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‘This moment was thrust upon him’: Gavin Newsom steps up to parry Trump’s ‘wrecking ball’ attacks on American democracy
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 June 2025, 15:34
When Donald Trump landed in Los Angeles to tour the ruins left by January’s devastating wildfires, just days after being sworn in for a second term, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, was waiting on the tarmac to greet him. The surprisingly warm exchange between two longtime political rivals seemed to reflect a new reality: with a vengeful Trump back in the White House, fire-ravaged California – and its Democratic governor – had a great deal at stake.In the weeks that followed, Newsom met with Trump at the White House to lobby for federal disaster relief, then approved funding to strengthen the state’s legal defenses against challenges from the Trump administration. He invited Maga-world fixtures on to his podcast, including Steve Bannon, and infuriated progressives, and even some allies, when he said that it was “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports – a wedge issue central to Trump’s conservative agenda. All the while, his state was suing the Trump administration – over executive actions on immigration, federal funding and tariffs – at a rate of more than one lawsuit a week.Their fragile detente, already showing cracks, shattered spectacularly last week, when the president mobilized thousands of national guard troops and 700 marines – over the governor’s objections – to quell protests in Los Angeles sparked by immigration raids across the region.Newsom accused Trump of deliberately injecting chaos into a situation that local authorities had under control. Trump’s actions, he declared, were “madness” and marked an “unmistakable step toward authoritarianism”. Trump, in turn, called Newsom, whom he refers to as “Newscum”, grossly incompetent and suggested the governor should be arrested. “Gavin likes the publicity,” the president mused, though he later played down the threat.With guards troops deployed in the streets of Los Angeles, the 57-year-old governor of the country’s most populous state delivered a formal, state-of-the-union-style address warning that the president was taking a “wrecking ball” to American democracy.“Look, this isn’t just about protests in LA,” Newsom said on Tuesday. “This is about all of us. This is about you.”“California may be first – but it clearly won’t end here. Other states are next,” he said. “Democracy is next.”For months, Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans and a growing number of alarmed Americans had been clamoring for leaders who grasp what they say is the urgency of Trump’s assault on democratic norms and American institutions. When Trump activated California’s national guard troops, Newsom stepped into the ring – and hasn’t stopped swinging since.“This moment was thrust upon him,” said Mike Madrid, a sharp critic of Trump and former political director of the California Republican party, “and whether it was a battlefield conversion or a genuine moment, Gavin Newsom realized that the only way out of this was to fight.”View image in fullscreenIn the week since the national guard’s deployment to Los Angeles, Newsom has mounted an all-out offensive – battling Trump in the courts and in the court of public opinion. He has made himself ubiquitous: sitting for interviews with podcasters and YouTubers, national media and local media. On social media, he and his team are running a rapid response blitz – a stream of taunts, Star Wars memes and factchecks.Newsom sued to block the guard’s deployment without his consent. California later filed an emergency order asking a judge to bar the guard from assisting with immigration enforcement. On Thursday, a federal judge sided with the state, finding that Trump’s deployment of the guard was unlawful – though the victory was short-lived. Two hours later, the ninth US circuit court of appeals temporarily blocked the order.“He is not a king and he should stop acting like one,” Newsom said on Thursday, at a press conference before the ruling was paused.The White House has responded in kind, with Trump hurling insults back at Newsom. When asked what crime Newsom might be charged with, Trump sniped: “His primary crime is running for governor, because he’s done such a bad job.”Trump, thanking the appeals court on Friday, said: “If I didn’t send the military into Los Angeles, that city would be burning to the ground right now” – a claim Newsom, city officials and local law enforcement strongly dispute.Tensions escalated further on Thursday, when a senator from California, Alex Padilla, was forcibly removed and handcuffed after trying to ask a question at a press conference held by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, amid the ongoing protests in Los Angeles. Newsom called the episode “outrageous, dictatorial, and shameful”.“This is a moment that tests the mettle of leaders,” said Brian Brokaw, a longtime political adviser to Newsom. He noted that Newsom’s tenure was defined by crisis from the very start.The day after he was elected in 2018, a gunman killed 12 people at a country music bar in Thousand Oaks and as the Camp fire – the deadliest wildfire in state history – raged toward the town of Paradise. Since then, Newsom has faced a near-constant onslaught: more fires, more mass shootings, floods, mudslides, drought, a global pandemic, mass protests after the murder of George Floyd, and the wildfires that swept Los Angeles earlier this year.“Newsom has pretty good instincts,” Brokaw said. “He knows what a moment like this requires – and that’s what you’re seeing from him now.”The rapidly intensifying standoff between Trump and Newsom has rallied Democrats. Twenty-two Democratic governors signed a joint statement in support of California, calling Trump’s troop deployment “ineffective and dangerous”. The signatories spanned the ideological spectrum of the party and included several governors who are potential 2028 presidential contenders, such as JB Pritzker of Illinois, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Andy Beshear of Kentucky.“He has shown he’s not going to be intimidated, and we’re all for that,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said earlier this week.Even some of his critics have been impressed. Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible, one of the groups behind Saturday’s “day of defiance” protests against Trump, said Newsom’s pugilistic response to the president’s “bullying” has been “spot on”.“I think he’s been one of the leading members of the ‘roll over and play dead’ faction, one of these dead-dog Democrats,” Levin said. “But maybe – maybe – he is shifting sides, and I think it is very important that we welcome people and leaders when they do that.”The White House believes its maximalist response to unrest in California plays to its political advantage. Trump, who campaigned on a promise of mass deportations, has framed California’s resistance as an obstruction to what he says is a popular mandate. Images of protesters waving Mexican flags near burning robotaxis feed the rightwing narrative of disorder in Democratic-run cities such as Los Angeles.“To be very cynical about this, you can argue that this benefits both principals,” said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University. “Donald Trump gets to swing at his favorite piñata, California, but Gavin Newsom doesn’t mind taking the whacks because it plays pretty well with the Democratic base.”According to a YouGov flash poll, 45% of Americans disapprove of the Los Angeles protests, while 36% approve. Similar shares disapprove of Trump’s deployment of the marines – 47% to 34% – and the national guard – 45% to 38%.View image in fullscreenSince Trump’s 2024 victory, many Democrats have taken pains to show support for law enforcement and border security.Some say Newsom’s approach offers a clear path forward. He has been unequivocal in condemning sporadic violence, vowing “zero tolerance” for bad actors. At the same time, he has offered a full-throated defense of the city’s immigrant communities, accusing Trump of tearing apart families and “disappearing” neighbors.“What’s happening right now is very different than anything we’ve seen before,” Newsom said in his Tuesday address, accusing federal agents of indiscriminately targeting Latino neighborhoods. “Trump is pulling a military dragnet across LA, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals.”Conservatives say Newsom’s posture is precisely what helped Trump make inroads in some of the bluest corners of the country last year. Steve Hilton, a former top adviser to former UK prime minister David Cameron now running for governor of California, accused Newsom of trying to “gaslight us”.