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      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

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      Trump’s very beautiful tariffs will fix America, masculinity and the family. It said so on Fox News | Arwa Mahdawi

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      There’s been a lot of doom-mongering about tariffs recently, hasn’t there? Oh no, my life savings are going to get wiped out and I’m never going to be able to retire! Oh no, grocery prices are going to triple! Oh no, it looks suspiciously as if Donald Trump has used ChatGPT to guide his fiscal policy and now we’re going to see another Great Depression! Moan, moan, moan.While it might be true that much of these predictions are coming from highly credentialed economists and people who tend to know what they’re talking about, I’d like to remind you that there are two sides to every story – and it’s always worth looking at both of them. You’ve already heard from voices who reckon Trump’s tariffs are misguided and dangerous. Now it’s time to focus on the people who support the president’s assessment that tariffs are a “very beautiful thing” that will usher in a new golden age.Where do we find such people? Fox News, of course. The place where up is down, left is right, and Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia if King Trump says that’s the case. As the stock market plunges, Fox News has wheeled out a bunch of pundits and anchors to explain how your savings getting obliterated is a good thing, actually.First, there’s Fox News host Jesse Watters, who is known for making thoughtful and nuanced statements such as: “When a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman”; and announcing that men shouldn’t eat soup in public because it isn’t “manly”. In a recent segment, Watters said that these tariffs – which will make life more expensive – are actually “going to make it easier for people to start families”. He added: “These tariffs are for the children.” I polled my own child, who is three, on this, and she would rather have an Elsa doll than a tariff, but what does she know, eh?While Watters believes the children are our future, and tariffs will help them lead the way, Free Press columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon reckons Trump’s economic policy is going to fix the “crisis of masculinity”. On Sunday, Ungar-Sargon told Fox News that the US had “shipped jobs that gave men who work with their hands for a living, and rely on brawn and physicality, off to other countries … and imported millions and millions of illegals to work in construction, manufacturing, landscaping, janitorial services – jobs that used to give men access to the American dream.”Ah yes, as the old adage goes: if you’ve got nothing intelligent to say, go on Fox News and demonise immigrants. There are in fact plenty of jobs available in the US that rely on “brawn and physicality”; the problem is many of them wreck your body and don’t pay a living wage. You know the workers who cut quartz slabs for kitchen countertops, for example? They’re predominantly young Latino men who are said to be suffering from lung disease because of the silica dust created by cutting said slabs. Meanwhile, construction workers are more likely to die of a drug overdose than those in any other occupation because the physical nature of the work results in an increased likelihood of injury and the subsequent prescription of addictive opioids. Romanticising these sorts of jobs – particularly when your own job consists of typing on a computer – does absolutely nothing to help men.As I said, it’s always important to look at both sides, even if one side of an argument appears completely demented. Still, I’m squinting very hard and I’m afraid that, despite Ungar-Sagon and Watters’s very persuasive arguments, I can’t see an upside to tariffs. Let’s say that more manufacturing jobs do open up in the US (a process that would take years). It seems unlikely Trump would fight for them to come with decent wages – he recently rescinded one of Joe Biden’s executive orders that raised the minimum wage for federal contractors. I’m not sure doing hard labour for a low salary gives you access to the American dream, unless your dream is going bankrupt from medical bills.But look at me: moan, moan, moan. You know what I’ve just realised my problem is? I think I need to watch more Fox News. And, if you’re feeling down about the state of the world, then you may need to, too. Now that Trump has started posturing over Iran, I can’t wait for Fox pundits to explain how accidentally inviting a nuclear war is going to be great, actually. Nothing like a little bit of radiation poisoning to fix the crisis of masculinity. More

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      ‘Everything is political’: how film can guide us through difficult times

