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      Trump news at a glance: reports of IRS data deal spark fears for undocumented migrant workers

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      The US Internal Revenue Service is reportedly nearing a deal to allow immigration officials to use tax data to support Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.Under the proposed data-sharing agreement, said to have been in negotiations for weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) could hand over the names and addresses of undocumented immigrants to the IRS, raising concerns about abuse of power from the Trump administration and the erosion of privacy rights.If access to this confidential database is agreed on, it would mark a significant shift, likely becoming the first time immigration officials have relied on the tax system for enforcement assistance in such a sweeping way.Under the agreement, the IRS would cross-reference names of undocumented immigrants with their confidential taxpayer databases, a move that would breach the long-standing trust in the confidentiality of tax information. Such data has historically been considered sensitive and thereby closely guarded, so the reported deal has raised alarm bells at the IRS, according to the Washington Post.Here are the key US politics story from Sunday:IRS nears deal with Ice to share data of undocumented immigrants – reportsThe potential shift in taxpayer data use, from once being used to rarely build criminal cases to now reportedly becoming instrumental in enforcing criminal penalties, aligns with many of the more aggressive immigration policies Trump is pursuing.Read the full storyAnger in Greenland over visits this week by Usha Vance and Mike WaltzUsha Vance, the wife of US vice-president JD Vance, will travel to Greenland this week as President Donald Trump clings to the idea of the US annexing the strategic, semi-autonomous Danish territory.Vance will visit Greenland on Thursday with a US delegation to tour historical sites, learn about the territory’s heritage and attend the national dogsled race, the White House said in a statement.Read the full story‘I’m not stepping down’: Chuck Schumer defies Democrats’ calls over funding billChuck Schumer rejected calls to give up the top Democratic position in the Senate after he voted for Republicans’ funding bill to avoid a government shutdown, saying on Sunday: “I’m not stepping down.”Schumer has faced a wave of backlash from Democrats over his decision to support the Republican-led bill, with many Democrats alleging that the party leader isn’t doing enough to stand up to Donald Trump’s agenda.Read the full storyBernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the courage to brawl for the working classBernie Sanders is not running for president. But he is drawing larger crowds now than he did when he was campaigning for the White House.The message has hardly changed. Nor has the messenger, with his shock of white hair and booming delivery. What’s different now, the senator says, is that his fears – a government captured by billionaires who exploit working people – have become an undeniable reality and people are angry.Read the full storyTrump’s defiance of court orders is ‘testing the fences’ of the rule of lawDonald Trump’s second administration has shown an “unprecedented degree of resistance” to adverse court rulings, experts say, as part of a forceful attack on the American judiciary which threatens to undermine the rule of law, undercut a co-equal branch of government and weaken American democracy.Read the full storyThe Trump administration is descending into authoritarianismTrump’s breach of the justice department’s traditional independence last week was neither shocking nor surprising. His speech quickly faded from the fast and furious news cycle. But future historians may regard it as a milestone on a road leading the world’s oldest continuous democracy to a once unthinkable destination.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Three major wildfires that broke out in one North Carolina county still recovering from Hurricane Helene have exploded to burn more than 3,000 acres combined as South Carolina’s governor declared an emergency in response to a growing wildfire in the Blue Ridge mountains.

      Bald eagle that went viral for incubating a rock dies after fierce storms in Missouri. Murphy, who lived to 33, took in the rock in 2023 and tried to hatch it, captivating hearts, and later fostered two eaglets.

      Luigi Mangione lawyer says arrest flaws invalidate evidence – but will it work? Pennsylvania attorney for suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson shooting claims police violated his client’s constitutional rights in arrest. More

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      IRS nears deal with Ice to share data of undocumented immigrants – report