“Do your job,” he said on Fox News, “instead of pretending this is fine.”Newsom rose to prominence as the mayor of San Francisco, defying state law to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He served as the state’s lieutenant governor for eight years before being elected governor in the middle of Trump’s first term, riding a wave of progressive anger. He survived a 2021 recall attempt, fueled in part by backlash to his handling of the pandemic, and was easily re-elected in 2022. He campaigned aggressively for Biden in 2024, even as some in the party hoped he’d run himself. When Biden dropped out, Newsom quickly endorsed his fellow Californian, “fearless” Kamala Harris.Democrats’ staggering losses in November left the party leaderless and without power in Washington. As Democrats grasped for answers – how to oppose an emboldened president whom voters chose over them – Newsom launched a podcast. Some speculated Newsom’s moves – interviewing far-right figures on his podcast, cracking down on homeless encampments and moving to scale back health coverage for immigrants without legal status – were part of a calculated pivot toward the political center, in preparation for a 2028 presidential run.Asked recently at a press conference if he was trying to shed his liberal persona, Newsom said he had always been a “hard-headed pragmatist”. “I’m not an ideologue,” he added.California – the biggest blue state in the country – has long served as Trump’s favorite foil. From homelessness and crime to immigration and climate policy, Trump has painted the state as a cautionary tale – a failed experiment in liberal governance now a “symbol of our nation’s decline”.This week, amid his clash with Newsom, Trump signed into law a measure blocking California’s vehicle emissions rules and his administration announced plans to abolish two of the state’s newest national monuments.“If it’s a day ending in Y, it’s another day of Trump’s war on California,” the governor’s office tweeted.Steve Maviglio, a Democratic political consultant, said Newsom’s “guerrilla warfare” tactics may raise the governor’s national profile – but at a cost.“We know that the president doesn’t respond well to being attacked,” Maviglio said, adding: “It’s likely going to result in a lot less federal dollars coming our way – which is about the last thing we need right now with a multibillion-dollar budget deficit.”Yet Newsom’s attempt at conciliation yielded little protection. Earlier this month, the Trump administration warned it may pull billions in funding from California’s long-delayed high-speed rail project. Trump has threatened to “maybe permanently” strip federal funding if the state continues to allow transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports. And California is still waiting for the disaster aid Newsom sought after the fires.Newsom has argued in recent interviews that Trump can’t be placated. The governor suggested the state had leverage: it could withhold the billions in taxes its residents pay the federal government. (He has since tempered the idea, but said he urged his team to get “creative” on how the state might push back on Trump’s threats.)Newsom also suggested that growing public opposition to the immigration crackdown was working, after Trump conceded that his immigration tactics were hurting agriculture and hospitality. “Turns out, chasing hardworking people through ranches and snatching women and children off the streets is not good policy,” Newsom shot back.Though protests have calmed, the situation remains volatile. With the appeals court decision, Trump remains in command of the national guard through at least next week. On Friday, US marines temporarily detained a man outside the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles – the first known detention of a civilian by active-duty troops deployed there by Trump.Speaking in Los Angeles, Noem pledged to “liberate” Los Angeles and vowed that the Trump administration would continue its immigration operations across the region.Ahead of planned protests on Saturday, Newsom ordered the state to “pre-deploy” additional resources to support law enforcement throughout the state. Organized as a show of defiance against Trump’s military parade staged in the streets of Washington DC on Saturday to celebrate the US army’s 250th anniversary and the president’s 79th birthday, the events have multiplied since Trump deployed guard troops to Los Angeles.For Newsom, the stakes are bigger than California. He has framed this moment as a test of democratic resilience in the face of creeping authoritarianism. And for those who have long sounded the alarm, the governor is meeting it.“He’s become what Democrats nationally have been waiting for since the election,” Madrid said. “He’s the tip of the spear – the more strenuously he fights, the more aggressive he is, the more he uses Trump’s tactics against him, the more he’s going to be rewarded.”David Smith in Washington and Rachel Leingang contributed reporting More
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JD Vance threatened to deport him. The ‘menswear guy’ is posting through it
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 June 2025, 14:00
Derek Guy was a relatively unknown menswear writer with 25,000 followers on Twitter in 2022. Now, in 2025, Guy has 1.3 million followers on the platform, now called X, where this week both the vice-president of the United States and the Department of Homeland Security posted threats to deport him from the US – the country he has called home since he was a baby.“Honestly didn’t expect this is what would happen when I joined a menswear forum 15 years ago,” Guy quipped on X on Monday. “Was originally trying to look nice for someone else’s wedding.”The threats targeted at Guy, a fashion writer known for lampooning the sartorial decisions of rightwing figures, including JD Vance, marked another alarming escalation in the White House’s ongoing project to mass deport millions of immigrants – raising the prospect of an administration wielding deportation as a weapon of retribution against its critics.But Guy’s story also laid bare the transformation of X. In a few short years, the platform has become a place where Maga and other far-right influencers not only rule the roost, but can see their trollish posts perhaps dictate policy. X may now be a sincerely dangerous place for some users to post their thoughts.It all started with Elon Musk. After taking over Twitter in 2022, the world’s richest man oversaw the implementation of an algorithmic “for you” tab that pushed content from a bizarre array of influencers on users. Through a fateful quirk in the algorithm, Guy was among the platform’s new main characters, his incisive commentary about men’s fashion suddenly ubiquitous on people’s feeds. Guy, who got his start years earlier commenting in menswear forums before launching a blog called Die, Workwear!, was suddenly being profiled in GQ and interviewed by Slate. Everyone started calling him the “menswear guy”.Musk later rechristened Twitter as X, further loosening moderation on the platform, and restoring the accounts of users previously banned for bigotry or harassment. X became even more of a far-right haven, with white supremacist and neo-Nazi accounts risen from the dead. Meanwhile Guy was frequently going viral, namely for posts teasing prominent Maga figures for their ill-fitting suits – bringing attention to the wrinkles on Trump’s trousers, and the “collar gaps” on Stephen Miller’s suit jackets.By 2025, of course, Trump and Miller were back in the White House, pursuing a campaign promise to “remigrate” millions of everyday people out of America. In recent weeks they appeared to ramp up this ethno-nationalist project, with disturbing footage emerging online of masked, heavily armed Ice and DHS agents abducting Latino people from schools and courthouses, or kidnapping them off the streets, often separating them from their children.Guy felt compelled to stand up and be counted.In a long post on X, he recounted his family’s harrowing story of escaping war in Vietnam, a journey that ended with his mom carrying him across the US border while he was still an infant. Guy revealed that he was one of millions of undocumented people living in the US.