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      From its opening frame, Costa-Gavras’s political thriller Z promises to be an unflinching denunciation of authoritarianism. The kinetic camera work matches its forthright narrative of state-sponsored violence and the erosion of democracy. The Greek expatriate director’s film is loosely based on the 1963 assassination of the democratic leader Grigoris Lambrakis and although it was released in 1969, when Costa-Gavras reigned as a political storyteller, the film still has something to say today in this “golden age” for the United States.In the flurry of Donald Trump’s executive orders, I found myself watching Z again as I contemplated how we arrived at this political moment – the polarization, disinformation, corruption and complicity by individuals and institutions that precede and abet the collapse of democracy – and what cinema can reveal at a time of censorship, deportations and protesters vilified as domestic terrorists.It turns out, that’s a lot.There’s a long tradition of turning anti-totalitarian books into films. George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale have been revisited multiple times, confirming the staying power of these cautionary tales in a world where freedom is still dispensable. And there’s also a long tradition of films commenting on totalitarianism. Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, released in 1940, mocked Adolf Hitler while warning about the dangers of the Führer before the US entered the second world war. I’m Still Here, this year’s Oscar winner for best international feature film, looks at the real-life fallout from Brazil’s dictatorship through the lens of Eunice Paiva’s struggle to discover what happened to her husband Rubens, a former politician who was disappeared by the military in 1971.View image in fullscreenCosta-Gavras has said: “Everything is political.” We can see his point in several films across genres that capture how authoritarianism takes root, the importance of resisting unjust systems and the often-protracted fight for human rights and dignity.Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, about a slave uprising in the Roman empire, depicts a hero who fought for the principle of self-determination. Kirk Douglas plays the titular character, a reluctant gladiator who leads the uprising. But the politics behind the 1960 film – and the politics the film represented – are as powerful as the story of the slave revolt. In the hands of screenwriters Dalton Trumbo and Howard Fast, who were blacklisted and imprisoned during the red scare, Spartacus is an allegory for the human right to resist oppressive systems. (The film was based on Fast’s book, written in prison and published in 1951.) In universalizing Spartacus’s desire for freedom, the film-makers echoed the themes of the growing civil rights movement and defended dissent against the censorship of McCarthyism. However, the film isn’t content to leave us with a depiction of heroic freedom fighters. Instead, in its final scenes it highlights the steep price of dissent and the sometimes-protracted struggle for social change. When the uprising fails, Spartacus and his followers are crucified, but his son is born free. The rebellion may be short-lived, but it’s not in vain.V for Vendetta, the 2005 dystopian film based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore, is a less straightforward story of rebellion against an unjust system and more a critique of the role of government and commentary on the power of an idea to incite social change. Set in a future London in the grips of a fascist regime, the film follows V, played by Hugo Weaving, who is determined to destroy the regime and repay its leaders for torturing him. He hides his identity behind a mask of Guy Fawkes, who with a small band of Catholic co-conspirators attempted to blow up parliament and assassinate King James in 1605. The conspirators wanted the Protestant king to be more tolerant toward Catholics. The conspiracy’s failure is commemorated annually. In the final standoff with the regime’s enforcers, V says: “People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people,” a statement that could be a motto and a rallying cry for our times.French film-maker Ladj Ly told the Hollywood Reporter: “I’m an artist, and my job is only to denounce the unjust reality as I see it. I have no solutions. I hope what the film will do is expose the humiliating situations that people are dealing with every day and help more people understand the situation – and why so many of us feel this rage.”View image in fullscreenLy’s acclaimed film Les Misérables, about an uprising against police violence by young Black and Arab men, is set in the segregated banlieues outside Paris. The Siege, a 1998 American film directed by Edward Zwick and co-written by Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower, mines similar territory. The film is set in contemporary Brooklyn where the US military has seized control of the borough after a string of terrorist attacks. The military detains thousands of men of Arab and Middle Eastern descent while people demonstrate for their release outside the barbed-wire fences surrounding the stadium where they are held. Released five years after the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center and three years before 9/11, The Siege is perhaps more relevant now than it was when it premiered. The ongoing deaths in Gaza and the threats of deportation against foreign students demonstrating on behalf of Palestinians give the film an urgency.While aspects of the film seem improbable – given its history of surveillance, it’s doubtful that the FBI would confront the military over defending the constitutional rights of detainees – The Siege dares to have a debate we need to have: what it means to be a patriot. When FBI agent Denzel Washington walks in on commanding general Bruce Willis as a man is being tortured, Washington asks, exasperated and outraged: “Are you people insane?” The ensuing argument between the men about the relationship between patriotism and the US constitution could be richer, but at least the film knows the issue must be debated.As Ly says, film, like art, can reflect and shape reality. Not surprisingly, Z was a favorite of the Black Panther party, which screened an advanced print at a national anti-fascist conference. The Panthers, whose members were surveilled and killed, saw their story in the film. In the climax of Z, everyone involved in exposing the truth about the murder of the populist leader is imprisoned, killed or exiled. And as the military cracks down on free speech, a list of banned words and activities, from freedom of the press to labor unions, continuously scrolls behind the television news anchors announcing the decrees. In its disturbing epilogue, Z reminds us of a universal truth about authoritarians that we can’t afford to ignore: to succeed they must first control information. More

