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      Mahmoud Khalil finally allowed to hold one-month-old son for the first time

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      Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and detained Palestinian activist, was finally allowed to hold his infant son for the first time Thursday – one month after he was born – thanks to a federal judge who blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the father and infant separated by a Plexiglass barrier.The visit came before a scheduled immigration hearing for Khalil, a legal permanent resident who has been detained in a Louisiana jail since 8 March.The question of whether Khalil would be permitted to hold his newborn child, Deen, or forced to meet him through a barrier had sparked days of legal fighting, triggering claims by Khalil’s attorneys that he is being subject to political retaliation by the government.On Wednesday night, a federal judge in New Jersey, Michael Farbiarz, intervened, allowing the meeting to go forward Thursday morning, according to Khalil’s attorneys.The judge’s order came after federal officials said this week they would oppose his attorney’s effort to secure what’s known as a “contact visit” among Khalil; his wife, Noor Abdalla; and their son.Instead, they said Khalil could be allowed a “non-contact” visit, meaning he would be separated from his wife and son by a plastic divider and not allowed to touch them.“Granting Khalil this relief of family visitation would effectively grant him a privilege that no other detainee receives,” justice department officials wrote in a court filing on Wednesday. “Allowing Dr Abdalla and a newborn to attend a legal meeting would turn a legal visitation into a family one.”Brian Acuna, acting director of the Ice field office in New Orleans, said in an accompanying affidavit that it would be “unsafe to allow Mr Khalil’s wife and newborn child into a secured part of the facility”.In their own legal filings, Khalil’s attorneys described the government’s refusal to grant the visit as “further evidence of the retaliatory motive behind Mr Khalil’s arrest and faraway detention”, adding that his wife and son were “the farthest thing from a security risk”.They noted that Abdalla had traveled nearly 1,500 miles (2,400km) to the remote detention center in hopes of introducing their son to his father.“This is not just heartless,” Abdalla said of the government’s position. “It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse. And I cannot ignore the echoes of this pain in the stories of Palestinian families, torn apart by Israeli military prisons and bombs, denied dignity, denied life.”Khalil was the first person to be arrested under Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on protesters against the war in Gaza and is one of the few who have remained in custody as his case winds its way through both immigration and federal court.Federal authorities have not accused Khalil of a crime, but they have sought to deport him on the basis that his prominent role in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza may have undermined US foreign policy interests.His request to attend his son’s 21 April birth was denied last month by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.In a letter to his son published in the Guardian, Khalil wrote after the birth: “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.“My absence is not unique,” Khalil added. “Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life … The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations.”Farbiarz is currently considering Khalil’s petition for release as he appeals a Louisiana immigration judge’s ruling that he can be deported from the country.On Thursday, Khalil appeared before that immigration judge, Jamee Comans, as his attorneys presented testimony about the risks he would face if he were to be deported to Syria, where he grew up in a refugee camp, or Algeria, where he maintains citizenship through a distant relative.His attorneys submitted testimony from Columbia University faculty and students attesting to Khalil’s character.In one declaration, Joseph Howley, a classics professor, said he had first introduced Khalil to a university administrator to serve as a spokesperson on behalf of campus protesters, describing him as an “upstanding, principled and well-respected member of our community.“I have never known Mahmoud to espouse any anti-Jewish sentiments or prejudices, and have heard him forcefully reject antisemitism on multiple occasions,” Howley wrote.No ruling regarding the appeal was made on Thursday. Comans gave lawyers in the case until 5pm 2 June to submit written closing arguments.Columbia’s interim president, Claire Shipman, acknowledged Mahmoud’s absence from Wednesday’s commencement ceremony and said many students were “mourning” that he couldn’t be present. Her speech drew loud boos from some graduates, along with chants of “free Mahmoud”.Abdalla accepted a diploma for Khalil on his behalf at an alternative graduation ceremony on Sunday.In the 75 days since his arrest, at least three other international college students have been released from detention after weeks of legal action by their attorneys. They include Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi and Badar Khan Suri.All three have been targeted for deportation by the Trump administration, and have challenged the legality of their detentions with a string of motions and legal briefs in federal district courts. The judges in all of their cases agreed to release them while their immigration court cases played out. More

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      Trump administration seeks to end basic rights and protections for child immigrants in its custody