“The lack of legal immigration has totally shaped my life,” he wrote. “It has made every interaction with the law much scarier. It has shaped which opportunities I could or could not get. It has taken an emotional toll, as this legal issue hangs over your head like a black cloud.”He was sharing his story to “push back against the idea that all undocumented immigrants are MS-13 members”, he wrote. “I know many people in my position and they are all like your neighbors.”Guy’s post sent far-right influencers on X into a feeding frenzy. “JD Vance I know you’re reading this and you have the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever,” a user named @growing_daniel wrote about Guy’s announcement. (@Growing_Daniel appears to be the founder of a tech startup called Abel, that uses artificial intelligence to help police write up crime reports.)Vance did see the post, replying with a gif of Jack Nicholson from the movie Anger Management, slowly nodding his head with an intense, menacing look. A short time later, the official account of the Department of Homeland Security joined the fray. The federal agency quote-tweeted a post from another far-right account, which noted Guy’s undocumented status, with a gif from the movie Spy Kids, showing a character with futuristic glasses that can zoom in on a subject from a great distance.The message to Guy was clear: we’re watching you. Vance and DHS did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment about the posts.Prominent far-right figures were ecstatic. “IT’S HABBENING,” posted Jack Posobiec, a Maga operative with more than 3 million followers on X. Michael Knowles, the prominent Daily Wire pundit, posted a photo of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, wearing a blue-and-white sash over his suit jacket. “Hey @dieworkwear,” Knowles wrote to his one million followers, “what are your thoughts on this outfit?” The subtext of Knowles’s tweet was also clear: Bukele has partnered with the Trump administration to hold immigrants deported from America, with no due process, in El Salvador’s most notorious gulag.Guy was aghast at the response. “The cruelty in today’s politics feels horribly corrosive,” he wrote. “Bringing up that hard-working immigrant families — undocumented, yes, but not violent criminals — are being ripped apart based on immigration status doesn’t bring compassion or even pause, but gleeful cheers.”Longtime critics of X pointed to the deportation threats as evidence of the platform’s perils. “…It’s been turned into a political weapon for people who wish to use it to harm others,” noted journalist Charlie Warzel, the author of a recent Atlantic essay arguing for people to abandon X. “It’s not the marketplace of ideas – you do not have to participate in this project! very simple!”For now, Guy – who politely declined to comment to the Guardian about this week’s saga – is still on X, using all of this week’s attention for what he sees as good causes.“ICE raided a downtown LA garment warehouse, arresting fourteen garment workers,” he wrote. “Many of those detained were the primary breadwinner for young children and elderly relatives. Would you consider donating to help these families?”He also took time to taunt those calling for his deportation. When an account belonging to a luxury wristwatch dealer chastised him for “disrespecting” immigration laws, Guy responded with a one-thousand word history of how the flow of immigrants and refugees across borders over the past two centuries led to the creation of Rolex, among other luxury watch brands.He also replied directly to Vance’s post threatening to deport him. “i think i can outrun you in these clothes,” Guy wrote, posting a photo of the vice-president seated at a political conference, his ill-fitting suit pants riding up to his calves. “you are tweeting for likes. im tweeting to be mentioned in the National Archives and Records,” Guy added.Guy then told the vice-president where immigration agents could find him: “Here is my house,” the “menswear guy” wrote, posting an image of a Men’s Wearhouse storefront.
This article was updated on 14 June 2025 to correct that the movie the gif of Jack Nicholson was from was Anger Management, not The Departed. More
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We are no longer free. But we can win our freedom back
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 June 2025, 11:00
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View image in fullscreenMost of us are no longer free.People are aware of this condition to varying degrees. Some, nostalgic for the world that was, reject “unfreedom” as an exaggerated description of our situation. Others, seeing reality clearly, nevertheless hide from the unnerving implications.Some people, a minority, experience the changes that have come to America in 2025 as liberation. They are free to say and do what they want with impunity and without shame. On the other side of the spectrum, many who are not free now also were not before, and they suffered no illusion that they were. Now, they might raise an eyebrow to the rest of us, asking if we now see what this country has long been for some people, much of the time.But for most in this country, unfreedom is a novel experience. What makes this condition confounding is that our unfreedom doesn’t yet look like it does in Russia or China – it is still partial. Most in this country can still enjoy a dinner out with friends, loudly deploring the current state of affairs. For most, authoritarianism has not snuffed out the pleasures, private or communal, of a spring morning in the park. In fact, most of us can still read about horrors while lying on the grass, soaking up the sun.The newly unfree live with cognitive dissonance. You hear of people like doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk and labor leader David Huerta innocently walking down the street or protesting outside an immigration detention center, or even presiding in their courtroom – being arrested, detained or abducted. Institutions founded on principles of free expression or the rule of law have quickly abandoned them to avoid financial losses. People hesitate to travel abroad for fear of what will happen when they try to return to the country they’ve called home. And now, we have 2,000 national guard troops and 700 marines sent to a city to repress protest against the wishes of the governor and mayor. After Los Angeles, more Americans are conscious of our growing unfreedom.When – if – you wake up to our shared condition of unfreedom, you face an existential choice. Do you act on what you know to be true, or do you hide? Too many corporate titans, university presidents and heads of major law firms are behaving as though they are powerless. Members of Congress admit that they are afraid to speak up. Judges talk openly about the threats they face to their safety.Those leading powerful institutions still have leverage. They still have power. We must call on them to unite and exercise it. Silence and hiding will offer no lasting reprieve.But regular people, everyday people, face a different challenge. In order to act, they must first discover their power – and learn how to use it.What should using that power look like? A dilemma for those awake to our growing unfreedom is that the tools we know how to use to change things no longer seem to work. Protests are crucial in raising awareness, but often don’t compel those in power to change course. Representatives are less responsive to our advocacy. The rules have changed. Reason, evidence and expertise don’t carry the day. Norms we once took for granted are gone.There are ways we can oppose authoritarianism, using techniques that haven’t been used at a scale for decades. These tools are our inheritance. They have been passed down for centuries, by abolitionist campaigners, labor organizers and anti-colonial leaders. Gandhi famously revived them in the early 20th century, inspiring many leaders in the US civil rights movement. The Black freedom struggle, this country’s leading democracy movement, has in turn inspired nearly every peaceful, people-powered movement around the world since. This is the lineage of strategic nonviolence to which we must now return. These are the tools we must rediscover.View image in fullscreenSue. Protest. Vote. Then, rinse and repeat. In recent years, pro-democracy advocates have faithfully followed that formula. These strategies have prevented many abuses. But they did not prevent an authoritarian movement from gaining strength. And they won’t be enough to prevent what we now face: the prospect of years of authoritarian rule, or something far worse.So what is to be done?Much depends on how quickly civil society can remake itself for this new era. We can learn from previous generations of change-makers in the US, and from contemporaries around the world today, who have won by deploying a booster formula for times such as these. It is simple:Disrupt. De-legitimize. And draw defectors.To be clear, the formula of sue, protest and vote remains absolutely necessary – but is not sufficient.Lawsuits curbed the worst excesses of Trump’s first term and have been among the few