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      Trump news at a glance: Wild swings on global markets as Trump threatens further China tariffs

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      Global stock markets fell catastrophically on Monday following President Trump’s tariff rollout.Despite the economic turmoil, the US president doubled down on his plan, threatening to impose an additional 50% tariff on imports from China on Wednesday, unless the country rescinds its retaliatory tariffs on the United States by Tuesday.Trump has defended his sweeping tariffs, saying: “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something”. Top officials in the administration have brushed aside fears of a recession and reiterated the tariff policy will be implemented as planned.Here are the key stories at a glance:Wild swings on global stock marketsExtreme volatility plagued global stock markets on Monday, with Wall Street swinging in and out of the red as Donald Trump defied stark warnings that his global trade assault will wreak widespread economic damage, comparing new US tariffs to medicine.A renewed sell-off began in Asia, before hitting European equities and reaching the US. It was briefly reversed amid hopes of a reprieve, only for Trump to threaten China with more steep tariffs, intensifying pressure on the market.Read the full storyEU offered ‘zero-for-zero’ tariff deal weeks agoThe EU has said it offered the US a “zero-for-zero” tariff deal on cars and industrial goods weeks before Donald Trump launched his trade war, but that it would not wait to defend itself. Maros Šefčovič, the EU commissioner for trade, said he had proposed zero tariffs on cars and a range of industrial goods, such as pharmaceutical products, rubber and machinery on 19 February.He said the EU and US were in early stages of talks while EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the offer remained on the table. However, later on Monday Trump appeared to quash any such discussions, telling reporters zero-zero tariffs were not on the cards.Read the full storySupreme court allows deportations under 18th century law Donald Trump may continue using a 1798 law to deport alleged gang members to Venezuela, the supreme court ruled on Monday, however it will apply certain limits. Despite siding with the administration, the court’s majority placed limits on how deportations may occur, emphasizing that judicial review is required.Read the full storyTrump unveils ‘direct talks’ with Iran on nuclear dealDonald Trump has announced that the US is to hold direct talks with Iran in a bid to prevent the country from obtaining an atomic bomb, while also warning Tehran of dire consequences if they fail.He said the talks were happening in an effort to avoid what he called “the obvious” – an apparent reference to US or Israeli military strikes against the regime’s nuclear facilities.Read the full storyIsraeli PM discusses Gaza and tariffs at White HouseThe Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, met with Donald Trump Monday for the second time since the US president’s return to office, marking the first effort by a foreign leader to negotiate a deal after Trump announced sweeping tariffs last week.Read the full storyRFK Jr claims anti-vax doctors healed kids with measlesRobert F Kennedy Jr followed up his attendance at the Texas funeral of a child who died from measles by praising two unconventional “healers”, one of whom was previously disciplined by the state’s medical board for “unusual use of risk-filled medications”.Read the full storyRepublican senator claims ‘kill journalists’ comments were ‘joke’ The Republican US senator and Donald Trump loyalist Markwayne Mullin has evidently sought to backtrack from comments suggesting politicians could “handle our differences” with journalists by shooting and killing them, insisting he was trying to make a joke.The Oklahoma lawmaker, a former mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, on Saturday posted to X a video of himself at a stairway in the US Capitol building recounting the tale of the newspaper columnist Charles Kincaid.Read the full storyAnti-DEI purge of Harriet Tubman webpageThe National Park Service has removed a quote and an image of US abolitionist Harriet Tubman from a webpage about the Underground Railroad network that helped enslaved people escape captivity – and instead, the page now emphasizes what it describes as “Black/White Cooperation” as Donald Trump’s presidential administration continues its effort to sanitize the country’s history.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A libertarian group backed by Leonard Leo and Charles Koch has mounted a legal challenge against Donald Trump’s tariff regime, in a sign of spreading rightwing opposition to a policy that has sent international markets plummeting.

