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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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      Trump once condemned Qatar. How things have changed | Mohamad Bazzi

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      On his tour of the Middle East last week, Donald Trump was treated like royalty by the leaders of the wealthiest countries in the Arab world. The US president was feted in gilded ballrooms, his motorcade was flanked by dozens of men riding white Arabian horses and he was awarded an elaborate gold medal necklace. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates went out of their way to show Trump that they respect him more than his predecessor, Joe Biden.While Trump frequently praised Saudi and UAE leaders during his first term, he was highly critical of Qatar, a small emirate that is rich in natural gas but usually overshadowed by its two larger and more powerful neighbors. In June 2017, Trump said Qatar “has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level” and he supported a blockade against the country, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Qatar’s neighbors accused it of financing terrorism by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and being too cozy with Iran. The blockade, which disrupted the lives of thousands of people across the Persian Gulf, stretched until early 2021.Today, Qatar has emerged as the unlikely success story of Trump’s first state visit of his second term. It was no accident that the Qatari royal family recently offered to donate a $400m luxury jet – a “palace in the sky” Boeing 747 – that the president could use as Air Force One for the rest of his term. The plane’s ownership would then be transferred to Trump’s presidential library, meaning he would be able to continue using the jet after he leaves office. Despite the administration’s convoluted effort to frame this as a donation from Qatar to the US government, it would in effect be a gift for Trump’s personal benefit.It’s yet another way that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family business, which has ongoing deals for Trump-branded real estate projects and golf resorts worth billions of dollars in the three wealthy Gulf petrostates that Trump visited last week. So far, neither Congress nor US courts have tried to sanction Trump over the US constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which forbids the president from accepting gifts or payments from a foreign government without congressional approval.Qatar seems to have won Trump’s respect with its lavish gift and a charm offensive built around its role as a global mediator that is able to bring enemies together. During the first Trump administration, Qatar brokered a peace agreement between the US and Taliban leaders, which was supposed to lead to a phased withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. During the Biden administration, Qatar hosted indirect talks for a prisoner swap between Iran and the US, which included unblocking $6bn in frozen Iranian oil funds – an agreement that Washington later rescinded.But Qatar’s most high-stakes mediation role has been to serve as the main conduit for negotiations between Israel and Hamas, after the October 2023 Hamas attack and Israel’s devastating war on Gaza. The Qataris helped broker a one-week ceasefire in November 2023, and a two-month truce that started this past January and collapsed in March.Yet since the emirate emerged as a primary mediator in Gaza, politicians in both the US and Israel ratcheted up their attacks on Qatar. They accused its leaders of supporting terrorism by hosting members of Hamas’s political leadership in Doha, the Qatari capital, where several settled after they were forced out of Damascus for turning against the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was facing a popular uprising. Throughout the stalled Gaza negotiations, several members of Congress demanded that the Biden administration pressure Qatar to close the Hamas offices and expel its leaders. The Qataris resisted those demands and consistently pointed out that Barack Obama’s administration had asked Qatar in 2012 to establish an indirect channel that would allow the US to communicate with Hamas.After news broke of Qatar’s plan to donate the luxury jet to Trump, some figures in the president’s Maga movement revived complaints about the emirate’s support for Hamas and other Islamist groups. “We cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits,” Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who last month convinced Trump to fire six White House national security staffers, wrote on X. She added: “I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.”But most of the Republicans in Congress who had urged Biden to punish Qatar for its support of Hamas have so far stayed quiet about Trump’s decision to accept the $400m plane and cozy up to Qatar’s rulers. That’s partly an indication of how Trump has successfully banished or ignored many hawkish Republicans and neoconservatives during his second term, preferring to negotiate with Iran and other US adversaries. Qatar’s role as a mediator that can resolve regional conflicts is particularly attractive to Trump, who sees himself as the ultimate dealmaker.In this term, Trump has surrounded himself with longtime friends as top advisers, including Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer who is serving as the president’s Middle East envoy and all-around troubleshooter. Witkoff has been publicly praising Qatar’s leaders for their mediation efforts with Hamas since he took office in January – and the envoy’s praise is clearly resonating with Trump, who has dramatically changed his approach toward Qatar. “They’re good, decent people,” Witkoff said of the Qataris during an interview in March with Tucker Carlson, the rightwing media host and Maga figure. “What they want is a mediation that’s effective, that gets to a peace goal. And why? Because they’re a small nation and they want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker.”Witkoff’s comments echoed the strategy of Qatar’s ruler, the 44-year-old Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who took power in 2013 when his father abdicated the throne. The emir has tried to position Qatar as a force in global geopolitics not just for prestige, but also as a way to ensure his ruling family’s survival amid sometimes aggressive neighbors. (Those neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have tried to impose their own foreign policy directives on Qatar, as they did during the blockade that Trump supported in his first term.) Qatar still walks a tightrope of proving itself crucial to the US and western powers by being one of the world’s largest and most reliable suppliers of liquified natural gas, and also maintaining ties with non-state groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban.Qatar has tried to hedge its bets by positioning itself to play an outsize role as a dealmaker, one that a country of its size would not normally take on. That policy began under the current emir’s father, who launched the state-owned Al Jazeera satellite network in 1996 as part of Qatar’s soft-power campaign to increase its influence in the Middle East. And while Qatar directly funded Islamist groups soon after the 2011 Arab uprisings in Syria, Libya and Egypt, the emirate’s leaders became more cautious in recent years and shifted toward cementing their role as global negotiators.For decades, Qatari leaders have also worked to solidify a military alliance with the US. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, they allowed Washington to use Al-Udeid Air Base outside Doha to launch air strikes against Afghanistan. Qatar later invested $8bn to upgrade the base, which has become the largest US military installation in the Middle East, housing up to 10,000 troops. On Thursday, as Trump wrapped up his visit to Qatar, he delivered a meandering, campaign-style speech to US troops stationed at the base. He bragged about economic agreements he had signed with Qatari leaders the previous day, which the White House valued at more than $243bn.Trump also expounded on the value of Qatar’s loyalty: “I don’t think our friendship has ever been stronger than it is right now.” Earlier on Thursday, he praised Qatar’s emir and told a meeting of business leaders: “We are going to protect you.”For Trump, who sees all diplomacy as transactional, that is the ultimate favor he can bestow: US protection for a foreign leader who is trying to resolve regional conflicts – and also happened to offer the president an extravagant gift.