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      The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly nearing a deal to allow immigration officials to use tax data to support Donald Trump’s deportation agenda, according to reports by the Washington Post.Under the proposed data-sharing agreement, said to have been in negotiations for weeks, Immigration And Customs Enforcement (Ice) could hand over the names and addresses of undocumented immigrants to the IRS, raising concerns about abuse of power from the Trump administration and the erosion of privacy rights.If access to this confidential database is agreed upon, it would mark a significant shift, likely becoming the first time immigration officials have relied on the tax system for enforcement assistance in such a sweeping way.Under the agreement, the IRS would cross-reference names of undocumented immigrants with their confidential taxpayer databases, a move that would breach the long-standing trust in the confidentiality of tax information. Such data has historically been considered sensitive and thereby closely guarded, so the reported deal has raised alarm bells at the IRS, according to the Washington Post.The IRS website says that undocumented immigrants “are subject to US taxes despite their illegal status”, and because most are unable to get social security numbers, the agency allows them to file with individual taxpayer numbers, known as ITINs. The agency also subjects them to the same reporting and withholding obligations as it does to US citizens who receive the same kind of income. More than half of the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US file income tax returns to document their payments to the government.While the IRS mandates that taxpayer information is protected, section 6103 on the agency’s website outlines that “under court order, return information may be shared with law enforcement agencies for investigation and prosecution of non-tax criminal laws.” However, sources familiar with the matter told the Washington Post that it would be rare for these privacy law exceptions to be weaponized for cooperation with immigration enforcement and that this is outside of standard procedure.The potential shift in taxpayer data use, from once being used to rarely build criminal cases to now reportedly becoming instrumental in enforcing criminal penalties, aligns with many of the more aggressive immigration policies Trump is pursuing.During his campaign, Trump promised to deport millions of undocumented people in the US, and the reports of this new deal shine a light on how he is planning on doing so. Since becoming president, he has ended legal pathways for immigrants to come and stay in the US.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Friday they would revoke the temporary legal status of more than 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicararguans and Venezuelans, and Ice raids and enforcement operations have been commonplace in major cities across the US – like Chicago and New York – with high immigrant populations.And on Sunday, members of the Trump administration defended using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law, to deport the 137 Venezuelan migrants last weekend on the grounds that they were committing violent crimes and sending money back to Venezuela. The administration deported the migrants despite a judge’s verbal orders telling them not to do so.The border czar Tom Homan said in an interview with ABC News that the administration would not defy court orders stemming from legal challenges over its invocation of the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport the alleged Venezuelan gang members.“I don’t care what the judges think as far as this case,” Homan told ABC, referring to a federal judge’s efforts to determine whether the administration already ignored an earlier order to temporarily halt deportations.The attorney general, Pam Bondi, also addressed the deportations in an interview with Fox News on Sunday, calling the fight against the alleged gang members was akin to “modern day warfare”. More

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      ‘I’m not stepping down’: Chuck Schumer defies Democrats’ calls over funding bill

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      Chuck Schumer defied calls to give up the top Democratic position in the Senate after he voted for Republicans’ funding bill to avoid a government shutdown, saying on Sunday: “I’m not stepping down.”Schumer has faced a wave of backlash from Democrats over his decision to support the Republican-led bill, with many Democrats alleging that the party leader isn’t doing enough to stand up to Donald Trump’s agenda.Explaining his decision during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Schumer said: “I knew when I cast my vote against … the government shutdown … that there would be a lot of controversy.” He said that the funding bill “was certainly bad”, but maintained that a shutdown would have been 15 or 20 times worse.Schumer has argued that billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) would have used a shutdown to “eviscerate the federal government”, which he said would have been “devastating”.Schumer, describing his decision as a “vote of principle”, went on to say that as a leader: “You have to do things to avoid a real danger that might come down the curve. And I did it out of pure conviction as to what a leader should do and what the right thing for America and my party was. People disagree.”In response to whether he believes he is making the same mistake as Joe Biden did last year when he refused to move aside to allow for new Democratic leadership, Schumer said: “No, absolutely not,” adding, “Our caucus is united in fighting Donald Trump every step of the way. Our goal, our plan, which we’re united on, is to make Donald Trump the quickest lame duck in modern history by showing how bad his policies are.”Schumer’s latest pushback against calls for his resignation comes after Maryland representative Glenn Ivey became the first Democratic lawmaker this week to publicly call for Schumer’s resignation.Speaking to constituents at a town hall earlier this week, Ivey said: “I respect Chuck Schumer. I think he had a great career … But it may be time for Senate Democrats to get a new leader.”Meanwhile, the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized what she called an “acquiesce” by Schumer to the Republican-led bill after almost every single Democrat in the House voted against the Republican spending bill.“There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territory in the United States who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people,” she said.” Just to see Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk, I think, is a huge slap in the face.” More

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      Arizona’s execution pitted experts against politicians. Experts lost | Austin Sarat