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      The Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that requires the government to provide basic rights and protections to child immigrants in its custody.The protections, which are drawn from a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, limit the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes.The administration’s move to terminate the Flores agreement was long anticipated. In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be “completely” terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families”.Donald Trump also tried to end these protections during his first term, making very similar arguments.The move to end protections follows a slew of actions by the Trump administration that target children, including restarting the practice of locking up children along with their parents in family detention. Immigration advocacy groups have alleged in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month that unaccompanied children are languishing in government facilities after the administration unveiled policies making it exceedingly difficult for family members in the US to take custody of them. The president and lawmakers have also sought to cut off unaccompanied children’s access to legal services and make it harder for families in detention to seek legal aid.“Eviscerating the rudimentary protections that these children have is unconscionable,” said Mishan Wroe, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. “At this very moment, babies and toddlers are being detained in family detention, and children all over the country are being detained and separated from their families unnecessarily.”The effort to suspend the Flores agreement “bears the Trump administration’s hallmark disregard for the rule of law – and for the wellbeing of toddlers who have done no wrong”, said Faisal al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices. “This administration would rather enrich private prison contractors with the $45bn earmarked for immigrant detention facilities in the House’s depraved spending bill than to uphold basic humanitarian protections for babies.”The Trump administration in 2019 asked a judge to dissolve the Flores Settlement Agreement, but its motion was struck down. During the Biden administration, a federal judge agreed to partially lift oversight protections at the Department of Health and Human Services, but the agreement is still in place at the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies.“Children who seek refuge in our country should be met with open arms – not imprisonment, deprivation and abuse,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.The settlement is named for Jenny Flores, a 15-year-old girl who fled civil war in El Salvador and was part of a class-action lawsuit alleging widespread mistreatment of children in custody in the 1980s.Since the settlement agreement was reached in 1997, lawyers and advocates have successfully sued the government several times to end the mistreatment of immigrant children. In 2018, attorneys sued after discovering unaccompanied children had been administered psychotropic medication without informed consent.In 2024, a court found that CBP had breached the agreement when it detained children and families at open-air detention sites at the US southern border without adequate access to sanitation, medical care, food, water or blankets. In some cases, children were forced to seek refuge in portable toilets from the searing heat and bitter cold. More

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      Ice arrests at immigration courts across the US stirring panic: ‘It’s terrifying’

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      Federal authorities have arrested people at US immigration courts from New York to Arizona to Washington state in what appears to be a coordinated operation, as the Trump administration ramps up the president’s mass deportation campaign.On Tuesday, agents who identified themselves only as federal officers arrested multiple people at an immigration court in Phoenix, taking people into custody outside the facility, according to immigrant advocates.In Miami on Wednesday, Juan Serrano, a 28-year-old who immigrated from Colombia, went to court for a quick check-in where a judge soon told him he was free to go. When he left the courtroom, federal agents waiting outside cuffed him and placed him in a van with several other immigrants detained that day.Journalists, advocates and attorneys reported seeing Ice agents poised to make arrests this week at immigration courthouses in Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York, Seattle, Chicago and Texas.Arrests near or in the immigration courts, which are part of the US Department of Justice, are typically rare – in part due to concerns that the fear of being detained by Ice officers could discourage people from appearing. “It’s bad policy,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef). “By putting immigration officers in the courtrooms, they’re discouraging people from following the processes, punishing people for following the rules.”Toczylowski noted several Ice officers both inside and outside an immigration courtroom in Los Angles this week, but said she did not see any arrests made there. She said that immigrants without lawyers are especially vulnerable, as they may not understand the exact information and context they need to provide in order to advance their case for asylum or other pathways to permanent residency in the US.ImmDef and other legal groups are sending attorneys to courtrooms they believe may be targeted by Ice officials, to try to provide basic legal education and aid to people appearing at required appointments. The presence of agents is stirring panic, she said.“People are being detained and handcuffed in the hallway,” she said. “Can you imagine what you would be thinking, if you’re waiting there with your family and children, about to see a judge? It’s terrifying.”The agents’ targeting of immigrants at court comes as the Trump administration faces multiple lawsuits and the president attempts to enact the large-scale deportations he promised during his campaign.“All this is to accelerate detentions and expedite removals,” said Wilfredo Allen, an immigration attorney with decades of experience representing immigrants at the Miami immigration court.The Trump administration has revived a 2019 policy that allows for “expedited removals” – fast-tracked deportation proceedings for people who have been in the US for less than two years.Immigrants who cannot prove that they have been in the US for longer than two years are subject to having their cases dismissed and being immediately expelled from the country.Under the Biden administration, expedited removals were limited to people apprehended within 100 miles (160km) of the US border, and who had been in the US for less than two weeks.In Phoenix, immigrant advocates gathered outside immigration court to protest the presence of Ice agents. “We witnessed parents and children being detained and abducted into unmarked vans immediately after attending their scheduled immigration proceedings,” said Monica Sandschafer, the Arizona state director for the advocacy group Mi Familia Vota. “We demand an immediate stop to these hateful tactics.”Three US immigration officials told the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity that government attorneys were given the order to start dismissing cases when they showed up for work Monday, and were aware that federal agents would then be able to arrest those individuals when they left the courtroom.In the case of Serrano in Miami, the request for dismissal was delivered by a government attorney who spoke without identifying herself on the record, the Associated Press reported. She refused to provide her name to the AP and quickly exited the courtroom.US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement this week that it was detaining people who are subject to fast-track deportation authority.Advocates and lawyers are advising immigrants with upcoming hearings or court appearances to bring a trusted family member or friend who is a US citizen and ideally, a lawyer, to their appointments.The Associated Press contributed More

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      Trump administration halts Harvard’s ability to enroll international students