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

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      Judges thwart Trump effort to deport pro-Palestinian students – but their fight isn’t over

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      The Trump administration suffered yet another blow this past week to its efforts to deport international students over their pro-Palestinian speech, when a third federal judge threw a wrench into a government campaign widely criticized as a political witch hunt with little historical precedent.On Wednesday, a federal judge in Virginia ordered immigration authorities to release Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri from custody. The Indian scholar’s release followed that of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, and Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian permanent resident and Columbia University student. The administration is seeking to deport all of them on the grounds that their presence in the US is harmful to the country’s foreign policy, part of a crackdown on political dissent that has sent shockwaves through US campuses.Only the first foreign student to be detained by the administration over his activism, Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident of Palestinian descent, remains in detention more than two months after being taken from his Columbia University residential building. Yunseo Chung, another Columbia student and green card holder, went into hiding and sued the administration in March before authorities could detain her; others have left the country rather than risk detention.A federal judge in New Jersey is expected to rule soon on a request to release Khalil pending further resolution of his case – but his attorneys are hopeful the other releases are a good sign. The green card holder, who is married to a US citizen, was known on Columbia’s campus as a steady mediator between the university administration and student protesters. He was recently denied a request to attend the birth of his son.“These decisions reflect a simple truth – the constitution forbids the government from locking up anyone, including noncitizens, just because it doesn’t like what they have to say,” said Brian Hauss, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups representing Khalil and the others. “We will not rest until Mahmoud Khalil is free, along with everyone else in detention for their political beliefs.”Diala Shamas, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is also involved in Khalil’s defense, said that “we’re seeing wins in all of these cases”, but added that “every single day that Mahmoud Khalil spends in detention is a day too long and adds to the chilling effect that his continued detention has on other people”.The arrests have prompted widespread anxiety among international students and scholars and significantly contributed to a climate of fear and repression on US campuses. Despite occasional efforts to revive it, last year’s mass campus protest movement has been significantly dampened, even as Israel’s war in Gaza – the focus of the protests – is only escalating.But while the Trump administration seems to be getting clobbered in court, the fundamental question at the heart of the cases – whether the government has the authority to detain and deport noncitizens over their political speech – is far from settled.‘Times of excess’Khan Suri, Öztürk and Mahdawi have all been released pending a resolution to federal court cases over the government’s authority to detain them. Separately, the government’s effort to deport them is moving through the immigration court system, a different process.Advocates warn of a long legal battle that is likely to end up before the US supreme court. But they are hopeful. The releases, which required clearing substantial legal thresholds, are a welcome sign, they say, that the courts are skeptical of the government’s broader case: that it has the authority to use an obscure immigration provision to deport anyone the secretary of state deems a foreign policy problem.The government hasn’t clearly defended its position. In an appeal hearing this month in Öztürk and Mahdawi’s cases, one of the judges on the panel asked the government’s lawyers whether the administration believed the students’ speech to be protected by the first amendment’s guarantees of free speech and expression“We have not taken a position on that,” one of the attorneys, Drew Ensign, responded. “I don’t have the authority to take a position on that.”Instead, the legal proceedings thus far have largely focused on jurisdictional and other technical arguments. In Khalil’s case, for example, a New Jersey judge recently issued a 108-page decision dealing exclusively with his authority to hear the case. The judge hasn’t yet signaled his position on the constitutional questions.US district court judge Geoffrey Crawford, who ordered Mahdawi’s release, compared the current political moment with the red scare and Palmer raids of the early 20th century, when US officials detained and deported hundreds of foreign nationals suspected of holding leftist views, as well as the McCarthyism of the 1950s.“The wheel of history has come around again,” Crawford wrote, “but as before these times of excess will pass.”In her ruling in Khan Suri’s case this week, US district judge Patricia Giles said that his release was “in the public interest to disrupt the chilling effect on protected speech”, and that she believed the broader challenge against the government had a substantial likelihood of success.Chip Gibbons, the policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, a civil rights group, noted that while challenging immigration detention is often an “uphill battle” given the deference typically shown by judges to the government, the rulings might suggest otherwise.