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      Trump promised peace but brings rapid increase in civilian casualties to Yemen | Dan Sabbagh

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      “I am the candidate of peace,” Donald Trump declared on the campaign trail last November. Three months into his presidency, not only is the war in Ukraine continuing and the war in Gaza restarted, but in Yemen, the number of civilian casualties caused by US bombing is rapidly and deliberately escalating.Sixty-eight were killed overnight, the Houthis said, when the US military bombed a detention centre holding African migrants in Saada, north-west Yemen, as part of a campaign against the rebel group. In the words of the US Central Command (Centcom), its purpose is to “restore freedom of navigation” in the Red Sea and, most significantly, “American deterrence”.A month ago, when US bombing against the Houthis restarted, the peace-promising Trump pledged that “the Houthi barbarians” would eventually be “completely annihilated”. It is a highly destructive target, in line perhaps with the commitments made by Israeli leaders to “eliminate” Hamas after 7 October, and certainly in keeping with statements from Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, that the US military must focus on “lethality, lethality, lethality”.Photographs from Almasirah, a Houthi media organisation, showed a shattered building with bodies inside the wreckage. TV footage showed one victim calling out for his mother in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. It is not immediately obvious they were material to the Houthi war effort, in which the group has attacked merchant shipping in the Red Sea and tried to strike targets in Israel.That the Houthis have sought to fight on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza is not in dispute but what has changed is that the US military response – joint US and UK airstrikes when Joe Biden was in the White House – has escalated. The data clearly suggests that previous restraints on causing civilian casualties have been relaxed.Approximately 80 Yemeni civilians were estimated killed and 150 injured in a bombing raid on Ras Isa port on 18 April, according to the Yemen Data Project, a conflict monitor. The aim, Centcom said, was to destroy the port’s ability to accept fuel, whose receipt it said was controlled by the Houthis, and, the US military added, “not intended to harm the people of Yemen” – though the country is already devastated by 11 years of civil war. Half its 35 million people face severe food insecurity.So far, the Trump administration bombing campaign, Operation Rough Rider, is estimated to have caused more than 500 civilian casualties, of whom at least 158 were killed. Compare that with the previous campaign, Operation Poseidon Archer, which ran under Biden from January 2024 to January 2025: the Yemen Data Project counted 85 casualties, a smaller number over a longer period.Parties in war are supposed to follow international humanitarian law, following the principle of distinction between military and civilian targets, and respecting the principle of proportionality, where attacks that cause excessive civilian casualties relative to any military advantage gained are, in theory, a war crime.The clear signs from the US campaign in Yemen are that it is following a looser approach, mirroring the unprecedented level of civilian casualties in the Israel-Gaza war. It is hardly surprising, given that Hegseth has already closed the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation office, which handled policy in the area, and the related Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, responsible for training.That could make it difficult for traditional allies to assist. Whereas the UK participated in Poseidon Archer, British involvement in the latest operation has gone from minimal to nonexistent. No air-to-air refuelling was provided in the most recent attacks, the UK Ministry of Defence said, unlike in March.In justification, Centcom says that after striking 800 targets, Houthi ballistic missile launches are down 69% since 15 March. But one figure it does not cite is that transits of cargo ships in the Red Sea during March remain at half pre-October 2023 levels, according to Lloyd’s List. A broader peace in the region may prove more effective in restoring trade than an increase in demonstrative violence. More

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      Ukraine, Gaza and Iran: can Witkoff secure any wins for Trump?

