviscerated the National Institutes for Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and withheld $2.6bn from Harvard University in federal funds including for medical research on cancer and other diseases. After an armed man with a semi-automatic rifle opposed to vaccines fired 150 rounds into the CDC headquarters in Atlanta and murdered a police officer, Trump said absolutely nothing. He has been a stalwart against any restriction on guns, which are almost without exception the weapons used in school massacres, mass shootings and violent crime.“I looked,” reads the Book of Revelation, “and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death.”

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Epstein estate records release could shine light on sex trafficker’s connections – or show nothing at all

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      The release of records from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate to US lawmakers this week, as well as potentially suspicious transaction reports, could offer a roadmap to where the scandal swirling around the late convicted sex trafficker goes next.Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed full transparency around Epstein and his links to a wide circle of powerful, rich and famous associates. But instead, the administration has been accused of foot-dragging and a cover-up, and has faced intense scrutiny over the extent of Trump’s own social contact with Epstein.Due to be handed over this week to the House oversight committee chair are estate records that include Epstein’s 50th “birthday book” compiled with notes from friends – including an entry allegedly signed by Trump that is now the subject of a defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.They also include Epstein’s last will and testament, agreements he signed with federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008, his contacts from his “black book”, non-disclosure agreements, and financial transactions and holdings. In addition, the committee has asked the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, for relevant suspicious activity reports (SARs) in connection with the investigation and prosecution of Epstein and his one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell on sex-trafficking charges.The committee this week also plans to hold a transcribed interview with Alex Acosta, Trump’s first-term labor secretary who was US attorney for the southern district of Florida when the justice department struck a plea deal with Epstein that victims have repeatedly said allowed him to get away with many crimes.Then there is a stalled campaign by the Kentucky Republican representative Thomas Massie and the California Democrat Ro Khanna to pass legislation to force the government to release all documents relating to the Epstein-Maxwell investigation.The White House has reportedly advised Republicans in Congress that supporting the effort would “be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration”.Adding to pressure on the Trump administration, Epstein survivors said last week they would compile their own client list of alleged abusers if the information was not released. Massie and Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said they would read out the names on the House floor under a protective “speech or debate” clause.But none of the potential avenues for more information on the Epstein-Maxwell sex-trafficking conspiracy may be more fruitful than the financial disclosures, and especially the SARs, if they are made public.But the SARs request is already mired in partisan politics, with Democratic senator Ron Wyden accusing Bessent of withholding key information. In a letter, Wyden listed 58 people or institutions he wanted records on. “Treasury records shine a light on how high-profile individuals paid Epstein staggering sums of money, which was then used to move women around the world or engage in dubious transactions indicative of money laundering,” he said.Banks are required to file SARs with the treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network when they suspect a criminal violation, when specified transaction thresholds are reached, or when they suspect money laundering.According to Patrice Schiano, a former FBI forensic accountant now with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, an SAR itself does not necessarily reveal much – but it can be used by law enforcement to subpoena information, including the originator and beneficiaries of the transaction.“They’re documents that speak for themselves. You might find things you don’t necessarily know you’re looking for. Maybe a source is telling you something but you don’t really know the support behind the SARs, and there are ways with SARs you can begin to figure things out,” Schiano said.In a 2023 lawsuit, the Epstein victims and the US Virgin Islands claimed that JP Morgan notified the government of $1bn in suspicious transactions by Epstein dating back to 2003 – but made the report only after Epstein was arrested in 2019.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLawyers for the bank said it had flagged the treasury department six times, including as early as 2002, about Epstein’s financial activity and that the federal government gave no response and took no action. The bank settled the action for $290m. JP Morgan said that any association with Epstein “was a mistake, and we regret it”.According to Schiano, Epstein’s banking information, if lawmakers can get it, could be “a rich source”.Schiano added: “But you have to have access to SARs, then you have to get a subpoena, and then you have to crunch the data. It’s not easy to do, and it takes a long time, but they could have all the information they need to do a comprehensive investigation.”But will they? A release last week of more than 30,000 pages of Epstein-related documents yielded little new. Wyden noted in his letter that Bessent has twice declined to produce treasury documents to the committee. The senator and his staff viewed some of the SARs last year, but they were not allowed to copy the documents.A treasury department spokesperson called Wyden’s request “political theater”.Representative James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, has also issued deposition subpoenas to several former senior US government officials and figures such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Merrick Garland, Robert Mueller, William Barr, Jeff Sessions and Alberto Gonzales to testify.Marie Springer, author of The Politics of Ponzi Schemes: History, Theory, and Policy, warned the truth about Epstein may remain a mystery and even the release of estate records may show little.“I’m very suspicious about the whole Epstein case. I don’t think we will ever have full disclosure,” Springer said. “He had a lot of money for someone who didn’t graduate from college. The curiosity is around why and how, and the people alive now aren’t willing to tell the story.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: President tells foreign companies to ‘respect’ immigration law after Hyundai Ice raid