“Three separate federal judges, in three separate cases, have found that victims of the Trump-Rubio campaign of politically motivated immigration enforcement raise substantial constitutional claims challenging their detention,” he added. “Even a federal judiciary all too often deferential to executive claims of national security or foreign policy powers has clearly seen that the administration’s actions are likely retaliatory against political speech.”But even if the government ultimately loses its bid to deport students whose views it does not like, the free speech climate in the US has changed. The administration continues to pursue coercive investigations into universities under the guise of fighting antisemitism, dangling billions of dollars in funding as a threat, and universities have been surprisingly compliant in order to prevent a revival of last year’s protests.But some voices remain defiant. “We will not fear anyone because our fight is a fight for love, is a fight for democracy, is a fight for humanity,” Mahdawi said at a press conference upon his release. “This system of democracy [has] checks and balances, and discord is part of it.” More

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      Trump’s border intimidation is coming for US citizens too – ask streamer Hasan Piker | Owen Jones

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      Where are all the free speech warriors on the right now? Hasan Piker, a popular streamer with 4.5 million followers across YouTube and Twitch, who has been hailed by mainstream publications such as the New Yorker and New York Times as the left’s answer to the deluge of rightwing internet influencers, says he was detained and questioned for hours by border control agents as he re-entered the US (Piker is a US citizen). It is an instructive moment. Countries that behave like this towards political commentators and dissenting voices who are their own citizens are either nakedly authoritarian, or well on the way.Piker was reportedly interrogated at length not just about Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah, but his views on Donald Trump. The 33-year-old pundit – an unapologetic champion of the Palestinian cause – stuck to a message of opposing “endless bloodshed” and siding with civilians. That the biggest progressive streamer in the US was subjected to this experience is emblematic of a phenomenon that requires an accurate and insistent description: it is the biggest assault on free speech in the west since the height of McCarthyism seven decades ago.When foreign-born citizens – including green card holders – began to be detained by US authorities over their opposition to Israel’s genocide, it should have been clear that this was just phase one: US citizens would be next. Sure, Piker wasn’t arrested, but the authorities are pushing the boundaries bit by bit. The numbers of foreign visitors entering the US are falling as it is, undoubtedly driven by fears of a punitive border regime. But Piker’s detention sends a message to Americans with dissenting opinions – not least opponents of Israel’s genocide. The threat of being stopped at the border and subjected to lengthy interrogation simply because of what you think is straightforward political intimidation. It won’t stop there.That the vice-president, JD Vance, railed against Europe for a supposed war on free speech underlines what a sham this favoured narrative of the right always was. Weeks later, his boss announced that universities allowing “illegal” protests would be starved of federal cash – with Columbia University losing $400m despite having clamped down on pro-Palestinian protests – and dissenting students would be variously expelled, arrested, imprisoned or deported. Alas, it was under the Biden administration that the McCarthyite blacklisting-style campaign began, with defenders of Palestinian rights being variously deplatformed, fired and threatened.Indeed, Vance could have noted how European countries such as Germany have assaulted free speech by silencing pro-Palestinian activists: from imposing crippling restrictions on protests and violently assaulting demonstrators to shutting down conferences, sacking people who speak out and now seeking to deport activists, too. Alas, it’s not really free speech that Vance is interested in, but rather advancing far-right politics.If we’re going to discuss who is being stopped at the border, let’s discuss the astonishing 23,380 US citizens who serve in the IDF, according to figures quoted in the Washington Post a year ago. Many of them are undoubtedly committing unspeakable war crimes in Israel’s genocidal onslaught. Yet they are being waved through the border. And that really sums it up. If like Piker, you speak out against genocide, you are liable to be treated as a criminal as you enter your own country. If you’re a US citizen serving in a foreign army committing heinous atrocities, you’re more likely to be treated as a hero. The world is turned on its head.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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      To my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction | Mahmoud Khalil