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      The Trump administration has said it is halting Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students and has ordered existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status.On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration notified Harvard about its decision following ongoing correspondence regarding the “legality of a sprawling records request”, according to three people familiar with the matter.The records request comes as part of an investigation by the homeland security department in which federal officials are threatening the university’s international student admissions.The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, posted a copy of the letter on X, formerly known as Twitter. In it Noem said: “I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked.”“The revocation of your Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification means that Harvard is prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J-nonimmigrant status for the 2025-2026 academic school year. This decertification also means that existing aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status must transfer to another university in order to maintain their nonimmigrant status,” Noem continued.Noem justified the decision by saying: “This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements … Consequences must follow to send a clear signal to Harvard and all universities that want to enjoy the privilege of enrolling foreign students, that the Trump administration will enforce the law and root out the evils of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in society and campuses.”The former governor of South Dakota also accused Harvard of “fostering violence, antisemitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”.In a separate press release, the homeland security department said: “Secretary Noem is following through on her promise to protect students and prohibit terrorist sympathizers from receiving benefits from the US government.”A Harvard spokesperson called the government’s action “unlawful” in a statement to the Guardian on Thursday.“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the university – and this nation – immeasurably,” the spokesperson said.“We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”Pippa Norris, an author and Paul F McGuire lecturer in comparative politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, told the Guardian on Thursday that Trump “is basically cutting off international knowledge to American students, he is reducing soft power, and therefore weakening America … And for me personally, it’s going to mean tremendous problems in terms of teaching.”Norris said “about 90%” of her students are international, so if she “can no longer recruit international students, then the demand and participants, etc, is going to go down”.She continued: “Imagine that you’ve come, you’ve spent a lot of money and resources to come to Harvard, and you’ve got in, and your second or third year of the undergraduate degree, or the second year of your master’s degree, and [they] say: ‘Well, I’m sorry, you know, you’re not going to be able to study here next year.’ I mean, it’s devastating.”Leo Gerdén, an international student from Sweden, called the announcement “devastating” in the university newspaper Harvard Crimson.“Every tool available they should use to try and change this. It could be all the legal resources suing the Trump administration, whatever they can use the endowment to, whatever they can use their political network in Congress,” Gerdén said, adding: “This should be, by far, priority number one.”The university currently hosts nearly 6,800 international students, with many being on F-1 or J-1 visas, according to university records. International students make up about 27% of the university’s population.The latest decision from the homeland security department comes amid growing tensions between federal officials and Harvard over the Trump administration’s claims that the university has implemented inadequate responses to antisemitism on its campus.The Trump administration terminated a further $450m in grants to the university in May, following an earlier cancellation of $2.2bn in federal funding.A Trump-appointed antisemitism taskforce has pointed to “just how radical Harvard has become” as nationwide anti-war protesters – including students – demonstrated against Israel’s deadly onslaught on Gaza, which has killed at least 53,000 Palestinians in the last year and a half.The Trump administration has also ordered the university to dismantle its diversity, equity and inclusion programming, restrict student protests, and disclose admission details to federal officials.In response to the federal cuts, the university – with an endowment of more than $53bn – filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, said in April that “no government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue”.Garber also said: “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights … The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s first amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production and dissemination of knowledge.”Of how this will impact Harvard’s future, Norris said: “Why would any further international students apply to America, not just Harvard, if they can’t know that they’ve got a guaranteed place?“[This halt is] going to benefit Oxford and Cambridge and many other academic institutions, because of course, the best of the brightest could apply wherever they would. America, again, is going to have problems as a result.”Jenna Amatulli contributed reporting More

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      Mahmoud Khalil blocked from holding son for first time by Ice, lawyers say

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      Mahmoud Khalil, the detained Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist, was not allowed to hold his newborn son after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials refused to allow a contact visit between him and his family, his lawyers said on Wednesday.Instead, Khalil, 30, was forced to meet his month-old baby for the first time behind glass, after his wife, Noor Abdalla, traveled from New York to the Louisiana detention facility where he has been detained since March, his legal team said.Ice officials and a private prison contractor denied the family’s request for a contact visit, citing the detention center’s no-contact visitation policy and unspecified “security concerns”, lawyers said.Abdalla, a US citizen who gave birth to their first child last month while Khalil was in detention, said she was “furious at the cruelty and inhumanity of this system that dares to call itself just”.“After flying over a thousand miles to Louisiana with our newborn son, his very first flight, all so his father could finally hold him in his arms, Ice has denied us even this most basic human right,” she said in a statement.“This is not just heartless. It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse.”The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The department had previously denied Khalil’s request to be at his wife’s side to attend the birth of their son in New York, a move that Abdalla described as “a purposeful decision by Ice to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer”. Instead, he was only able to experience his child’s birth via a telephone call.Khalil, a legal permanent resident, or US green-card holder, was arrested in New York on 8 March in the first in a string of Ice arrests targeting pro-Palestinian students and scholars, and put in detention without due process.In a letter to his son published in the Guardian, Khalil wrote shortly after the birth: “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.”“My absence is not unique,” he continued. “Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life … The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations.”The current president of Columbia University in New York, Claire Shipman, where Khalil had been finishing up his graduate studies, was booed and heckled on both Tuesday and Wednesday by graduates at their commencement ceremonies who also were furious that Khalil was in detention. Many chanted “free Mahmoud”, as Shipman acknowledged their frustration.The Trump administration is using obscure immigration law to make extraordinary claims in cases such as Khalil’s that it can summarily detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy. Khalil is Palestinian and was born in a refugee camp in Syria. His wife accepted a graduate diploma on his behalf at an alternative graduation ceremony in New York on Sunday, while holding their baby. More

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      Trump makes baseless claims about white genocide in chaotic meeting with South Africa’s president – live