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      Donald Trump’s version of Pax Americana, the idea that the US can through coercion impose order on the world, is facing its moment of truth in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran.In the words of the former CIA director William Burns, it is in “one of those plastic moments” in international relations that come along maybe twice a century where the future could take many possible forms.The US’s aim has been to keep the three era-defining simultaneous sets of negotiations entirely separate, and to – as much as possible – shape their outcome alone. The approach is similar to the trade talks, where the intention is for supplicant countries to come to Washington individually bearing gifts in return for access to US markets.The administration may have felt it had little choice given the urgency, but whether it was wise to launch three such ambitious peace missions, and a global trade war, at the same time is debatable.It is true each of the three conflicts are discrete in that they have distinctive causes, contexts and dynamics, but they are becoming more intertwined than seemed apparent at the outset, in part because there is so much resistance building in Europe and elsewhere about the world order Donald Trump envisages, and his chosen methods.In diplomacy nothing is hermetically sealed – everything is inter-connected, especially since there is a common thread between the three talks in the personality of the property developer Steven Witkoff, Trump’s great friend who is leading the US talks in each case, flitting from Moscow to Muscat.View image in fullscreenTo solve these three conflicts simultaneously would be a daunting task for anyone, but it is especially for a man entirely new to diplomacy and, judging by some of his remarks, also equally new to history.Witkoff has strengths, not least that he is trusted by Trump. He also knows the president’s mind – and what should be taken at face value. He is loyal, so much so that he admits he worshipped Trump in New York so profoundly that he wanted to become him. He will not be pursuing any other agenda but the president’s.But he is also stretched, and there are basic issues of competence. Diplomats are reeling from big cuts to the state department budget and there is still an absence of experienced staffers. Witkoff simply does not have the institutional memory available to his opposite numbers in Iran, Israel and Russia. For instance, most of the Iranian negotiating team, led by the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, are veterans of the 2013-15 talks that led to the original Iran nuclear deal.Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s chief foreign policy adviser, who attended the first Russian-US talks this year in Saudi Arabia, spent 10 years in the US as Russian ambassador. He was accompanied by Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund who then visited the US on 2 April.In the follow-up talks in Istanbul on 10 April, Aleksandr Darchiev, who has spent 33 years in the Russian foreign ministry and is Russian ambassador to the US, was pitted against a team led by Sonata Coulter, the new deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, who does not share Trump’s benign view of Russia.View image in fullscreenAs to the Gaza issue, Benjamin Netanyahu has lived the Palestinian conflict since he became Israel’s ambassador to the UN in 1984.Richard Nephew, a former US Iran negotiator, says the cuts to state department means the US “is at risk of losing a generation of expertise … It’s beyond tragedy. It’s an absolutely devastating national security blow with the evisceration of these folks. The damage could be permanent, we have to acknowledge this.”One withering European diplomat says: “It is as if Witkoff is trying to play three dimensional chess with chess grandmasters on three chessboards simultaneously, not having played the game before.”Bluntly, Witkoff knows he needs to secure a diplomatic win for his impatient boss. But the longer the three conflicts continue, the more entangled they become with one another, the more Trump’s credibility is questioned. Already, according to a Reuters Ipsos poll published this month, 59% of Americans think Trump is costing their country its credibility on the global stage.The risk for Trump is that the decision to address so much so quickly ends up not being a show of American strength but the opposite – the public erosion of a super power.In the hurry to seal a deal with Iran inside two months, Trump, unlike in all previous nuclear talks with Tehran, has barred complicating European interests from the negotiation room.To Iran’s relief, Witkoff has not tabled an agenda that strays beyond stopping Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb. He has not raised Iran’s supply of drones to Russia for use in Ukraine. Nor has he tabled demands that Iran end arms supplies to its proxies fighting Israel.That has alarmed Israel, and to a lesser extent Europe, which sees Iran’s desire to have sanctions lifted as a rare opportunity to extract concessions from Tehran. Israel’s strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, and Mossad’s head, David Barnea, met Witkoff