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      Yaba Deen,* it has been two weeks since you were born, and these are my first words to you.In the early hours of 21 April, I waited on the other end of a phone as your mother labored to bring you into this world. I listened to her pained breaths and tried to speak comforting words into her ear over the crackling line. During your first moments, I buried my face in my arms and kept my voice low so that the 70 other men sleeping in this concrete room would not see my cloudy eyes or hear my voice catch. I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharing this experience. Why do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?Since that morning, I have come to recognize the look in the eyes of every father in this detention center. I sit here contemplating the immensity of your birth and wonder how many more firsts will be sacrificed to the whims of the US government, which denied me even the chance of furlough to attend your birth. How is it that the same politicians who preach “family values” are the ones tearing families apart?Deen, my heart aches that I could not hold you in my arms and hear your first cry, that I could not unfurl your clenched fists or change your first diaper. I am sorry that I was not there to hold your mother’s hand or to recite the adhan, or call to prayer, in your ear. But my absence is not unique. Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life. Babies are born every day without their fathers – not because their fathers chose to leave, but because they are taken by war, by bombs, by prison cells and by the cold machinery of occupation. The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations.View image in fullscreenDeen, it was not a gap in the law that made me a political prisoner in Louisiana. It was my firm belief that our people deserve to be free, that their lives are worth more than the televised massacre we are witnessing in Gaza, and that the displacement that began in 1948 and culminated in the current genocide must finally end. This mere belief is what made the state scramble to detain me. No matter where I am when you read this – whether I’m in this country or another – I want to impress upon you one lesson:The struggle for Palestinian liberation is not a burden; it is a duty and an honor we carry with pride. So at every turning point in my life, you will find me choosing Palestine. Palestine over ease. Palestine over comfort. Palestine over self. This struggle is sweeter than a life without dignity. The tyrants want us to submit, to obey, to be perfect victims. But we are free, and we will remain free. I hope you feel this as deeply as I do.Deen, as a Palestinian refugee, I inherited a kind of exile that followed me to every border, every airport, every form. Borders mean something to me that they may not mean to you. Each crossing required me to prove my docility, my identity and my very right to exist. You were born an American citizen. You may never feel that weight. You may never have to translate your humanity through paperwork, countless visa applications and interview appointments. I hope you use this not to separate yourself from others, but to uplift those who live under the same circumstances that once constrained me. But I won’t pretend this citizenship protects you. Not completely. Not when you have my name. Not when those in power still see our people as threats.One day, you might ask why people are punished for standing up for Palestine, why truth and compassion feel dangerous to power. These are hard questions, but I hope our story shows you this: the world needs more courage, not less. It needs people who choose justice over convenience.It is nothing but the dehumanization and racist disregard for Palestinians that renders their lives forgettable and that dares describe Palestinian fathers who love their sons as “terrorists”. Perhaps that is why the world so quickly forgot the killing of four-month-old Iman Hijjo in Gaza in 2001. Why did Ahmed Abu Artema’s beloved son Abdullah die hungry for bread? Who recalls the children lost in the Flour Massacre? Where is the justice for the fathers in the West Bank who carefully dress their sons for prison? Why does liberty not visit the bodies of Palestinian children whose limbs are missing, whose ribs are exposed under thin skin and who are born lovingly only to die under an Israeli bomb?On this first Mother’s Day for Noor, I dream of a world where all families are reunited to celebrate the incredible women in their lives. Many years ago, on one of our very first dates, I had asked your mother what she would change in the world if she could. Her simple response was: “I just want people to be nicer to each other.” Deen, you were born to a mother as gentle as she is fierce. I pray that you live in a world shaped by that kindness. I hope, with all my heart, that you will not witness the oppression that I’ve known. I hope that you never need to chant for Palestine, because it has long been free with dignity and prosperity for all. Should that day come, know that it was ushered in through the courage of those who came before you. I am certain that in this new world, you and I will visit Tiberias together, drink from the river and marvel at the sea. There, in a free and just Palestine, you will see the fruits of our struggle.Deen, my love for you is deeper than anything I have ever known. Loving you is not separate from the struggle for liberation. It is liberation itself. I fight for you, and for every Palestinian child whose life deserves safety, tenderness and freedom. I hope one day you will stand tall knowing your father was not absent out of apathy, but out of conviction. And I will spend my life making up for the moments we lost – starting with this one, writing to you with all the love in my heart.*Yaba Deen: “Yaba” (يابا ) is an affectionate term meaning “dad” in Arabic. In Palestinian Arabic, yaba is often used self-referentially to center the father-son bond in the greeting itself. So when a father says “yaba”, he’s using a tender, fatherly voice to address his child, somewhat like saying: “From your dad, Deen” or “My son, from your yaba (dad)”.