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      Another day, another shocking Oval Office meeting between Trump and a world leader. This time it was South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, who was ambushed by the US president; Trump requested dimmed lights for video footage to be played purporting to show anti-white violence in the country and relentlessly peddled false accusations of “genocide” and Afrikaners being “executed” as justification for admitting them into the US as refugees. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Trump then held up printouts of news articles about what he said were killings of white South Africans, repeating “death, death, death” as he flipped through the pages.In an effort to diffuse the chaos, Ramaphosa kept composed as he tried to explain to Trump that while violent crime affects people of all races in his country most victims are black, white people are not being persecuted there, and his government is trying to redress the enduring injustices of South Africa’s apartheid past. He even quipped that he was sorry he didn’t have a plane to give Trump, to which Trump said he wished he did. Ramaphosa said he was willing to talk with him about his concerns “outside of the media” – which is worth noting given the feeling expressed by many that Trump and JD Vance’s bust-up with Volodymyr Zelenskyy back in February was very much a made-for-TV humiliation of Ukraine’s president.In other news:

      The Trump administration formally accepted the controversial gift of a Boeing 747 jetliner from the government of Qatar, and directed the air force to assess how quickly the plane can be upgraded for possible use as a new Air Force One. The offer of the jet has set off a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of Trump, particularly following the president’s visit to the country last week to arrange US business deals. Here’s our write-up.

      A federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan was “unquestionably violative” of an injunction he had issued earlier. US district judge Brian E Murphy made the remark at an emergency hearing he had ordered in Boston following the Trump administration’s apparent deportation of eight people to South Sudan, despite most of them being from other countries. On Tuesday, Murphy ruled that the administration could not let a group of migrants being deported to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities. My colleague Maya Yang has the story.

      The justice department moved to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department following the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, after the death of Breonna Taylor, saying it does not want to pursue the cases. The move shows how the civil rights division of the justice department is changing rapidly under Donald Trump, dismantling Biden-era work and investigating diversity programs. It also comes amid pressure on the right to recast Floyd’s murder, undermine diversity efforts and define liberal-run cities like Minneapolis as crime-ridden. Full story here.

      The US army said it has no plans to recognize Donald Trump’s birthday on 14 June when he presides over part of the army’s celebrations of its 250th anniversary. Trump, who is turning 79 on the same day, will play a big role in the celebrations, which will cost between $25m and $45m, will see the army hold a parade down Washington’s Constitution Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares that cuts through the capital. The parade was not part of the original planning for the 14 June celebrations and was added this year, stoking criticism from Democratic lawmakers and others that Trump has hijacked the event. More here.

      Trump nominated Darryl Nirenberg, a lawyer and former Senate staffer, to serve as the next US ambassador to Romania. Nirenberg, a longtime Washington lawyer currently at Steptoe LLP law firm, was chief of staff for late Republican senator Jesse Helms and was a counsel for the Senate foreign relations committee. The nomination will require Senate approval.

      A federal judge rejected a bid by the US treasury department to cancel a union contract covering tens of thousands of IRS staff, in an early blow to Trump’s efforts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for many federal workers. More on that here.