last Friday in Paris to try to persuade him that when he met the Iran negotiating team the next day in Rome, he had to demand the dismantling of Tehran’s civil nuclear programme.Witkoff refused, and amid many contradictory statements the administration has reverted to insisting that Iran import the necessary enriched uranium for its civil nuclear programme, rather than enrich it domestically.Russia, in a sign of Trump’s trust, might again become the repository of Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, as it was after the 2015 deal.Israel is also wary of Trump’s aggrandisement of Russia. The Israeli thinktank INSS published a report this week detailing how Russia, in search of anti-western allies in the global south for its Ukraine war, has shown opportunistic political support not just to Iran but to Hamas. Israel will also be uneasy if Russia maintains its role in Syria.But if Trump has upset Netanyahu over Iran, he is keeping him sweet by giving him all he asks on Gaza.Initially, Witkoff received glowing accolades about how tough he had been with Netanyahu in his initial meeting in January. It was claimed that Witkoff ordered the Israeli president to meet him on a Saturday breaking the Sabbath and directed him to agree a ceasefire that he had refused to give to Joe Biden’s team for months.As a result, as Trump entered the White House on 19 January, he hailed the “EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signalled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies”.But Netanyahu, as was widely predicted in the region, found a reason not to open talks on the second phase of the ceasefire deal – the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza in exchange for a permanent end to the fighting.Witkoff came up with compromises to extend the ceasefire but Netanyahu rejected them, resuming the assault on Hamas on 19 March. The US envoy merely described Israel’s decision as “unfortunate, in some respects, but also falls into the had-to-be bucket”.View image in fullscreenNow Trump’s refusal to put any pressure on Israel to lift its six-week-old ban on aid entering Gaza is informing Europe’s rift with Trump. Marking 50 days of the ban this week, France, Germany and the UK issued a strongly worded statement describing the denial of aid as intolerable.The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is calling for a coordinated European recognition of the state of Palestine, and Saudi Arabia is insisting the US does not attack Iran’s nuclear sites.Witkoff, by contrast, has been silent about Gaza’s fate and the collapse of the “EPIC ceasefire”.But if European diplomats think Witkoff was naive in dealing with Netanyahu, it is nothing to the scorn they hold for his handling of Putin.The anger is partly because Europeans had thought that, after the Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s public row with Trump in the Oval Office, they had restored Ukraine’s standing in Washington by persuading Kyiv to back the full ceasefire that the US first proposed on 11 March.View image in fullscreenThe talks in Paris last week between Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and European leaders also gave Europe a chance to point out it was Putin that was stalling over a ceasefire.But instead of putting any countervailing pressure on Russia to accept a ceasefire, Witkoff switched strategy. In the words of Bruno Tertrais, a non-resident fellow at the Institut of Montaigne, Witkoff is “is now presenting a final peace plan, very favourable to the aggressor, even before the start of the negotiations, which had been due to take place after a ceasefire”.No European government has yet criticised Trump’s lopsided plan in public since, with few cards to play, the immediate necessity is to try to prevent Trump acting on his threat to walk away. At the very least, Europe will argue that if Trump wants Ukraine’s resources, he has to back up a European force patrolling a ceasefire, an issue that receives only sketchy reference in the US peace plan.The Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, addressing the country’s parliament on Wednesday, pointed to the necessity of these security guarantees. “Any arrangement with the Kremlin will only last so long as the Russian elite dreads the consequences of its breach,” he said.View image in fullscreenBut in a sense, Trump and Putin, according to Fiona Hill at the Brookings Institution, a Russia specialist in Trump’s first administration, may already have moved beyond the details of their Ukrainian settlement as they focus on their wider plan to restore the Russian-US relationship.It would be an era of great power collusion, not great power competition in which Gaza, Iran and Ukraine would be sites from which the US and Russia could profit.Writing on Truth Social about a phone call with Putin in February, Trump reported” “We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II … We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together.”Witkoff has also mused about what form this cooperation might take. “Shared sea lanes, maybe send [liquefied natural] gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on AI together,” he said, adding: “Who doesn’t want to see a world like that?” More