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      Donald Trump has told foreign companies that they must hire and train American workers and respect immigration laws, after a raid at a Hyundai Motor manufacturing facility in Georgia saw about 300 South Koreans detained.Nearly 500 workers in total were detained in the raid on Thursday, with US authorities releasing footage showing them restrained in handcuffs and ankle chains, loaded on to buses.The raid marked the largest single site sweep carried out under Donald Trump’s nationwide anti-immigration campaign and appeared to strain the longstanding diplomatic and economic relationship between the US and South Korea.“I am hereby calling on all Foreign Companies investing in the United States to please respect our Nation’s Immigration Laws,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday, adding “Your Investments are welcome, and we encourage you to LEGALLY bring your very smart people … What we ask in return is that you hire and train American Workers.”Trump made the post shortly after telling reporters he would look at what happened but that the incident had not harmed his relationship with South Korea.300 South Koreans detained at Hyundai plant in US to be released, says SeoulSouth Korea announced on Sunday that the roughly 300 of its nationals detained during an immigration raid in Georgia would be released and flown home.LG executive Kim Ki-soo flew to Georgia in an apparent effort to slow the fallout. “The immediate priority now is the swift release of both our LG Energy Solution employees and those of our partner firms,” Ki-soo reportedly said before boarding a plane.Read the full storyUS treasury secretary denies Trump tariffs are tax on AmericansUS treasury secretary Scott Bessent has refused to acknowledge that the sweeping trade tariffs imposed by Donald Trump around the world are taxes on Americans.In a new interview Bessent, a former billionaire hedge fund manager, dismissed concerns from major American companies including John Deere, Nike and Black and Decker who have all said that Trump’s tariffs policy will cost them billions of dollars annually.Bessent was asked: “Do you acknowledge that these tariffs are attacks on American consumers?” To which Bessent replied: “No, I don’t.”Read the full storyRepublican condemns Vance for ‘despicable’ comments on Venezuelan boat strikeThe Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance for “despicable” comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings.“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” the vice-president said in an X post on Saturday, in defense of Tuesday’s US military strike against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which killed 11 people the administration alleged were drug traffickers.Rand Paul condemned Vance’s comments, saying “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”Read the full storyCrowd greets Donald Trump with boos and cheers at US Open men’s finalDonald Trump was booed and cheered at the US Open during the national anthem before Sunday’s men’s final.Prior to the match, US Open broadcasters were asked not to show any negative crowd reactions to the president at the event.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Nine attorneys – who have represented approximately 50 Jeffrey Epstein survivors – have told the Guardian they have not been recently contacted by the justice department, despite the president’s promises to get to the bottom of the deceased financiers crimes.

      As Chicago braced for an immigration enforcement crackdown and a possible national guard deployment, churches across the city have urged congregants to carry identification, stay connected to family and protest.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on Saturday 6 September 2025. More