      Democratic US representative Gerry Connolly died aged 75, his family said in a statement posted to his account on X this morning following the Virginia lawmaker’s cancer diagnosis last year. At the end of last month, Connolly announced he would be retiring from Congress at the end of this term and stepping back from his role as ranking member on the House oversight committee after finding out his cancer had returned. He died peacefully at home surrounded by family, their statement said.
      The Trump administration will halt $365 million in federal funding originally allocated for rooftop solar power in Puerto Rico and instead redirect it toward fossil fuel power plants and infrastructure repairs.Puerto Rico has long struggled with frequent blackouts caused by aging infrastructure, the 2017 bankruptcy of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, and repeated hurricanes. Just last month, the island experienced a major blackout, followed by another that affected 134,000 customers.According to the Department of Energy, the redirected funds will go toward immediate fixes, such as “dispatching baseload generation units, supporting vegetation control to protect transmission lines and upgrading aging infrastructure.” Baseload generation in this case refers to power plants that run on oil products and potentially natural gas.Last week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued an emergency order that directed Puerto Rico’s state-owned utility to tackle electricity shortfalls with power generated by oil-burning power plants, which emit pollution, including the greenhouse gases that cause climate change and global warming.The administration of President Donald Trump has supported maximizing the output of fossil fuels and dismantling policies by former President Joe Biden’s administration designed to spur use of renewable power.“The redirection of these funds will expand access to reliable power for millions of people rather than thousands and generate a higher return on investment for taxpayers while advancing grid resiliency for Puerto Rico,” the department said in a statement.Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” report about childhood diseases is raising questions among farmers and some Republican lawmakers.President Donald Trump promised a review within 100 days that would analyze the ramifications that US lifestyle — from the medications prescribed for children to the food served on their school lunch trays — has on childhood diseases like obesity, depression or attention deficit disorder.Farmers and Republicans are nervous about what the report might say about glyphosate, the ingredient commonly used in pesticides sprayed on crops. Kennedy has denied the report will be unfavorable to farmers.The report, led by a so-called “MAHA Commission,” is expected to be released on Thursday.Here’s what some lawmakers had to say:
      “I hope there is nothing in the MAHA report that jeopardizes the food supply or the livelihood of farmers,” Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said.
      “There’s a reason why we still use: It works,” said Blake Hurst, a Missouri farmer who is past president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, said about glyphosate.
      Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday dismissed speculation of a falling out with the US administration following a visit to the Gulf by Donald Trump that left out Israel.With the coupling of the US president’s Gulf visit – excluding Israel – and his decision to end US airstrikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis despite their continued attacks on Israel, media speculation grew over a possible rift with Washington.The Israeli prime minister, who had previously made no public comment on the issue, told reporters at a news conference that he had spoken to Trump about 10 days ago and Trump had told him: “‘Bibi I want you to know, I have a complete commitment to you and I have a complete commitment to the state of Israel.’”Amid growing international pressure on Israel, Trump has acknowledged that people are starving in Gaza and the US would have the situation in the territory “taken care of” as it suffered a further wave of intense Israeli airstrikes.In a separate conversation a few days ago, Netanyahu said JD Vance had told him: “Don’t pay attention to all these fake news stories about this rupture between us.”.The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said yesterday that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time.Cyril Ramaphosa said that Elon Musk was present during lunch today with Donald Trump.“The only issue he raised is that he’d like his Tesla cars to be in South Africa,” Ramaphosa told reporters. “He wants to import them. And of course, there are tariffs, and the tariff discussion becomes part of what we are going to discuss between the DTIC as well as the commerce department.”Ramaphosa also said that, although the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was present as well, “the discussions never veered towards issues of security”.Instead, Ramaphosa said, they were more about combating criminal activities, and he pointed to the need to “up our game” in that area.UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, was not consulted regarding the US decision to deport eight migrants to South Sudan, a country where fears of civil war are rising.A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration violated a court order on deportations to third countries. Judge Brian E Murphy in Boston said the eight migrants, accused by the US of being dangerous criminals, were not given a meaningful opportunity to object that the deportation could put them in danger.Dujarric told UN reporters that since the UN wasn’t consulted, he had no comment “except to say that, obviously, as a principled position, refugees or people in need of international protection must not be sent back to a place where they face risk”.Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, told South African TV station Newzroom Afrika that the Oval Office meeting was “an orchestrated show for the cameras” and that the “real business” of the trip was the bilateral closed-door meeting.“President Ramaphosa came here not for a TV show, he came here to discuss with President Trump in earnest how we can reset the strategic relationship between South Africa and the US,” Magwenya said.South African president Cyril Ramaphosa was more cordial about the meeting during a press conference this afternoon.“Much as he flighted the the video and all those press clippings, and in the end, I mean, I do believe that that is there’s doubt and disbelief in his head about all this”, Ramaphosa said. “I have agreed that we’re going to meet again, and we will meet at the G20 by meeting again.”Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, appeared to strike a hardline maximalist position on Iran’s nuclear programme in his second successive day of testifying on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, suggesting that the country must end its uranium enrichment activities if it is to gain relief from US sanctions.Appearing before a subcommittee of the House appropriations committee, Rubio was asked to comment on current negotiations led by Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, aimed at reaching at deal that would limit Tehran’s nuclear programme, which the US, Israel and other western powers have long suspected of being aimed at building an atomic bomb. Rubio – who also holds the national security adviser’s portfolio – said:
      “The President and his entire team has been very clear, Iran cannot have an enrichment capability, because that ultimately makes them a threshold of nuclear power. There are sanctions related to terrorism, sanctions related to their ballistic missiles program and the like. Those sanctions, if they’re not part of the deal, they’ll remain in place if those things are not addressed. But the enrichment piece is the key piece, and we continue to say that Iran cannot have an enrichment capability.”
      The comments suggested that the administration was seeking the total elimination – rather than restricting – Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, a demand repeatedly made by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.Witkoff has sent mixed signals about whether Washington would seek the dismantlement of the Iranian programme, although he has previously suggested Iran might be allowed to retain some enrichment capacity. Iran has previously rejected demands for it to end enriching uranium, insisting it is for civilian purposes. Announcing negotiations to reporters last month, Trump was unspecific on Tehran’s enrichment activities but said: “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has enriched its uranium stockpile to 60% since Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018 from an agreement reached under Barack Obama’s presidency that permitted the country’s Islamic regime to retain a strictly limited enrichment programme. Uranium enriched to 90% is considered to be weapons grade, with experts saying Iran is now just a short technical step from reaching that level.After Donald Trump confronted president Cyril Ramaphosa with false claims of mass killings and land seizures from white people, the South African leader said the meeting went “very well”.As Ramaphosa exited the White House after a private session with Trump, he was asked whether he thought Trump listened to him. “Yes, he did,” Ramaphosa said. “It went very well.”Here is an extract from this week’s edition of The Long Wave by my colleague Nesrine Malik that I think provides helpful context for what we witnessed in the Oval Office today. And if you haven’t already (!) you can sign up for the newsletter here.Since the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump has made white farmers in South Africa one of his pet projects. It is an obsession that dates to his first term, where he amplified allegations by some Afrikaners that they are victims of “mass killings” and suffer from violence and discrimination by vengeful Black South Africans. There is nothing to support this claim. And yet, in March, Trump expelled the South African ambassador to the US, cut off aid and extended an invitation for political asylum to white farmers, even as the US all but halts all refugee admissions to the country. The first of those white South African “refugees” arrived in the US two weeks ago.The source of this odd fixation is those around Trump, who “doesn’t have a sense of the world outside the United States”, Jonathan Jansen, a professor of education in Stellenbosch, tells me, adding: “To know about South Africa, let alone its politics, [the president] must have whisperers,” who are telling him that there is a “white genocide”. Jansen suspects one of those is the South African-born Elon Musk, who has “a grievance against the country”.Jansen believes South Africa’s hard line against Israel has fuelled animosity in Washington. Taking the Israeli government to the international court of justice “is not cool in the world of Trump”. I suggest a provocative factor may also have been how uncompromising and measured the South African government has been on the issue of white farmers when goaded by Trump. “This is true,” Jansen says. “[Cyril] Ramaphosa, with all his faults – and they are many – is a man of restraint.”Despite the media focus on the [white supremacy] issue, Jansen calls for some perspective. He says that some white South Africans who claim racial discrimination are a small group of people who nurse an inflated sense of resentment because they still cannot accept that apartheid is over. “There are grievances with a Black government, which is very hard for some of my white brothers and sisters to accept, even after 30 years.”Jansen says if one is to consider violent crime, “more Black people die than white people, even as a proportion of the population. Make no mistake, these are white supremacists who are drawn to a white supremacist. Their capacity for reflection is not very high.”Despite the understanding in South Africa that the issue of white discrimination is a political stunt, Jansen notes the galling hypocrisy of it all, considering the effort that Black South Africans made to ensure peace after apartheid. “What riles is that you’re giving attention to people who for 350 years were oppressing us. My argument is: don’t get into a tizzy. But I also regard it quite seriously as a slap in the face for Black South Africans.”Here’s my colleague David Smith’s write-up of the most tense Oval Office encounter since Trump’s bullying of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February. In this encounter, Cyril Ramaphosa refused to take the bait as Trump ambushed him with false claims of white “genocide” and suggested that they “talk about it very calmly”.David writes:
      The biggest bone of contention [for the Trump administration] has been a South African land-expropriation law signed in January that aims to redress the historical inequalities of white minority rule. Ramaphosa denied that the law will be used to arbitrarily confiscate white-owned land, insisting that all South Africans are protected by the constitution.
      And right at the end of David’s story is this helpful reminder of the post-apartheid context:
      South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world. White people make up 7% of the country’s population but own at least half of the land. They are also better off economically by almost every measure.
      Read the full story here:Another day, another shocking Oval Office meeting between Trump and a world leader. This time it was South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, who was ambushed by the US president; Trump requested dimmed lights for video footage to be played purporting to show anti-white violence in the country and relentlessly peddled false accusations of “genocide” and Afrikaners being “executed” as justification for admitting them into the US as refugees. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Trump then held up printouts of news articles about what he said were killings of white South Africans, repeating “death, death, death” as he flipped through the pages.In an effort to diffuse the chaos, Ramaphosa kept composed as he tried to explain to Trump that while violent crime affects people of all races in his country most victims are black, white people are not being persecuted there, and his government is trying to redress the enduring injustices of South Africa’s apartheid past. He even quipped that he was sorry he didn’t have a plane to give Trump, to which Trump said he wished he did. Ramaphosa said he was willing to talk with him about his concerns “outside of the media” – which is worth noting given the feeling expressed by many that Trump and JD Vance’s bust-up with Volodymyr Zelenskyy back in February was very much a made-for-TV humiliation of Ukraine’s president.In other news:

      The Trump administration formally accepted the controversial gift of a Boeing 747 jetliner from the government of Qatar, and directed the air force to assess how quickly the plane can be upgraded for possible use as a new Air Force One. The offer of the jet has set off a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of Trump, particularly following the president’s visit to the country last week to arrange US business deals. Here’s our write-up.

      A federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan was “unquestionably violative” of an injunction he had issued earlier. US district judge Brian E Murphy made the remark at an emergency hearing he had ordered in Boston following the Trump administration’s apparent deportation of eight people to South Sudan, despite most of them being from other countries. On Tuesday, Murphy ruled that the administration could not let a group of migrants being deported to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities. My colleague Maya Yang has the story.

      The justice department moved to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department following the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, after the death of Breonna Taylor, saying it does not want to pursue the cases. The move shows how the civil rights division of the justice department is changing rapidly under Donald Trump, dismantling Biden-era work and investigating diversity programs. It also comes amid pressure on the right to recast Floyd’s murder, undermine diversity efforts and define liberal-run cities like Minneapolis as crime-ridden. Full story here.

      The US army said it has no plans to recognize Donald Trump’s birthday on 14 June when he presides over part of the army’s celebrations of its 250th anniversary. Trump, who is turning 79 on the same day, will play a big role in the celebrations, which will cost between $25m and $45m, will see the army hold a parade down Washington’s Constitution Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares that cuts through the capital. The parade was not part of the original planning for the 14 June celebrations and was added this year, stoking criticism from Democratic lawmakers and others that Trump has hijacked the event. More here.

      Trump nominated Darryl Nirenberg, a lawyer and former Senate staffer, to serve as the next US ambassador to Romania. Nirenberg, a longtime Washington lawyer currently at Steptoe LLP law firm, was chief of staff for late Republican senator Jesse Helms and was a counsel for the Senate foreign relations committee. The nomination will require Senate approval.