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      An American has become pope. Will he be the moral leader we desperately need? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      America is back, baby. Not only has the Gulf of Mexico been successfully Americanized, the Vatican is now officially US territory. OK, fine, not officially, but, on Thursday, the Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost was announced as pope. The 69-year-old, who has taken the papal name Leo XIV, is the first clergyman from the United States to lead the Roman Catholic church.While Prevost was a frontrunner for the papacy, his victory seems to have taken many experts by surprise. There has long been resistance to an American pope for a number of reasons, including the fact that it might make it appear as if the Vatican is aligned with the world’s strongest economic and military power.“If the Catholic church were also run by an American, the global dominance of the US would be simply pervasive and overwhelming,” Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a watchdog group that tracks clergy child abuse cases in the Catholic church worldwide, told ABC News recently.I’ll tell you who doesn’t seem particularly overwhelmed by the first American pope: Donald Trump. The president has spent the last few days posting AI-generated pictures of himself as the pope and generally mocking the Catholic church. Still, Trump was on his best behaviour when the official announcement came through, and posted a fairly restrained message on Truth Social, congratulating the pope and saying it was a “Great Honor for our Country”.Just give it a few days, though, and I’m sure Trump will be on Fox News taking credit for the new pope and announcing that the Vatican is going to get rid of all their dusty old Bibles and replace them with the Trump God Bless the USA Bible. Only $99.99 for the platinum edition and a bargain $74.99 for the pink and gold edition!Vice-President JD Vance, one of the last people to see Pope Francis alive, also posted a diplomatic message of congratulations, saying he was “sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for [Pope Leo’s] successful work leading the Church”.I am not an American Catholic. Nor am I Protestant, Episcopalian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or anything else. I am an atheist, although not a terribly devout one. But I am certainly praying as hard as I can that Pope Leo will be the moral leader that the world so desperately needs at this moment.For most of my life I have not been particularly interested in who the pope is. And I have had very little faith that the Vatican, which covered up systemic sexual abuse, could ever be a real force for good. But – and I know I am not alone when I say this – the past 19 months has fundamentally changed how I see the world. I used to believe in things like international human rights law. I used to believe that while the arc of the moral universe may be extremely long, it bends toward justice. I used to believe that universities would stand up for free speech. And I used to believe that no matter how craven western world leaders might be, they wouldn’t go so far as to enable the livestreamed genocide unfolding in Gaza. That western leaders wouldn’t stand by and cheer as Israel, whose total blockade on Gaza has entered its third month, starves children to death.During a time when international law has been dealt a deadly blow, when might is right and decades of progress seem to be unravelling, the late Pope Francis made an impression on non-Catholics like me for his moral clarity towards many marginalized groups and his advocacy for peace everywhere from “martyred Ukraine” to Gaza. Of course, his legacy is not perfect: many abuse victims have questioned whether he went far enough in acknowledging children sexually abused by clergy. But Pope Francis undoubtedly fought for the most vulnerable in society.Pope Francis also understood what many newspaper editors and politicians don’t seem to be able to comprehend: that there is no “both-sidesing” atrocities. That there are times where you must take sides because, as Desmond Tutu said, “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”In 2023, for example, Pope Francis went on a historic trip to South Sudan and told churches in the region that they “cannot remain neutral” but must speak up against injustice and abuse of power.Pope Francis also visited the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023, where he criticized the “poison of greed” driving conflict in the region. “Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hands off Africa. Stop choking Africa: it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” Francis said.When it came to Gaza, Pope Francis spoke clearly and powerfully. He would call the only Roman Catholic church in Gaza almost nightly after this iteration of the conflict broke out. When so much of the world seems to have turned away from Gaza’s suffering, Pope Francis let anguished civilians know he cared. One of his last wishes was that his popemobile be turned into a mobile health clinic for children in the Gaza Strip.And Pope Francis was not shy about criticizing the US – consistently speaking up for immigrants and refugees. “We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories,” he told the US Congress in September 2015.We do not yet know how Pope Leo will undertake his duties but he is widely considered a centrist who was aligned with Francis on a number of social issues. Notably, in February Leo tweeted an article that disagreed with Vance’s views on immigration, headlined “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others”. In April, he also retweeted commentary criticizing Trump deporting a US resident to El Salvador.Whether Pope Leo will remain outspoken, whether he will continue Francis’s demands for a ceasefire in Gaza, remains to be seen. But the world desperately needs strong moral leadership at the moment. May Leo be the light we need in the current darkness. And, for his own sake, may he stay away from Vance.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      How Trump’s walkaway diplomacy enabled Israel’s worst impulses