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      Israel’s far-right security minister to visit Yale day after Mar-a-Lago dinner

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      Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was set to address a meeting at Yale University, a day after being honored at a lavish dinner at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.Ben-Gvir, who has past convictions for supporting terrorism and was considered persona non grata under the Biden administration, attended a fundraising event at the Florida resort on Tuesday, where he told attendees about harsh new measures implemented against Palestinian prisoners.“I love the American people very much,” Ben-Gvir told attendees via a translator. “We have a joint war against the jihad.”Trump himself was absent and the minister was not expected to meet the US president, but Ben-Gvir’s spokesperson said the minister met with “dozens of senior businessmen from Miami” and the Republican House majority whip, Tom Emmer, according to the Times of Israel.Emmer did not respond to a request for comment.Ben-Gvir posted on X that he “had the honor and privilege of meeting with senior Republican Party officials at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate”, though it is unclear who those officials were.“They expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.”Ben-Gvir, a hardline Jewish settler from the occupied West Bank who has advocated for the deportation of all Arab citizens, has been an integral part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition since 2022, and has threatened to leave his side should the war in Gaza end.His presence in the Israeli government has been a source of international concern; major American Jewish organizations distanced themselves from his current visit, and demonstrators allied with Yale’s Students for Justice in Palestine set upprotests on the university’s grounds ahead of his scheduled appearance at a meeting of Shabtai, a Jewish society based at the university.Yale did not return a request for comment.Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, expressed alarm at Ben-Gvir’s reception in the United States.“The fact that someone like Ben-Gvir … is even being hosted by US institutions is in and of itself deeply disturbing,” said Elgindy. “That the GOP is aligned with the most fanatical elements in Israeli politics, while perhaps not surprising, is extremely alarming and does not bode well for the stability of the region.”Ben-Gvir was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement and support for groups on terrorism blacklists. For years, he prominently displayed a photo in his living room of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron in 1994.In 2022, the Biden administration condemned Ben-Gvir’s visit to the memorial of violently racist and anti-Palestinian rabbi Meir Kahane, whom the national security minister was a follower of in his youth.“Celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization is abhorrent. There is no other word for it,” US state department spokesperson Ned Price said at the time. “We urge all parties to maintain calm, exercise restraint, and to refrain from actions that only serve to exacerbate tensions and that includes in Jerusalem.”But since joining Netanyahu’s coalition government, Ben-Gvir has continued his provocations, including an inflammatory visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound last year – also a historically significant and highly venerated holy site in Judaism – that drew international outrage and a rebuke from Netanyahu himself last summer. Ben-Gvir again visited the Al-Aqsa mosque earlier this month, prompting more outrage in the region.The White House did not return a request for comment.Following Yale, Ben Gvir was expected to address a gathering on New York’s Upper East Side, focusing on “securing Israel post-October 7th”. More

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      Trump says Hegseth is ‘doing a great job’ despite reports of second Signal chat

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      Donald Trump offered public support for defense secretary Pete Hegseth a day after it emerged that Hegseth had shared information about US strikes in Yemen last month in a second Signal group chat that included family, his personal lawyer and several top Pentagon aides.“He’s doing a great job. Ask the Houthis how he’s doing,” Trump said dismissively, referring to the rebel group in Yemen targeted by those missile strikes, on the sidelines of the White House Easter egg roll event on Monday.Hegseth was revealed to have shared, in a series of messages, plans about US strikes against the Houthis on 15 March before they happened in the Signal group chat that included his wife, his brother and a number of his top military aides.The details that Hegseth sent in were essentially the same information that he shared in a separate Signal group chat earlier this year that mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic in addition to JD Vance and other top Trump officials, a person directly familiar with the messages said.But pressure on Hegseth has so far come from people outside of the White House. Trump called the defense secretary on Sunday after the story broke and aides concluded that it had been leaked to the news media by a former Hegseth aide who was in the group chat but abruptly fired last week.Trump has resisted firing top officials in his second term, not wanting to be seen as caving to a media swarm even if he has been unhappy with the negative coverage. Trump also stuck by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who had added the editor of the Atlantic to the first chat.According to a person familiar with the call, Trump told Hegseth that he had his support and that disgruntled leakers were to blame for the story, which was first reported by the New York Times.Trump also told his team to back Hegseth in public, and senior Trump aides repeated their defense line that none of the information shared in either of the group chats were classified, although the accusations have centered on why it was shared with Hegseth’s wife, for instance, since she is not a Pentagon official.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe defense secretary himself appeared furious when asked about the second Signal chat during the White House Easter egg roll event on the South Lawn, telling reporters that the story was a “hit piece” that repeated his defense that it had been pushed by “disgruntled former employees”.But Hegseth faced growing pressure to resign after John Ullyot, his former spokesperson, wrote in an extraordinary opinion essay in Politico on Sunday that the Pentagon was “in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership”.Republican congressman Don Bacon, who sits on the House armed services committee, did not explicitly call for Hegseth’s resignation but suggested he would not keep Hegseth in place were he was the president.“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” said Bacon, a former air force general. “I’m not in the White House and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.” More