speed bumps slowing the current administration’s much more aggressive rampage against civil liberties and the rule of law. But we are already seeing open defiance of court orders.When Trump was asked whether he was obligated as president to uphold the constitution in the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, who had been wrongly deported from the US, he replied: “I don’t know.” While Ábrego García is now back on US soil, preventing this particular collision course, other contempt trials continue to play out and legal experts fear many more opportunities for Trump to even more brazenly defy the courts.History also suggests reasons to avoid placing too much hope in the courts, because they cannot always be counted on to save us. Consider Dred Scott v Sandford in 1857, when the supreme court ruled that Black Americans were not citizens; Plessy v Ferguson in 1896, upholding racial segregation; Korematsu v United States in 1944, allowing Japanese citizens to be interned in camps; or Trump v United States just last year, in which the court needlessly expanded the doctrine of presidential immunity. Lawsuits buy us essential time, but by themselves are not a sufficient safeguard of our freedoms.In fact, history further suggests that the courts move in concert with public opinion – and are often pushed by people who take bold action. The supreme court only affirmed same-sex marriage rights, for instance, after public support had increased following years of organizing and advocacy.Protests also play a vital role in building the confidence of those opposed to an authoritarian government’s policies. They help people see they are not alone. And they help embolden those in power who may be sympathetic to the opposition.But while protest remains an effective means of focusing pressure and raising awareness, protest alone can’t force authoritarian coalitions to change. Authoritarians revel in their power to defy dissidents – and can become violent in doing so, as we have seen in Los Angeles this week. Authoritarians have also learned to disregard many types of dissent. Erica Chenoweth, a leading scholar of protest, found that protest movements have recently become less effective in unseating despots around the world, due in part to authoritarians’ growing savvy in repressing them or waiting them out.Meanwhile, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci and journalist Vincent Bevins have reported that mass protests facilitated by social media lack the power of protests of a previous era because they are not undergirded by organizations that can negotiate and adapt tactics as circumstances change. Mass protest is essential, but it is not a panacea.Voting is crucial. But rulings on everything from redistricting to campaign finance to voter suppression bills make clear that elements of the federal judiciary are all too happy to disenfranchise voters across the nation. And we cannot wait for communities to make their voices heard at the polls. What happens now will determine whether this country even has free and fair midterm elections.The situation is dire. But as we look to the other movements that have successfully defeated authoritarianism and achieved democratic breakthroughs, it’s useful to maintain perspective. Movements in places like South Africa, Brazil and the Jim Crow south succeeded under conditions far worse than those we face today – when the right to vote and to protest did not exist, when courts were uniformly hostile, when the media and other major institutions were captured. How can it be possible to prevail under such conditions?View image in fullscreenRev James Lawson came into the Los Angeles community center and greeted everyone personally. Some two decades later, I still remember how intently he listened to the two dozen immigrant-rights organizers who had come seeking advice on how we might achieve a federal path to citizenship for undocumented people living in the US. We described a strategy focused on mass mobilization, skillful advocacy with policymakers, and expert communications to frame the problem and solution.His response was kind but firm. Our strategy wouldn’t work, he said. We were playing by the rules of someone else’s game. This Black American leader had seen the full truth of this country – the horrors as well as the heroism – and from that experience learned some hard truths. He wanted to share them with this group of mostly first-generation immigrants, many of whom still believed what we read in textbooks about how change happens. If we wanted to succeed, he said, we would have to engage in nonviolent disruption at a scale big enough to force a moral and economic crisis that would bring about change.We weren’t ready or able to take Rev Lawson’s advice then. We pursued a strategy that achieved some important gains in policy, but were unsuccessful in our efforts to pass federal immigration reform.Maybe we are ready to listen to him now.Rev Lawson knew more about disruption than perhaps any living American. He was, as Dr Martin Luther King Jr called him, the “leading nonviolence theorist in the world”. In the 1950s and 60s, he trained thousands of civil rights leaders and marchers, including John Lewis, to meet violence with love and dignity. He worked closely with the Little Rock Nine, who led the desegregation of an Arkansas high school, helping them muster the courage to remain composed as they walked into school amid a barrage of violent hate. He prepared the brave participants in Nashville’s sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters. He was instrumental in organizing the freedom rides in protest of the defiance of the ruling ordering the desegregation of buses.I’d first met Rev Lawson over a decade before that meeting, as part of a small training on principles of nonviolence that he held for organizers in Los Angeles. I had studied Gandhi and the ideas he’d developed during the Indian independence struggle. I was part of the Aids movement, and I’d witnessed a lot of death and government-sponsored cruelty. I thought I knew the material, but what Rev Lawson taught me in our first meeting shook me to the core.I had expected a master class in tactics. How do you plan a sit-in? How do you get press attention? What police tactics can you anticipate? Where do you have lawyers waiting? Instead, Rev Lawson devoted the first few hours of the training inviting us into deep introspection. He opened a dialogue about love, and asked if we loved our opponents. My attitude was well-captured by Tina Turner: “what’s love got to do with it?”While I had viewed nonviolence as a strategy, Rev Lawson understood nonviolence as a way of life. He believed the principles and techniques he taught couldn’t work without this depth of commitment. You couldn’t win defectors to your side without taking the moral high ground, and you couldn’t convincingly fake love for any length of time.We spent the next few hours of the training on building discipline. How do you conduct yourself facing unimaginable pressure and violence? I remember him inches from my face, calling me names and threatening me, trying to provoke a reaction. At the end, he assessed our performance. Did we manifest love, even to our opponents? Did we maintain the composure under fire that he demanded? With a glance, he let me know that I had done much better with discipline than with love. I’d been resolutely nonviolent, but was obviously smoldering inside.Rev Lawson was teaching us the art and science of nonviolent disruption. This is the hidden electric current that has powered the great episodes of American progress. WEB Du Bois explained that it was enslaved people themselves, and not white northerners, who broke the back of the plantation economy and won their own freedom by engaging in a loosely coordinated “general strike” that fatally damaged the southern cause. In more recent decades, the United Farm Workers’ grape boycott of 1965 and strikes by teachers in 2018 and autoworkers in 2024 are iconic examples of nonviolent disruption that delivered results.Disruption differs from protest in a key sense. Where protests are designed to capture attention, Rev Lawson constantly reminded us that disruption is not always loud and noisy. Sometimes it involves sitting where you’re not supposed to, not buying what you usually do, or not showing up for work. The point is that disruption must exact real economic or political costs on authoritarians and their collaborators.During the early days of the administration, we have already seen such methods yield results. Take the ongoing boycott of Target over its diversity, equity and inclusion policy rollback, which has depressed the chain’s foot traffic and stock price, or the widespread disavowal of Tesla, resulting in a