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      The Israeli plan to occupy and depopulate Gaza may not be identical to Donald Trump’s vision of a new riviera, but his inspiration and the US’s walkaway diplomacy have ushered Benjamin Netanyahu to the precipice of a dire new chapter in the Israel-Gaza war.The common perception in both Washington and Israel is that Trump has largely moved on, leaving an emboldened Netanyahu to his own devices, while his offhand proposals for turning Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” have provided cover for rightwing Israeli politicians to enthusiastically support the forced resettlement of the Palestinian population.“Part of the tragedy is that the only one who can actually save us, Trump, is not even seriously interested in that,” said Amos Harel, a prominent military and defense correspondent for the Haaretz newspaper. “Our only hope to get out of this crazy situation is that Trump would force Netanyahu to reach a hostage deal. But [Trump] seems disinterested. He was enthusiastic when the Riviera [idea] was proposed, but now he has moved on to Greenland, Canada and Mexico instead.”Trump’s interventions – specifically envoy Steve Witkoff’s threats to Netanyahu during a tense Shabbat meeting – were instrumental in achieving a temporary ceasefire to the conflict in January. His influence on Netanyahu appeared to be greater than that of previous US presidents, including his rival Joe Biden.But since then the ceasefire has broken down, a two-month Israeli blockade on aid has sparked an even worse humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and, with few opportunities for a quick peace, the White House now appears uninterested and overstretched as Israel signals an offensive and occupation that critics have said will amount to a state policy of ethnic cleansing.It is a trend that has repeated with this White House: broad designs for a grand deal followed by frustration when diplomacy fails to yield instant results. Recently, the White House announced that it was also ready to walk away from negotiations over the Russia-Ukraine conflict if a quick deal was not achieved. That has incentivized Russia to wait out the Trump administration, observers have said, and bank on a policy of US non-engagement in the longer term. Netanyahu similarly appears to have been unleashed by the White House’s growing disinterest.The Israeli ultimatum comes as Trump is scheduled to tour the Middle East next week, with Israeli officials briefing that they will begin the operation only after he returns from a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Trump’s talks there are expected to focus on investment and a likely quixotic quest to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, but not on achieving a resolution to the war. On Tuesday, Maariv, an Israeli newspaper, reported that a Trump visit to Israel was not out of the question, but White House officials have not yet signaled that Trump is ready to go meet Netanyahu.Witkoff, the Trump envoy, still appears personally invested in a resolution to the conflict, but he is overstretched by attempting to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, and also negotiate an Iran nuclear deal simultaneously. The US has continued negotiations with Israel over an aid delivery scheme that would create a new mechanism for aid distribution to avoid Hamas, they have said. But the UN and all aid organizations working in Gaza have condemned the plan as an Israeli takeover. “It contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic – as part of a military strategy,” the heads of all UN agencies and NGOs that operate in Gaza said in a joint statement on Sunday.The Trump administration’s budget and personnel cuts have also signaled a retreat from diplomacy. The state department was reportedly ready to cut the role of the security coordinator role for the West Bank and Gaza, a three-star general who was tasked with managing security crises between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, particularly with regards to growing tensions between settlers and local Palestinian communities.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore importantly, Trump has given cover to Israeli officials who had sought more aggressive action in Gaza, including forced depopulations. Rightwingers in government have been particularly aggressive, with finance minister Bezalel Smotrich saying that within months Gaza would be “totally destroyed” and the Gazan population would be “concentrated” in a small strip of land. “The rest of the strip will be empty,” he said.But other ministers have also become more radical using Trump’s rhetoric for cover, said Harel.“Once Trump said that, you could see how not only the radicals, but also Likud ministers and so on, have an excuse,” said Harel. “‘It’s not us. It’s the world, the free world’s leader is saying that, so we have to play along.’” More

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      Denied, detained, deported: the people targeted in Trump’s immigration crackdown

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      Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting people requesting asylum and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution.Here are some of the most high-profile individual cases that have captured the world’s attention so far because of their extreme and legally dubious nature, mostly involving documented people targeted by the Trump administration in the course of its swift and unlawful power grab.Students and academics hunted and ‘disappeared’In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) teams suddenly began arresting and detaining foreign-born students and academics on visas or green cards. In most cases the government has cited their roles in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza following the 7 October 2023 attack. Claims that they “support Hamas” are invoked as justification for wanting to deport them, even though they have not been charged with any crimes. Those taken include:Mahmoud KhalilA recent graduate student of Columbia University in New York, Mahmoud Khalil, 30, is a Palestinian green-card holder who was a leader during protests last year. He was arrested without due process in front of his pregnant wife and has been in a detention center in Louisiana since mid-March, denied release to attend the birth. He told an immigration judge that he and hundreds of other detainees were being denied rights the court itself had claimed to prioritize: “Due process and fundamental fairness.”View image in fullscreenThe government is using obscure immigration law to make extraordinary claims in cases like Khalil’s that it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy. A far-right group has claimed credit for flagging his and others’ names for scrutiny by the authorities.Rümeysa ÖztürkView image in fullscreenUS immigration officials encircled and grabbed the Tufts University PhD student near Boston and bustled her into an unmarked car, shown in onlooker video. Öztürk, a Fulbright scholar and Turkish national on a visa, had co-written an op-ed in the student newspaper, criticizing Tufts’ response to Israel’s military assault on Gaza and Palestinians. She was rushed into detention in Louisiana in apparent defiance of a court order. Öztürk, 30, says she has been neglected and abused there in “unsafe and inhumane conditions”.Mohsen MahdawiView image in fullscreenMahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and student at Columbia University, was apprehended by Ice in Colchester, Vermont, on 14 April, as first reported by the Intercept.He was prominent in the protests at Columbia last year. During his apprehension he was put into an unmarked car outside a federal office where he was attending an interview to become a naturalized US citizen. The