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      Sci-fi Musk is brainstorming ways to breed his ‘legion’ more efficiently | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Elon Musk’s never-ending daddy issuesI regret to inform you that, once again, we are all being forced to think about Elon Musk’s gonads. Musk, who has had at least 14 children with four women, hasn’t officially launched a new mini-Musk for a while, but the Wall Street Journal has just dropped some disturbing details about the billionaire’s well-publicized breeding fetish.You’ll be familiar with some of these details already. By now we all know that Musk seems to think that the only way to save western civilization is if people like him have as many children as possible. And you’ve probably read the New York Times report which alleges that Musk, who likes preaching what he practices in regards to populating the world, has a habit of wandering around offering his sperm to strangers.What you might not know, however, is that Musk is so committed to this idea of himself as a superhero saving the universe that, even in private conversations, he apparently speaks like he is a character in a poorly written sci-fi novel. According to the Journal, Musk reportedly refers to his children as a “legion” and has been brainstorming ways to breed more efficiently.“To reach legion-level before the apocalypse we will need to use surrogates,” he reportedly said to Ashley St Clair, the mother of one of his children, in a text message seen by the newspaper.Surrogacy can often be a complex ethical issue. Not in this case. Musk appears to view women as nothing more than walking wombs he can use to further his own narcissistic agenda. Ethics aside for a moment, one has to wonder why a man who styles himself as a tech guru can’t figure out a faster way to pop out offspring than surrogacy. At the very least, I’m surprised that Musk hasn’t yet followed the lead of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who reportedly had visions of using his ranch in New Mexico as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and give birth to his babies. But that may come later I suppose. All the money that Doge, Musk’s pet government project, has cut from libraries and medical research might, at this very moment, be getting funneled into an Official Institute of Accelerated Insemination.While Musk may not have a birthing ranch (yet), he does own a very expensive social network which, according to the Journal, he’s been using to solicit more baby mamas. Musk has apparently been engaging with the cryptocurrency influencer Tiffany Fong on X, sending so many followers her way that she earned $21,000 over a two-week period from the revenue-sharing programs for creators on the platform. Once she was enjoying how lucrative it was to be on his good side, the billionaire asked Fong if she was interested in birthing his child. You know, as you do. Fong politely declined and Musk swiftly unfollowed her, causing her X-related income to drop.We all know that Musk has very thin skin. How has he responded to the Journal’s embarrassing reporting? Honestly, in an unusually restrained fashion. Nobody has been sent to El Salvador (yet), no reporters have been doxed. Musk has just dismissed the piece as scurrilous gossip. On Tuesday he tweeted “TMZ > > WSJ”. And, in normal circumstances, Musk would be correct that, as long as all parties involved are consenting adults, his private life is no one else’s business. But Musk is not your run-of-the-mill rich guy, is he? I don’t think Donald Trump or JD Vance believe in very much other than their own advancement. But Musk is an ideologue: he’s inserted himself into the top levels of government and is busy rearranging the US according to his worldview. Understanding all the ins and outs of this worldview is now very much a matter of public interest.It’s also illuminating, I think, to