worldwide sales crisis for Elon Musk’s once-trendy automaker. Or look at the Los Angeles unified school district’s refusal to give federal immigration authorities access to the city’s schools.These acts of non-cooperation create friction, and friction slows the consolidation of authoritarianism. Each act of non-cooperation, of disruption, inspires others to use the power they have to throw sand in the gears.It’s an encouraging start. But there is more that must be done to revive the tools Rev Lawson, who died in 2024, left us for times such as these. I am inspired by an organization called Free DC, which is leading the way in revitalizing the lineage of nonviolence for this generation by training and organizing thousands of people across our nation’s capital to stand up for the capital city’s right to home rule, defend workers at federal agencies and protect immigrants. It is a fitting place to begin; Washington DC is still a colony and it is reeling from the firings of thousands of its residents, government workers, without cause.To meet the moment, it will be crucial to scale the work of organizations like FreeDC across the nation and train tens of thousands more in the proud nonviolent tradition that Rev Lawson and his fellow civil rights pioneers left us.View image in fullscreenThousands of people have descended on town hall meetings around the country opposing cuts to Medicaid, which provides essential healthcare and elder care to nearly 80 million people. Some of those showing up are members of unions, community groups and disability groups. Others are people who have never taken action before for whom Congress’s decision is a matter of life and death. Camilla Hudson came to Washington DC to defend Medicaid because she has an autoimmune disease that requires expensive treatments. She explained that without prescription drug coverage, “it’s terrifying … I would have to leave the US because I will die here.”These people may have voted for Trump, for Harris or not at all in 2024. Medicaid is even more important to people in red states than blue states. Most of them would not show up to a rally to defend the rule of law, but they are highly motivated by an issue that hits close to home. The activism is having a huge impact as some unlikely voices in Congress – who have been otherwise loath to break from the administration – openly declare their opposition to cuts.Meanwhile, thousands of people around the country have mobilized to protect their immigrant co-workers, co-parishioners and neighbors. The upswelling of support in Los Angeles, for example, includes union members, people of faith and relatives of immigrants who were not active before the recent raids.This is what it means to de-legitimize – and it goes hand in hand with disruption. De-legitimization, the process of driving down public support for authoritarian policies, recognizes that an administration with policies polling in the 20s or low 30s will be less able to execute its agenda or prevail in the courts than a government whose policies are supported broadly by the public.The goal is to win over everyday people through organizing, helping them understand the connections between the challenges they’re facing and the harmful actions of the administration. This process will ideally help people identify authoritarian strategies, allowing them to better resist propaganda. If done well, organizing can also serve to strengthen citizens’ commitment to democratic principles by offering them an experience of democracy in practice each day, rather than as a quadrennial abstraction.To this end, the administration’s “flood the zone” attacks on so many cornerstones of American life offer not only the biggest organizing imperative, but also the biggest organizing opportunity of our lifetimes. We must harness the power of the many millions of Americans who now feel under threat, including older Americans, veterans, the US-citizen children and spouses of immigrants, the parents of disabled and trans kids, and the large number of people who would be affected by cuts to Medicaid, including patients and medical workers. To name a few.Unexpected constituencies are raising their voices. Take scientists, who have long sought to protect their research by staying away from politics. Recognizing that the administration’s actions are not only undermining their own work but destroying the scientific enterprise for a generation, they are speaking out and even organizing marches of their own.Perhaps the greatest organizing challenge facing the pro-democracy coalition in the US will be bridging between the largely middle-class constituency that is fired up about attacks on the rule of law and the largely working-class base that is focused on kitchen table issues – not on a system that hasn’t been working for them. Without the latter group, the coalition will not be big enough to succeed.We must not be seen to be working to restore a broken system, but rather to transform it through a new vision, with accompanying policy goals. That may include, for example, campaigns for workers’ rights to help dissolve the unnatural bond between billionaires and some blue-collar voters that fuels the authoritarian coalition.We must develop and demonstrate alternatives that people will believe in.View image in fullscreenDisruption and de-legitimization lead to the third key objective: drawing defectors. These efforts must be targeted across the ideological spectrum and they must be achieved at two levels: that of institutions and individuals. Authoritarians rely on support, whether passive or active, from key pillars of society: corporations, churches, police and media outlets, among others. Under pressure, institutions like law firms and Columbia University shamefully moved from neutrality to active collaboration with authoritarianism.It does not have to be this way. Harvard’s recent decision to challenge the administration in court is an example of institutional defection, moving from the sidelines to active opposition. It did not happen by accident. Harvard’s action was the culmination of a massive behind-the-scenes organizing campaign of faculty, students, donors and alumni. Similar efforts are taking place across law firms, foundations and other universities.Employees have considerable leverage when it comes to winning defections at scale among businesses, faith institutions, tech companies, the military and law enforcement. They can push their institutions to not “obey in advance” and instead openly resist authoritarianism. Many individuals across the country who are concerned about the advance of authoritarianism forget the power they can wield over the institutions they are a part of. Now is the time to use it.It is also necessary to win defections at the level of everyday people. Consider the example of Women of Welcome, a group of evangelicals who educate and engage other Christians on issues related to immigrants and refugees. This group recently led a delegation of evangelical women to the southern US border to provide aid to asylum seekers and listen to their stories. They are not progressives – but they are taking a strong public stand for immigrants and recruiting their neighbors in communities that have been broadly receptive to the Trump administration’s xenophobic appeals.In seeking to build a pro-democracy coalition, members of the opposition must resist the impulse to write off, shame or expel those with whom they have disagreed in the past and may still disagree on many important issues. The imperative of defeating authoritarianism must supersede internecine fights or purity tests. It is essential to talk to everyone.Embodying the moral character taught by civil rights leaders like Rev Lawson – acting nonviolently and showing love to those on the other side – will be vital in creating the kind of attractive, welcoming gateway for defectors to join the movement. Doing so will help to create a pro-democracy majority that extends beyond our traditional allies in the progressive movement.I may finally grasp what Rev Lawson meant when he said that love is our secret weapon. When a mom and her three school-aged children were detained by Ice in the small upstate New York town of Sackets Harbor (ironically, the home of Tom Homan, the administration’s immigration enforcement “czar”), public school teachers and administrators swung into action, engaging in aggressive advocacy. These educators may or may not have been politically engaged before, but their care for their students moved them to take a stand, speak up and choose opposition over collaboration. They won – the mom and kids are free as a result of their courage.View image in fullscreenWe face considerable obstacles in trying to prevent the consolidation of authoritarianism in the