administration’s arcane justification is that his activism could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process, citing a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). He is detained in Vermont. Democratic lawmakers have visited Khalil, Öztürk and Mahdawi but failed to secure their release.Yunseo ChungView image in fullscreenAnother Columbia student, Chung, 21, sued the administration for trying to deport her, and has gone into hiding. She is a pro-Palestinian campaigner and was arrested by the New York police in March while protesting, as first reported by the New York Times. She said a government official told her lawyer they wanted to remove her from the country and her residency status was being revoked. Chung was born in South Korea and has been in the US since she was seven.Alireza DoroudiView image in fullscreenThe Democrats on campus group at the University of Alabama said of the arrest of Doroudi, 32, an Iranian studying mechanical engineering: “Donald Trump, Tom Homan [Trump’s “border czar”], and Ice have struck a cold, vicious dagger through the heart of UA’s international community.”He was taken to the same Louisiana federal detention center as Khalil. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said he was a threat to national security, without providing details, and the state department had revoked his visa, while an immigration judge refused to release him.Badar Khan SuriView image in fullscreenMore than 370 alumni of Washington DC-based Georgetown University joined 65 current students there in signing on to a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of Dr Badar Khan Suri, a senior postdoctoral fellow at the institution’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).The authorities revoked his student visa, alleging the Indian citizen’s father-in-law was an adviser to Hamas officials more than a decade ago – and claiming he was “deportable” because of his posts on social media in support of Palestine. He was taken to Louisiana and then detention in Texas and was given court dates in May.View image in fullscreenKseniia PetrovaThe Harvard Medical School research scientist was stopped at Boston’s Logan airport by US authorities on her way back from France in February, over what appeared to be an irregularity in customs paperwork related to frog embryo samples. She was told her visa was being revoked and she was being deported to her native Russia.When Petrova, 30, said she feared political persecution there because she had criticized the invasion of Ukraine, she was taken away and also ended up in an overcrowded detention facility in Louisiana. Her colleagues say her expertise is “irreplaceable” and Petrova said foreign scientists like her “enrich” America.Student visas revoked, then restored amid chaosMore than 1,400 international students from at least 200 colleges across the US had their “legal status changed” by the state department, including the revoking of visas, in what the specialist publication Inside Higher Education called “an explosion of visa terminations”.Amid scant information and rising panic, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, lambasted protesters and campus activists as “lunatics”. Some were cited for pro-Palestinian views, others concluded they must have been targeted because of minor crimes or offenses, such as a speeding ticket. Some could find no explanation. Then in the face of multiple court challenges, the administration in late April reversed course and restored legal statuses that had been rescinded en masse, but said it was developing a new policy. Uncertainty prevails.The legal rollercoaster came too late for this high-profile case:Felipe Zapata VelásquezView image in fullscreenThe family of the University of Florida student Felipe Zapata Velásquez, 27, said he was “undergoing a physical and emotional recovery process” in his native Colombia after police arrested him in Gainesville in March for traffic offenses and turned him over to Ice. He agreed to be deported, to avoid lengthy detention and legal battles. The Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost accused authorities of “kidnapping” Velásquez.Removed by (admitted) mistakeKilmar Ábrego GarcíaView image in fullscreenThe Salvadorian man was removed to El Salvador by mistake, which the Trump administration admitted. But it is essentially defying a US supreme court order to “facilitate” his return to his home and family in Maryland. Ábrego García was undocumented but had protected status against being deported to El Salvador. He was flown there anyway, without a hearing, to a brutal mega-prison, then later transferred to another facility. The administration accuses him of being a violent gangster and has abandoned him, infuriating a federal judge repeatedly and prompting warnings of a constitutional crisis.He has not been charged with any crimes but was swept up with hundreds of Venezuelans deported there. He has begged to speak to his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who insists he is not a criminal. The sheet metalworkers union chief, Michael Coleman, described Ábrego García as an “apprentice working hard to pursue the American dream” and said he was not a gang member. Trump said he was eyeing Salvadorian prisons for US citizens.Deported to a third country, without due processThe US deported more than 230 Venezuelan men to the mega-prison in El Salvador without so much as a hearing in mid-March despite an infuriated federal judge trying to halt the flights, then blocking others. Donald Trump took extraordinary action to avoid due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a law meant only to be used in wartime, prompting court challenges led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). John Roberts, the US chief justice, rebuked the president when he threatened the judge. The justices, by a majority, did not stop Trump from using the AEA but the bench unanimously reaffirmed the right to due process and said individuals must be able to bring habeas corpus challenges.Most of the men are reportedly not violent criminals or members of violent gangs, as the Trump administration asserts, according to a New York Times investigation.Many appear to have been accused of being members of the transnational Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua partly on the basis of their tattoos, with their families speaking out, including:Andry José Hernández RomeroView image in fullscreenHernández, a 31-year-old makeup artist and hairdresser, entered California last year to attend an asylum appointment, telling the authorities he was under threat in Venezuela as a gay man. But he was detained and accused of being in Tren de Aragua because of his tattoos, then suddenly deported under Trump, deemed a “security threat”.Jerce Reyes Barriosskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe former professional footballer, 36, has been accused of gang membership by the DHS, seemingly because of his tattoos, including one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “dios”.