look at the sort of coverage Musk’s shenanigans get, particularly in the conservative press. While people love gawking at Musk, he’s still widely seen as an eccentric genius. Even the headline of the Wall Street Journal piece: “The tactics Elon Musk uses to manage his ‘Legion’ of babies – and their mothers”, seemed to suggest admiration for his multitasking. I’ve offered up this thought experiment before, but just humor me again and imagine a world where a woman acted like Musk. You can’t, can you? She’d be eviscerated on Fox News. There’d be a million thought pieces about what a terrible mother she was. Absolutely nobody would consider her a genius and she certainly wouldn’t be advising the president. There is perhaps no better embodiment of gendered double standards than Musk. And now he’s set on exporting those double standards to Mars.Give Fatima Hassouna a ‘loud death’Being a journalist in Gaza is a death sentence, with Israel apparently set on ensuring a complete media blackout of the ongoing genocide. On Wednesday, days before her wedding, Fatima Hassouna, a young photojournalist who is the subject of a new documentary, became one of the latest journalists to be killed by Israel. A strike on her home killed her along with 10 members of her family, including her pregnant sister. “If I die, I want a loud death,” Hassouna had written on social media. “I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death that the world will hear.”This is what it means to be Palestinian: to have to beg the world to care about you. To have cowards avert your eyes as you are massacred. To have the architects of your annihilation trot around the world being treated as VIPs by countries that once pretended to care about human rights.Self-identifying ‘hot girls’ are mobilizing to elect a progressive as New York City mayorI fully endorse this.Young women now binge drink more than young menWhile gen Z may drink less than previous generations, the gender gap in risky drinking has been narrowing. A new study finds that women aged 18-25 are now actually drinking slightly more than men the same age.Sudan: two years of war and shameful international neglect“Last week, Amnesty International released a new investigation finding the Rapid Support Forces committed widespread sexual violence, including rape, gang rape and sexual slavery, amounting to possible crimes against humanity,” Amnesty International’s Erika Guevara Rosas said in a statement marking the two-year anniversary of the outbreak of Sudan’s civil war. “Despite these atrocities, the world has largely chosen to remain passive. Alarmingly, the UN Security Council has failed to implement a comprehensive arms embargo on Sudan to halt the constant flow of weapons fueling these heinous crimes.”A crack in the manosphere: Joe Rogan’s guests are revoltingI chuckled a lot at this headline.Everyone is making fun of Katy Perry for her little space trip, even Wendy’sThe fast-food chain is refusing to apologize to the singer for a tweet suggesting she should be sent back to space. The Blue Origin flight has been widely panned, with the model and actor Emily Ratajkowski saying she was “disgusted” by the 11-minute space flight. “That’s end time shit,” Ratajkowski said. “Like, this is beyond parody.”The week in pawtriarchyRemember when Trump got attacked by an angry bald eagle during a photoshoot in 2015? Unfortunately, the bird kingdom did not properly organize to stop his presidency back then but it seems that some of our feathered friends have decided to fight the Maga powers that be. Last Friday a pigeon landed on Fox News’s Peter Doocy’s head while the White House correspondent was wrapping up a segment on tariffs. Not the first time that a Fox News correspondent has looked bird-brained.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      US judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can be deported for his views