United States. But the truth is that they are smaller than those encountered by prior generations. The freedom rides, orchestrated in part by Rev Lawson, are now iconic, but we forget the violence that riders encountered in the process. Following the successful Birmingham campaign to win desegregation in 1963, four little Black girls were killed in the 16th Street Baptist church bombing. The next year, civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were the victims of a deadly KKK conspiracy in Mississippi.Yes, the physical threats to judges, politicians, election officials and citizens in the United States are real. Yes, immigrants have been taken off the streets and held without due process. Fortunately, as worrying as this week’s troop deployment to California should be to all of us, we still have a precious window of time to organize and dissent openly. We can take hope from cases around the world when everyday people have made that choice in large numbers.U-turns happen. Scholars have found that 73% of episodes of authoritarian breakthrough around the world in the last 30 years have been followed by democratic revivals. Sometimes, those revivals bring about an even stronger democracy than what came before. But U-turns aren’t self-executing. And the time to act is limited – comparable cases like India and Hungary suggest that if authoritarianism is not effectively challenged in the first couple of years, it can deepen and become the new normal for a decade or more.Our aspiration cannot be to return to the before times. The rotten fruit of authoritarianism grew in the soil of obscene inequality and insufficiently democratic institutions. We must therefore not only oppose autocracy, but propose something better – democratic alternatives that are ready to go if we can awaken from this nightmare.Rev Lawson and his contemporaries did not promise an easy path. Millions of us will have to reckon honestly with our current reality. We will need to make the choice to act. We will need to contribute our time, talent and money strategically. We will have to tap deep reservoirs of courage and love we didn’t know we had. Rev Lawson’s key teaching was hopeful: if we do those things, we can get free.
Deepak Bhargava has been an organizer and campaigner for 30 years and is the co-author of Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World. He currently serves as the president of the Freedom Together Foundation and the Movement Action Fund More
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Americans disagree on much – but this week, we have been coming together | Robert Reich
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 June 2025, 11:00
We are relearning the meaning of “solidarity”. This week, across the US, people have been coming together.We may disagree on immigration policy, but we don’t want a president deploying federal troops in our cities when governors and mayors say they’re not needed.We may disagree on how laws should be enforced, but we don’t want federal agents to arbitrarily abduct people off our streets or at places of business or in courthouses and detain them without any process to determine if such detention is justified.Or target hardworking members of our community. Or arrest judges. Or ship people off to brutal prisons in foreign lands.We may disagree on questions of freedom of speech, but we don’t think people should be penalized for peacefully expressing their views.We may disagree on the federal budget, but we don’t believe a president should spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on a giant military parade designed in part to celebrate himself.As we resist Donald Trump’s tyranny, America gains in solidarity. As we gain solidarity, we feel more courageous. As we feel courageous and stand up to the president, we weaken him and his regime. As we weaken Trump and his regime, we have less to fear.In downtown Kansas City, Missouri, this week, protesters holding signs reading “solidarity” marched peacefully. “I felt it was my right and my duty to come here – as what I had to go through to come here, and yell, and say I went through the system,” one of them told the local channel KSHB.In Denver, a crowd gathered outside the Colorado state capitol peacefully marched in solidarity with Los Angeles protesters, carrying flags and signs with slogans such as “Abolish ICE,” “No human is illegal” and “Keep the immigrants. Deport the fascists!”In downtown Tucson, people gathered at the Garcés Footbridge to show their solidarity. Reminders of the protest were written in chalk on sidewalks: “No one is illegal on stolen land,” “Love over Hate” and “Free Our Families.”In Boston, they gathered outside of the Massachusetts state house to express solidarity, citing two local students who they said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) abducted and detained for no reason, Rümeysa Öztürk and Marcelo Gomes da Silva.In Sioux City, Iowa, they marched along Singing Hills Boulevard, outside the Ice office, to peacefully protest. One of them, Zayden Reffitt, said: “We’re showing people that we’re not going to be silent and we’re not just going to let all this go through without us saying something about it.”In Chicago, thousands marched through the Loop, creating a standstill on DuSable Lake Shore Drive near Grant Park. As one explained: “I’m a first-generation citizen – my parents were born in Mexico. It’s something I’m super passionate about. My family is safe, but there are many who aren’t. This is impacting our community, and we need to stand up for those who can’t speak up for themselves.”In Des Moines, they rallied peacefully at Cowles Commons in solidarity with others. “We’re here to stand up for members of our community. For immigrants. For migrants. For refugees. For people with disabilities. For people on Medicaid. For seniors. For all the working class, because we are all under attack right now,” said one. “And Trump is trying to scapegoat immigrants and make them the enemy, calling them criminals.”In Austin, Texas, they gathered in front of the Texas capitol, holding flags and signs while chanting: “Whose streets? Our streets.” Authorities used pepper spray and teargas against the protesters and arrested more than a dozen of them, the governor, Greg Abbott, said.In San Antonio, hundreds gathered outside city hall, chanting, “People united will never be divided!” and holding signs that read, “No human is illegal” and “I’m speaking for those who can’t.”It was much the same in Sacramento; Raleigh, North Carolina; St Louis and in hundreds of other cities.All across the US, people who have never before participated in a demonstration are feeling compelled to show their solidarity – with immigrants who are being targeted by Trump, with people who are determined to preserve due process and the rule of law, with Americans who don’t want to live in a dictatorship.Peaceful protests don’t get covered by the national media. Most of the people who come together in places such as Des Moines and Kansas City to express their outrage at what Trump is doing aren’t heard or seen by the rest of us.Yet such solidarity is the foundation of the common good. And although the number of people expressing it is still relatively small, it is growing across the land.This is the silver lining on the dark Trumpian cloud.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More
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‘No Kings’ protests across US loom over Trump’s military parade
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 June 2025, 08:00