      At least 39 international students have had their visas revoked in the past week without notice or clear explanation – with one student losing her legal status due to a speeding ticket.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 6 April 2025. More

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      Trump threatens additional 50% tariffs on China over retaliatory levies

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      Donald Trump has threatened to impose an additional 50% tariff on imports from China on Wednesday unless the country rescinds its retaliatory tariffs on the United States by Tuesday.The news comes on the third day of catastrophic market falls around the globe since Trump announced his trade war last Wednesday with tariffs on the US’s trading partners.As part of that move the White House announced it would impose a 34% tariff on Chinese imports. In response, Beijing announced a 34% tariff on US imports.In a statement on Truth Social on Monday morning, the US president said that China enacted the retaliatory tariffs despite his “warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs” would be “immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set”.“If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” Trump wrote.“Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” he added. “Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.”China’s US embassy said on Monday it would not cave to pressure or threats over the additional 50% tariffs. “We have stressed more than once that pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage with us. China will firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” Liu Pengyu, an embassy spokesman, told Agence France-Presse.A senior White House official told ABC News that the increased tariffs on China would be on top of the 34% reciprocal tariff Trump announced last week and the 20% already in place.Trump’s new ultimatum to China marked the latest escalation from the White House and came as US stocks swung in and out of the red on Monday morning as a report circulated that Trump was going to pause the implementation of his sweeping tariffs for 90 days, but then was quickly dismissed by the White House as “fake news”.Not long after Trump threatened China with additional tariffs on Monday morning, he participated in a White House visit from the Los Angeles Dodgers to celebrate their World Series title. More

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      Mother and three kids released by Ice after protests from US ‘border czar’s’ hometown

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      A mother and her three children who were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents as part of a sweep in the tiny hometown of the Trump administration’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, have been released following days of outcry from community figures and protesters calling for their freedom.Over the weekend, about a thousand protesters marched outside of Homan’s home in a small New York village, calling for the release of the children and their mother after they were detained last month. The family has not been named or spoken out publicly.Jaime Cook, principal of the Sackets Harbor school district where the children reportedly attended class, wrote a letter to the community pleading for the students’ safe return.She described the children as having “no ties to criminal activity” and that they are “loved in their classrooms”.“We are in shock,” the letter reads. “And it is that shared shock that has unified our community in the call for our students’ release.”The family was taken into custody in a 27 March raid at a large dairy farm in the remote town that has a population of fewer than 1,500 in Jefferson county in north-western New York state, on Lake Ontario near the Canadian border. The target of the raid was reportedly a South African national charged with trafficking in child sexual abuse material, whom they apprehended, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents said.But authorities separately picked up and detained the family, as well as three other immigrants they said were without documentation. The family was moved to the Karnes county immigration processing center, a privately run detention facility in Texas, by 30 March.Cook’s letter said that the family had declared themselves to immigration judges, were attending court on their assigned dates and had been following the legal process.The release of the family was confirmed on Monday by local officials, school administrators, and the New York governor, Kathy Hochul.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHochul said in a statement that she had direct confirmation from Homan that “this family – a third grader, two teenagers and their mother – are currently on their way back to Jefferson county. I cannot imagine the trauma these kids and their mom are feeling, and I pray they will be able to heal when they return home.”The protests were organized with the help of the Jefferson county committee of the Democratic Party. Corey Decillis, committee chair, told NBC News that protestors had seen these raids “occur right in the last 60 days across the country, but when it happens in your backyard, I think that’s what garners people’s attention.” More