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      Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer, is eligible to be deported from the United States, an immigration judge ruled on Friday during a contentious hearing at a remote court in central Louisiana.The decision sides with the Trump administration’s claim that a short memo written by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, which stated Khalil’s “current or expected beliefs, statements or associations” were counter to foreign policy interests, is sufficient evidence to remove a lawful permanent resident from the United States. The undated memo, the main piece of evidence submitted by the government, contained no allegations of criminal conduct.During a tense hearing on Friday afternoon, Khalil’s attorneys made an array of unsuccessful arguments attempting to both delay a ruling on his eligibility for removal and to terminate proceedings entirely. They argued the broad allegations contained in Rubio’s memo gave them a right to directly cross-examine him.Khalil held prayer beads as three attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security presented arguments for his removal.Judge Jamee Comans ruled that Rubio’s determination was “presumptive and sufficient evidence” and that she had no power to rule on concerns over free speech.“There is no indication that Congress contemplated an immigration judge or even the attorney general overruling the secretary of state on matters of foreign policy,” Comans said.A supporter was in tears sat on the crowded public benches as the ruling was delivered.Following the ruling, Khalil, who had remained silent throughout proceedings, requested permission to speak before the court.Addressing the judge directly, he said: “I would like to quote what you said last time, that ‘there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.’”He continued: “Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process.“This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family. I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me is afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”Khalil, 30, helped lead pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia last year. He was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers in New York on 8 March and transferred to a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he has been detained for over a month. His case was the first in a string of Ice arrests instigated by the Trump administration targeting pro-Palestinian students and scholars present in the US on visas or green cards.The ruling means that Khalil’s removal proceedings will continue to move forward in Jena, while a separate case being heard in federal court in New Jersey examines the legality of his detention and questions surrounding the constitutionality of the government’s claims it can deport people for first amendment-protected speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy.Khalil’s legal team is asking the New Jersey judge to release him on bail so that he can reunite with his wife, who is due to give birth to their first child this month.His lawyers slammed the decision, which they said appeared to be prewritten. “Today, we saw our worst fears play out: Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent. This is not over, and our fight continues,” said Marc van der Hout, Khalil’s immigration lawyer.“If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply for speaking out for Palestinians and exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech, this can happen to anyone over any issue the Trump administration dislikes. We will continue working tirelessly until Mahmoud is free and rightfully returned home to his family and community.”During a short prayer vigil held outside the detention centre on Friday afternoon, a group of interfaith clergy read messages of support. A short statement from Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, who is due to give birth this month, was also delivered in front of reporters.“Today’s decision feels like a devastating blow to our family. No person should be deemed ‘removable’ from their home for speaking out against the killing of Palestinian families, doctors, and journalists,” the statement read.It continued: “In less than a month, Mahmoud and I will welcome our first child. Until we are reunited, I will not stop advocating for my husband’s safe return home.”The New Jersey judge has ordered the government not to remove Khalil as his case plays out in federal court. A hearing in that case is set for later on Friday. More