As tanks and soldiers parade through the streets of Washington on Saturday, millions of people around the country are expected to turn out in their communities to speak out against the excesses of Donald Trump’s administration in what’s expected to be the biggest day of protest since his second term began.The protests, dubbed “No Kings”, are set to take place throughout Saturday in about 2,000 sites nationwide, from big cities to small towns. A coalition of more than 100 groups have joined to plan the protests, which are committed to a principle of nonviolence.This week, Trump has deployed national guard and US marine troops to Los Angeles to crack down on protesters who have demonstrated against his ramped-up deportations, defying state and local authorities in a show of military force that hasn’t been seen in the US since the civil rights era. Interest in the Saturday protests has risen as a result, organizers said.Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, deployed his state’s national guard to manage protests ahead of No Kings and amid ongoing demonstrations against Trump’s immigration agenda. In Florida, Republican governor Ron DeSantis said that people could legally run over protesters with their cars if they were surrounded. “You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida,” he said.A website for the protest cites Trump’s defying of the courts, mass deportations, attacks on civil rights and slashing of services as reasons for the protests, saying: “The corruption has gone too far. No thrones. No crowns. No kings.”The coalition will not hold a protest in Washington DC – an intentional choice to draw contrast with the military parade and to not give the president an excuse to crack down on peaceful protest. Philadelphia will host a flagship march instead, and a DC-based organization is hosting a “DC Joy Day” in the district that will “celebrate DC’s people, culture, and our connections to one another”.Trump initially said people who protested the parade would be met with “very big force”, though the White House then attempted to clarify he was fine with peaceful protest. Asked about the No Kings protests during a White House event on Thursday, Trump said: “I don’t feel like a king. I have to go through hell to get things approved.”Since the start of his second term, opposition to Trump has grown, manifesting in protests and demonstrations including against Elon Musk at his car company, against deportations, around his retribution agenda and government cuts.Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium, which tracks political crowds, found that there had been three times as many protests by the end of March 2025 compared to 2017, during Trump’s first term, and that was before major protests in April and May. The biggest day of protest so far came on April 5, with “Hands Off”, which the consortium estimated drew as many as 1.5 million people, a lower figure than organizers cited.“Overall, 2017’s numbers pale in comparison to the scale and scope of mobilization in 2025 – a fact often unnoticed in the public discourse about the response to Trump’s actions,” a new analysis from the consortium said. More
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Trump is deeply obsessed with US history – but he has learned all the wrong lessons from it | David Reynolds
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 June 2025, 05:00
Today the US army will parade in style along the National Mall in Washington DC to celebrate its 250th anniversary. This also just happens to be the 79th birthday of President Donald J Trump. As commander-in-chief, he will take the salute from a viewing platform on Constitution Avenue.But this is not a mere vanity project, as some critics have claimed. History really matters to the US’s 47th president. One of Trump’s last acts before reluctantly leaving the White House in January 2021 was to publish a report by his “1776 Commission”, created to “restore understanding of the greatness of the American Founding”. Deliberately, the commissioners included few university historians because universities were described as often being “hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that combine to generate in students and in the broader culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright hatred for this country”.The 1776 Commission demanded a return to truly “patriotic education”, declaring: “We must resolve to teach future generations of Americans an accurate history of our country so that we all learn and cherish our founding principles once again. We must renew the pride and gratitude we have for this incredible nation that we are blessed to call home.”In this spirit, on 2 May this year, the president posted that he was renaming 8 May and 11 November respectively as “Victory Day for World War II and Victory Day for World War I” because “we won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance”, and it was time for the US to “start celebrating our victories again!”The parade on 14 June is also intended to raise the curtain on a spectacular nationwide celebration of the 250th anniversary of US independence, extending right across the country and culminating on 4 July 2026. According to the White House website, one feature will be a video history series that “tells the remarkable story of American Independence. It will highlight the stories of the crucial characters and events that resulted in a small rag-tag army defeating the mightiest empire in the world and establishing the greatest republic ever to exist.”History on parade, indeed. As is often the case, Trump does start with a valid point. After he witnessed the extravaganza of Bastille Day in 2017, where French and American troops marched down the Champs-Élysées to celebrate the centenary of the US’s entry into the first world war, he was determined to stage a parade of his own. So what’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t countries be proud of their past?OK (if you don’t mind the cost). But pride should be rooted in honesty, especially when Nato in Europe is engaged in a proxy war in Ukraine against Vladimir Putin, a systematic falsifier of history. And if we’re trying to be honest, world wars aren’t like the World Series with one country trumping all the others and winning almost single-handedly.Take the second world war. On 3 May this year, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev dismissed Trump’s claims as “pretentious nonsense”, asserting that “Victory Day is ours and it is 9 May. So it was, so it is, so it will always be!” Medvedev is now an obedient Putinist, but he and other Russians rightly point to their huge losses in 1941-45 – roughly 27 million people. Stated differently, in the three years from June 1941 to June 1944, between Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union and the D-day landings in Normandy, more than 90% of the German army’s battle casualties (killed, wounded, missing and prisoners) were inflicted by the Red Army. That puts Alamein and Tunis, Anzio and the liberation of Rome into a different perspective.View image in fullscreenYet Americans can rightly say that they were in a league of their own as a “superpower” – a word coined in 1944 to signify “great power and great mobility of power”. Their huge C-47 transport planes and the B-17 and B-24 bombers allowed the US to wage war right across the world. Their modern fleets of aircraft carriers, built to avenge Pearl Harbor, island-hopped across the Pacific to Japan itself. The Pacific war ended with the firebombing of Tokyo and the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Or consider the speed of the remarkable breakout from Normandy that enabled allied armies to liberate Brussels on 3 September 1944, occupying positions they had not expected to reach until May 1945. When an astonished Winston Churchill asked how the GIs were being fed and supplied, US general Omar Bradley said he was running trucks up to the front “bumper to bumper, 24 hours a day”. Ford delivered the goods.But Britain also played a crucial part in victory. Had our embattled island gone the same way as Scandinavia, France and the Low Countries in the summer of 1940, Hitler would have thrown all his resources against the Soviet Union, while Roosevelt’s US would probably have turned in on itself and concentrated on defending the western hemisphere. Instead, a combination of Churchillian leadership, modern fighters linked to the new Chain Home system of radar and the courage of the RAF pilots managed to keep Hitler at bay. Eventually, Britain became the essential supply base and launchpad for the liberation of Hitler’s Fortress Europe.And so in 1944-45, the allied armies converged on Germany from east, west and south. Of course, it was an unholy alliance, animated by divergent aims and values. But the extermination of nazism was a goal all the allies shared.With this in mind, let’s glance back to the US’s most important victory: independence. Yes, this was in large measure a David v Goliath story of “a small rag-tag army defeating the mightiest empire in the world”. The US’s independence was indeed testimony to George Washington’s leadership and his troops’ courage and resilience (reinforced by his insistence on inoculation against the smallpox epidemic). But this was also a world war as the British empire battled against its global foes. Crucially, by the 1780s Britain lost naval supremacy because (unusually) three rival seapowers had combined against it: France, Spain and the Dutch. It was blockade by the French fleet that forced Lord Cornwallis’s historic surrender at Yorktown in 1781 and British acceptance of American independence.The purpose of historical research is to set events in context, not to boost national pride. The story of the US’s founding, like that of Hitler’s defeat, reminds us that allies matter – in the past, the present and the future. That should not be forgotten when history goes on parade.