      A federal judge rejected a bid by the US treasury department to cancel a union contract covering tens of thousands of IRS staff, in an early blow to Trump’s efforts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for many federal workers. More on that here.

      Democratic US representative Gerry Connolly died aged 75, his family said in a statement posted to his account on X this morning following the Virginia lawmaker’s cancer diagnosis last year. At the end of last month, Connolly announced he would be retiring from Congress at the end of this term and stepping back from his role as ranking member on the House oversight committee after finding out his cancer had returned. He died peacefully at home surrounded by family, their statement said.
      South Africa’s foreign ministry spokesperson said in a post on X that “there is no land confiscation”, after that chaotic White House meeting in which Donald Trump confronted president Cyril Ramaphosa with false claims of mass killings and land seizures from white people.Congressman Greg Casar, chair of the House progressive caucus, wants to talk to conservatives about the Republican effort to cut Medicaid. So he joined Donald Trump’s Truth Social.In his first post, @repgregcasar stated the obvious: “I’m a progressive Democrat, and I know most users of this platform are more conservative than me.”But the congressman said he shared some common ground with many of the president’s supporters.“If you oppose cutting healthcare and want to take back our government from the billionaire class, I want to talk to you,” he said.Polls have consistently found that most Americans, across party lines, oppose cuts to Medicaid.The move is somewhat unusual. Few elected Democrats have joined Truth Social, the platform where Trump began regularly sharing his all-caps musings, often at odd hours, after being kicked off X and Facebook. His accounts have since been reinstated.But after their 2024 loss to Trump, Democrats have been consumed by the debate over how to, in Washington parlance, “meet voters where they are”.Casar, unveiling his new account in a Fox News op-ed, wrote that part of his rationale was ensuring “people know they are welcome in the Democratic Party even if they do not agree with us on every issue”.
      I am a progressive Democrat and I do not plan on changing or obscuring my position on anything, but I want people to know that we are focused on making the lives of all working class people better. That means we as Democrats need to sound less judgmental and more focused on the issues that matter most to peoples’ lives, like the GOP cuts to Medicaid and Social Security. More

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      Trump ambushes South African president with video and false claims of anti-white racism

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      Donald Trump ambushed the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, by playing him a video that he falsely claimed proved genocide was being committed against white people under “the opposite of apartheid”.The hectoring stunt on Wednesday set up the most tense Oval Office encounter since Trump’s bullying of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February. But Ramaphosa – who earlier said that he had come to Washington to “reset” the relationship between the two countries – refused to take the bait and suggested that they “talk about it very calmly”.Trump has long maintained that Afrikaners, a minority descended from mainly Dutch colonists who ruled South Africa during its decades of racial apartheid, are being persecuted. South Africa rejects the allegation. Murder rates are high in the country and the overwhelming majority of victims are Black.What began as a convivial meeting at the White House, including lighthearted quips about golf, took a sudden turn when Ramaphosa told Trump there is no genocide against Afrikaners.Trump said: “We have thousands of stories talking about it,” then ordered his staff: “Turn the lights down and just put this on.”Sitting next to Trump before the fireplace, Ramaphosa forced a smile and turned to look at a big TV screen as Trump’s South Africa-born billionaire ally Elon Musk, JD Vance, the defence secretary Pete Hegseth and diplomats and journalists from both countries looked on.The video included footage of former South African president Jacob Zuma and firebrand opposition politician Julius Malema singing an apartheid-era struggle song called “Kill the Boer”, which means farmer or Afrikaner, as supporters danced.Ramaphosa quietly but firmly pushed back, pointing out that the views expressed in the video are not government policy.There was also footage that Trump claimed showed the graves of more than a thousand white farmers, marked by white crosses. Ramaphosa, who had mostly sat expressionless, occasionally craning his neck to look, said he had not seen that before and would like to find out what the location was.Trump then produced a batch of newspaper articles that he said were from the last few days reporting on killings in South Africa. He read some of the headlines and commented: “Death, death, death, horrible death.”Ramaphosa acknowledged there is crime in South Africa and said the majority of victims are Black. Trump cut him off and said: “The farmers are not Black.”The conspiracy theory of a white genocide has long been a staple of the racist far right, and in recent years has been amplified by Musk and rightwing media personality Tucker Carlson.Trump kept returning to the theme during Wednesday’s televised meeting. He said: “Now I will say, apartheid: terrible. That was the biggest threat. That was reported all the time. This is sort of the opposite of apartheid.“What’s happening now is never reported. Nobody knows about it. All we know is we’re being inundated with people, with white farmers from South Africa, and it’s a big problem.”He added: “They’re white farmers, and they’re fleeing South Africa, and it’s a very sad thing to see. But I hope we can have an explanation of that, because I know you don’t want that.”But Ramaphosa maintained an even tone, observing: “We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around the table and talk about them. And this is precisely what we would also like to talk about.”The meeting came days after around 50 Afrikaners arrived in the US to take up Trump’s offer of “refuge”. Trump made the offer despite the US having halted arrivals of asylum seekers from most of the rest of the world as he cracks down on immigration.Relations between the countries are at their lowest point since the end of apartheid in 1994. The US has condemned South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza at the international court of justice, slashed aid, announced 31% tariffs and expelled the South Africa ambassador for criticising Trump’s Make America great again (Maga) movement.But the biggest bone of contention has been a South African land-expropriation law signed in January that aims to redress the historical inequalities of white minority rule. Ramaphosa denied that the law will be used to arbitrarily confiscate white-owned land, insisting that all South Africans are protected by the constitution.But Trump falsely asserted: “You do allow them to take land – and then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them. …“You’re taking people’s land away from them and those people in many cases are being executed. They’re being executed and they happen to be white.”Ramaphosa arrived at the White House with agriculture minister John Steenhuisen, who is white, two of South Africa’s top golfers, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, and the country’s wealthiest person, Johann Rupert, in a bid to woo the golf-loving president. All weighed in during the Oval Office meeting and seemed to be well-received by Trump.Rupert said South Africa needs technological help in stopping deaths in the country, which he said were not just of white farmers but across the board. “We have too many deaths … It’s not only white farmers, it’s across the board, and we need technological help. We need Starlink at every little police station. We need drones,” Rupert said.South Africa will reportedly offer Musk, who was born in the country, a deal to operate his Starlink satellite internet network in the country. The Tesla and SpaceX boss has accused Pretoria of “openly racist” laws, a reference to post-apartheid Black empowerment policies seen as a hurdle to the licensing of Starlink.South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world. White people make up 7% of the country’s population but own at least half of South Africa’s land. They are also better off economically by almost every measure. More