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

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

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

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      in US Politics

      Cory Booker spoke for 25 hours and didn’t mention Gaza once. That’s no surprise | Judith Levine

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      Seven and three-quarters hours into his 25-hour speech on the Senate floor, the New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker uttered the word “Gaza”. He was not talking about the war. He stepped nowhere near the 50,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli armed forces since 8 October 2023, or the US’s military and political support of the genocide.Rather, Booker was searching for a particularly ludicrous lie from a presidential administration that has told thousands. “There are lies about USAID, like, I don’t know, 5 million condoms going to Gaza or something outrageous,” he said. Considering the other outrageous things Trump has said about Gaza – such as his plan to “clean out” the strip to make room for luxury resorts – the remark felt trivializing.The word “Gaza” came up once more, when the senator mentioned his “humanitarian and peace-building work” with the UN there.It was not until hour 13, more than halfway through his oratorial marathon, that Booker engaged at any length with the subject of Israel and Palestine. This time it was not about the war, either. Instead, he was condemning the Trump administration’s attacks on free speech at universities and its summary deportation of legally resident foreign students who “espouse certain views on topics like Israel and Palestine”.The senator recounted the abduction of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Turkish Tufts University graduate student who was surrounded on the street by masked plainclothes agents, handcuffed and hustled into an unmarked vehicle, then shipped to a hellish Louisiana detention center, where she faces deportation – all apparently because she co-wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper urging the college to divest from Israel. “Her arrest,” said Booker, “looks like a kidnapping that you might expect to see in Moscow rather than in the streets of Boston.” True.Denouncing censorship, the senator self-censored. “Certain views on topics”: he neglected to specify which views. He didn’t say that punishment is being meted out exclusively to critics of Israel and never to its supporters, or that those supporters are supplying homeland security with the names of the critics – in other words, collaborating in the very violations of constitutional rights that he decries.The atrocities Israel has been committing in Gaza since the temporary ceasefire collapsed are arguably the worst yet. Trump is cheering Bibi on like a fan at a wrestling match. His support of Israel’s policies is not only unconsciously racist, like Biden’s, but blatantly racist. Yet few Democrats are saying – or, more importantly, doing – anything to stop him. In fact, a few days after the speech, Booker voted against Bernie Sanders’ resolutions to block $8.8bn in arms sales to the Netanyahu government. Only 14 of his colleagues voted in favor.Perhaps senators are hoping their constituents won’t notice their inaction. Indeed, as the mudslide of executive orders buries immigrants, federal workers, transgender people, science, regulation, the economy, the rule of law and US democracy, it is hard for the press, or anyone else, to take their eyes off what is going on at home. Even when horrors are taking place abroad. Especially if they’re taking place in Palestine.For example: senior national security officials discussed classified military operations on the commercial message app Signal and inadvertently included a reporter on the call. The super-blunder got a name, and Signalgate was all over the news. But on the subject of that discussion – US airstrikes on Houthi militants in Yemen – virtual silence.Only the most tuned-in of US news hounds know who the Houthis are, let alone why we might bomb them: their attacks on ships in the Red Sea, perpetrated in support of the Palestinians. Was the US strike a good idea? Was it consonant with the US’s Middle East strategy – if there is a Middle East strategy? Do the Houthis pose a threat to national security? Is the Yemen bombing an escalation of US involvement in the Gaza war? Don’t ask the mainstream media. Fixated on the incompetence of Trump’s cabinet and the president’s laid-back attitude toward classified information, Signalgate turned a military aggression in a country against which we have not declared war into a domestic story – about Trump.As in Booker’s speech, as last spring, when university administrators called in the police to break up student Palestine-solidarity encampments, the press focused narrowly on individual Americans’ acts in relation to a response to the war in Gaza, rather than on the war itself.Antiwar activists are having a hard time catching anyone’s eyes – including the eyes of those who are sympathetic to their cause. This Saturday, at opposite ends of the National Mall in Washington, two demonstrations occurred simultaneously: the Emergency March for Palestine and the much larger Hands Off rally, one of about 1,500 taking place nationwide.At the former event, a ribbon-like white banner inscribed with the names of the Palestinian dead flowed from hand to hand above the heads of the participants, drawing the crowd together like a seam stretching into the distance. Solemn, elegant, a symbol of the interminable war and the immensity of its damage, it was the kind of mediagenic political spectacle that deserved to be broadcast widely, at least at the end of the newscast. But it can be viewed only on social media.Why did these two events happen at the same time anyway? Was there no communication between Indivisible and the other Hands Off organizers and the groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace and the Palestinian Youth Movement, that planned the Palestine action? Did Indivisible consider the war too divisive for an action seeking to attract everyone from socialists to Republicans worried about their 401ks? Or was Trump’s stance on Israel not on the bill of indictments against him?What the Trump administration is doing to the US and what he is eagerly helping Netanyahu to do to the Palestinians are of a piece. Both are criminal, immoral campaigns against domestic and international law, causing immense suffering. Yes, it’s exhausting to contend with two major catastrophes at once. But we don’t have the time or the privilege to put either one aside.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books. Her Substack, Today in Fascism, is at judithlevine.substack.com More