“He chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” his lawyer, Linette Tobin, said, adding that her client fled Venezuela after protesting against the government and being tortured.Francisco Javier García CasiqueView image in fullscreenRelatives were shocked when they spotted Francisco Javier García Casique, 24, in a propaganda video from El Salvador showing scores of Venezuelan prisoners being frog-marched off planes and into custody there. He is a barber in his home town of Maracay and is completely innocent of gang involvement, the family said, adding that Francisco and his brother Sebastián have matching tattoos quoting the Bible.Migrants seeking asylum removed to PanamaA US military plane took off from California in February carrying more than 100 immigrants from countries as far flung as Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Pakistan, dumping them in Panama. They were shackled and deported to a third country without due process because their countries of origin refuse to accept them back from the US. Shocking scenes unfolded of the people locked in a hotel in Panama City, signaling and writing on the windows pleading for help.The people, including children, were then moved and held at a facility deep in the dense jungle that separates Panama from Colombia. They were later reportedly freed and were seeking asylum from other countries, their futures uncertain. One of those deported from the US was:Artemis GhasemzadehView image in fullscreenGhasemzadeh, 27, a migrant from Iran, wrote “Help us” in lipstick on a window of the hotel in Panama City, as a desperate way of alerting New York Times reporters on the street to her and fellow detainees’ plight. She had thought that, especially as a convert from Islam to Christianity who faces danger in Iran as a result, that she would be offered freedom in the US, she told the newspaper while still in custody. She is possibly still in Panama trying to get a foothold.Americans questioned and threatenedAmir MakledView image in fullscreenMakled, a Detroit-born attorney, was questioned at the airport on returning from vacation. He was flagged to a terrorism response team, kept behind and pressured to hand over his phone, then give up some of its contents. The Lebanese American represents a pro-Palestinian student protester who was arrested at the University of Michigan. Experts said the incident was evidence of a weakening of fourth amendment constitutional protections at the border against “unreasonable search and seizure”.Nicole MicheroniView image in fullscreenThis Massachusetts immigration lawyer, a US-born American citizen, spoke out after receiving an email from the Trump administration telling her “it is time for you to leave the United States”. She said it was “probably, hopefully, sent to me in error. But it’s a little concerning these are going out to US citizens.” She told NBC she thought it was a scare tactic.Adam PeñaThis San Diego-based US citizen now carries his American passport and birth certificate everywhere with him and thinks he was sent one of the “time for you to leave” letters in error but because he represents clients in Ice detention locally. “I do believe this email was sent intentionally to immigration advocates around the country to instill fear and intimidation,” he told NBC news.Americans removedChildren who are seven, four and two and are US citizens were removed from the US in late April when their mothers were deported to Honduras. DHS said the two women chose to take their children with them but one of their lawyers told the Guardian that they were denied any opportunity to coordinate the care and custody of their children before being put on deportation flights from Louisiana. A federal judge said it was “illegal and unconstitutional” to thus remove a US citizen “with no meaningful process”.Visitors detainedJasmine Mooney, CanadaView image in fullscreenCanadian Jasmine Mooney was shackled and ended up in Ice detention in the US for two weeks over an alleged work visa irregularity while on one of her frequent visits to California. She spoke out about the harsh conditions and the information black hole and how outraged she was that so many other detainees she met, who helped her, are stranded without access to the kind of resources that ultimately got her out.Rebecca Burke, UKView image in fullscreenThe British graphic artist was stopped at the border when she headed from Seattle to Canada as a backpacker and, because of a visa mix-up, she became one of 32,809 people to be arrested by Ice during the first 50 days of Trump’s presidency. Almost three weeks of grueling detention conditions later, she smuggled out her poignant drawings of fellow detainees when she was released.Jessica Brösche, GermanyThe German tourist and tattoo artist, 29, from Berlin was detained by US immigration authorities and deported back to Germany after spending more than six weeks in US detention, including what she described as eight days in solitary confinement. Her family compared her ordeal to “a horror film”.Fabian Schmidt, GermanyView image in fullscreenThe 34-year-old German national and US green-card holder was apprehended and allegedly “violently interrogated” by US border officials as he was returning to New Hampshire from a trip to Luxembourg. His family said he was held for hours at Boston’s Logan airport, stripped naked and put in a cold shower, then later deprived of food and medicine, and collapsed. His case is being investigated and as of mid-April he was in Ice detention in Rhode Island.Sent back‘Jonathan’A man with a US work visa provided his anonymous account to the Guardian of being denied entry into the US after a trip to his native Australia to scatter his sister’s ashes. He was pulled aside on arrival in Houston, Texas, and accused, variously, of selling drugs and having improper paperwork. After being detained for over a day he was put on a flight back to Australia even though he has worked on the US east coast for five years, where he lived with his girlfriend.Denied entry – for criticizing Trump?Alvin Gibbs, Marc Carrey and Stefan Häublein of band UK SubsView image in fullscreenMembers of the punk rock band UK Subs said they were denied entry and detained in the US on their way to play a gig in Los Angeles, after being questioned about visas. Bassist Alvin Gibbs said: “I can’t help but wonder whether my frequent, and less than flattering, public comments regarding their president [Trump] and his administration played a role.” He and the two band mates were kept in harsh conditions for 24 hours then deported back to the UK.French scientistA French scientist, who has not been publicly named, was denied entry to the US after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration, according to a French government minister. The researcher was on his way to a conference in Texas.“Freedom of opinion, free research, and academic freedom are values ​​that we will continue to proudly uphold,” Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, told Le Monde. More