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      Trump news at a glance: president unveils Golden Dome project – and claims Canada is interested

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      Donald Trump has announced that his administration will move forward with developing a multibillion-dollar missile defense system, called “Golden Dome”, and claimed that Canada was interesting in being part of it.“Once fully constructed, the golden dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they are launched from space,” Trump said. “Forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland.”The US space force general Michael Guetlein will oversee implementation of the project, Trump said. The selection of Guetlein, vice-chief of space operations at the space force, means the elevation of a four-star general widely seen at the Pentagon to be competent and deeply experienced in missile defense systems and procurement.Here are the key stories at a glance:Trump rolls out Golden Dome missile defense project Flanked by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, Trump announced the Golden Dome missile defense project on Tuesday in the Oval Office. The president said he wanted the project to be operational before he left office, and added that Republicans had agreed to allocate $25bn in initial funding and Canada had expressed an interest in taking part.What exactly Golden Dome will look like remains unclear. Trump said on Tuesday evening that he had settled on architecture for the project and suggested the total cost of putting it into service would reach $175bn. He provided no further details.Read the full storyTrump officials ‘illegally deport’ Vietnamese and Burmese migrants Immigrant rights advocates have accused the Trump administration of deporting about a dozen migrants from countries including Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in violation of a court order, and asked a judge to order their return.Read the full storyRubio clashes with Democrats over Afrikaner ‘refugee’ statusMarco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has defended the Trump administration’s decision to admit 59 Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees after Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, said they were getting preferential treatment because they were white.The clash between Rubio and Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s former running mate, came a day before South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was due to meet Donald Trump at the White House in an encounter that promises to be highly charged thanks to the controversy surrounding the Afrikaner arrivals.Read the full storyTrump bangs drum for tax bill as some still hold outDonald Trump traveled to the Capitol on Tuesday to insist that the fractious House Republican majority set aside their differences and pass his wide-ranging bill to enact his taxation and immigration priorities.In a speech to a closed-door meeting of Republican lawmakers, the president pushed holdouts to drop their objections, afterwards saying: “I think we have unbelievable unity. I think we’re going to get everything we want, and I think we’re going to have a great victory.”But it is unclear if the president’s exhortations had the intended effect as at least one lawmaker said afterwards they still do not support the bill.Read the full storyMusk claims he won’t spend as much on politicsElon Musk claimed that he would decrease the amount of money he spends on politics for the foreseeable future. If true, the reduction would represent a significant turnaround after the world’s richest person positioned himself as the US Republican party’s most enthusiastic donor over the last year.Read the full story‘Plenty of time’ to fix climate crisis, says Trump aideThe US has “plenty of time” to solve the climate crisis, the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, told a House committee on Tuesday.The comment came on his first of two days of testimony to House and Senate appropriators in which he defended Donald Trump’s proposed budget, dubbed the “one big, beautiful bill”, that would extend tax reductions enacted during Trump’s first term, while cutting $5bn of funding for the Department of the Interior.Read the full storyMost US companies say tariffs causing higher pricesA majority of US companies say they will have to raise their prices to accommodate Trump’s tariffs in the US, according to a new report. More than half (54%) of the US companies surveyed by the insurance company Allianz said they will have to raise prices to accommodate the cost of the tariffs.Read the full storyPatel scraps FBI watchdog teamThe FBI director, Kash Patel, has scrapped a watchdog team set up to scrutinise a warrantless surveillance law he previously claimed was being abused to target supporters of Donald Trump.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Charles Kushner, the father of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, has secured US Senate confirmation to serve as the nation’s ambassador to France.

      A participant in the January 6 attack pardoned by Trump was recently arrested for burglary and vandalism in Virginia.

      The Trump administration lifted a stop work order on a $5bn windfarm off the New York coast after negotiations – but cancelled plans for a gas pipeline could be revived.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 19 May 2025. More