David Reynolds’s most recent book is Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the leaders who shaped him. He co-hosts the Creating History podcast More
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Mahmoud Khalil: US judge denies release of detained Palestinian activist
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 June 2025, 01:42
A federal judge declined to order the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a setback for the former Columbia University student days after a major ruling against the Trump administration’s efforts to keep him detained.Khalil, a green-card holder who has not been charged with a crime, is one of the most high-profile people targeted by the US government’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism. Despite key rulings in his favor, Khalil has been detained since March, missing the birth of his son.His advocates were hopeful earlier in the week that he was close to walking free. On Wednesday, Judge Michael E Farbiarz ruled the Trump administration could no longer detain Khalil on the basis of claims that he posed a threat to US foreign policy. The federal judge in New Jersey said efforts to deport him based on those grounds were likely unconstitutional.Farbiarz had given the US government until Friday morning to appeal against the order, which the Trump administration did not do. Khalil’s lawyers then argued he must be released immediately, but the government said it would keep him detained in a remote detention facility in Louisiana. The administration argued it was authorized to continue detaining him based on alternative grounds – its allegations that he lied on his green-card application.On Friday, Farbiarz said Khalil’s lawyers had failed to present enough evidence that detention based on the green-card claims was unlawful, suggesting attorneys for the 30-year-old activist could seek bail from a Louisiana immigration judge.Khalil’s have strongly rejected the government’s assertions about problems with his green-card application, arguing the claims were a pretext to keep him detained.“Mahmoud Khalil was detained in retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian rights,” Amy Greer, one of his attorneys, said in a statement on Friday evening.“The government is now using cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father’s Day as a family. Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in [immigration] detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians. It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.”Khalil has previously disputed the notion that he omitted information on his application.In a filing last week, he maintained he was never employed by or served as an “officer” of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, as the administration claims, but completed an internship approved by the university as part of his graduate studies.Khalil said he also stopped working for the British embassy in Beirut in December 2022, when he moved to the US, despite the administration’s claims that he had worked in the embassy’s Syria office longer.The Friday ruling prolonging his detention came the same day a group of celebrity fathers filmed a video reading Khalil’s letter to his newborn son. The Father’s Day campaign, published by the American Civil Liberties Union, called for Khalil’s freedom and included actors Mark Ruffalo, Mahershala Ali, Arian Moayed and Alex Winter.Earlier in the week, when there was a ruling in Khalil’s favor, Dr Noor Abdalla, his wife, released a statement, saying: “True justice would mean Mahmoud was never taken away from us in the first place, that no Palestinian father, from New York to Gaza, would have to endure the painful separation of prison walls like Mahmoud has. I will not rest until Mahmoud is free.”Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has previously claimed Khalil must be expelled because his continued presence would harm American foreign policy, an effort that civil rights advocates said was a blatant crackdown on lawful free speech. More
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Trump news at a glance: Marines arrive in LA and Republicans back Israel on attacking Iran
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 June 2025, 01:12
About 200 US marines arrived in Los Angeles on Friday morning and detained a man soon after in the first known detention by active-duty troops since their deployment.Marines also took charge of a federal building in a rare domestic use of US troops after days of protests over immigration raids.Federal troops continued to be on duty in LA’s streets on Friday after a series of court rulings and more arrived, with large protests planned in California and across the country this weekend against the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration raids and a big military parade in Washington DC.Here’s our round-up of key Trump stories of the day:Hundreds of marines arrive in LA US marines deployed to Los Angeles on Friday temporarily detained a civilian, the US military confirmed, in the first known detention by active-duty troops deployed there by Donald Trump. Reuters images showed marines apprehending a man, restraining his hands with zip ties and then handing him over to civilians from the Department of Homeland Security. A US military spokesperson said active-duty forces “may temporarily detain an individual in specific circumstances”.Read the full storyRepublicans back Israeli attack on IranDonald Trump and Republicans in Washington on Friday cheered Israel for carrying out long-threatened strikes on Iran. But several Democrats accused the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of deliberately sabotaging talks to peacefully resolve the question of Tehran’s nuclear program.Read the full storyJudge blocks Trump order to require proof of citizenship to voteA second federal judge has rejected parts of Donald Trump’s executive order on elections, dealing another blow to the president’s directive that would require proof of citizenship to vote in US elections.Read the full storyTrump parade to produce planet-heating pollution costsDonald Trump’s military parade this weekend will bring thousands of troops out to march – and will also produce more than 2m kilograms of planet-heating pollution, equivalent to the amount created by producing 67m plastic bags or the energy used to power about 300 homes in one year, according to a review by a progressive thinktank and the Guardian.Read the full storyÁbrego García pleads not guilty to human smuggling chargesKilmar Ábrego García, the man returned to the United States last week after being wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador, pleaded not guilty on Friday to criminal charges of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle migrants into the US.Read the full storyTrump loses bid to overturn $5m damages award to E Jean CarrollThe president has lost his latest legal attempt to challenge the $5m in damages awarded against him for defaming E Jean Carroll, the New York writer who a jury found was sexually abused by Trump in the 1990s, before he embarked on his political career.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
Trump pulled the US government from a historic agreement to recover the salmon population in the Pacific north-west, calling the plan “radical environmentalism”.
Democrats are demanding the acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforce civil rights protections for transgender and nonbinary people.
A Republican member of South Carolina’s state house has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of distributing sexual abuse material involving children.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 12 June 2025. More

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