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      On Wednesday, 19 March, Arizona executed Aaron Gunches by lethal injection. As ABC News reports, he was put to death for “kidnapping and killing 40-year-old Ted Price by shooting him four times in the Arizona desert”.Gunches’s case was unusual in many ways, not least that he stopped his legal appeals and volunteered to be executed, then changed his mind before changing it again. His execution was scheduled to be carried out almost two years ago. It was put on hold when the Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, commissioned an independent review of the state’s death penalty procedures after a series of botched executions.But over the last several months, she pushed hard to make sure Gunches died for his crime. She even fired the expert retired Judge David Duncan who she had chosen to do that review, before he could complete his report.Her decision to let Duncan go was shocking. At the time, she offered the following explanation: “Your review has, unfortunately, faced repeated challenges, and I no longer have confidence that I will receive a report from you that will accomplish the purpose and goals of the Executive Order that I issued nearly two years ago.”The governor also noted that the department of corrections, rehabilitation & reentry had conduct “a comprehensive review of prior executions and has made significant revisions to its policies and procedures”. But doubt about whether she could rely on a review conducted by the group which is in charge of the state’s executions in why she appointed Duncan in the first place.That is why I suspect that Hobbs tossed Duncan aside because she didn’t like the facts he was finding or the conclusions he seemed to be reaching.Facts are stubborn things, but, in our era, they can be tossed aside with little political cost and no regret. Why rely on expertise if it gets in the way of achieving a result you want to reach?Still, Hobbs’s unprecedented decision to “kill the messenger” was another low moment for a society increasing living by a line uttered by a newspaper editor in the classic movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”In the world of capital punishment, the “legend” to which politicians like Hobbs are attached is that it can make America a safer and more just place. They want us to believe that they embrace the death penalty to bring closure to family members of murder victims rather than to accrue political capital.Note what Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes said during a news conference following the execution: “An execution is the most serious action that the state takes, and I assure you that it is not taken lightly. Today, Arizona resumed the death penalty, and justice for Ted Price and his family was finally served.”After Gunches’s death, the sister of the man he murdered echoed that sentiment. Karen Price called the execution “the final chapter in a process that has spanned nearly 23 years”.Ted Price’s daughter added that Gunches’s death means that she will no longer have to revisit “the circumstances surrounding my father’s death” as she had to for over two decades of seemingly endless legal proceedings. “Today,” she said, “marks the end of that painful chapter, and I couldn’t be more grateful”.That chapter would not have ended if Governor Hobbs had been willing to listen to her own expert.Before being sacked, Judge Duncan prepared a draft of his report and wrote a letter to the governor’s office previewing his conclusions. He called lethal injection an unreliable method of execution and said: “Drug manufacturers don’t allow states to use the appropriate drugs.”Duncan had spent nearly two years reviewing Arizona’s use of lethal injections. As he explained, “Early on, I thought lethal injection would work. The more I learned about it I learned that that was a false hope.”Duncan told the governor that, in his view, using lethal injection was too risky. In his view, the best course would be for Arizona to adopt the firing squad because “it has the lowest botch rate.”That was not the news Hobbs hoped her expert would deliver, so she let Duncan go. It seems he just didn’t understand that she wanted him to ease the way toward a resumption of lethal injection executions rather than suggesting that the state should not execute anyone until it could adopt what he considered to be a better method.And Duncan was not the only one raising questions about Arizona’s resumption of lethal injection executions. Last January, law professor Corinna Lain, a leading expert on lethal injection, said: “The evidence is overwhelming that Arizona cannot lawfully carry out an execution by lethal injection at this time. Its pentobarbital protocol is sure or very likely to cause a tortuous death even in the best of circumstances.”She went on to say: “The circumstances here are far from optimal. The State is on the cusp of using an inexperienced, untrained team to inject likely expired drugs stored in unmarked mason jars that were produced by a company that does not make drugs for human consumption and that will be compounded by a pharmacy that the … (the state) itself has previously disavowed.”Disregarding expert knowledge is very much in fashion in many areas of American life, not just where the death penalty is concerned. The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols explains that “Trump allies make noises about expert failures … [and] demonize what its constituents believe was the medical establishment’s attempt to curtail civil rights during the coronavirus pandemic.” He argues that Elon Musk’s attack on civil servants is really an attack on the “very notion of apolitical expertise.”But, as Nichols explains, such doubt is not confined to Washington DC. It is found in the “homes of ordinary American families”. There, “knowledge of every kind is also under attack. Parents argue with their child’s doctor over the safety of vaccines. Famous athletes speculate that the world might actually be flat. College administrators ponder dropping algebra from the curriculum because students keep failing it.”So, it is not surprising that the attack on knowledge would infect decisions about how to end the lives of people condemned to death. Political leaders – including Democrats like Hobbs – know they can play into the burgeoning culture of disrespect for what experts have to say, so they dispense with Duncan and ignore Lain.The more publicly they display that disrespect, the more politically they can benefit.It wasn’t always this way when decisions had to be made about methods of execution. At the end of the 19th century, before New York decided to abandon hanging, the state convened a commission to consider and recommend alternatives.That commission sought out the best minds to help them make their decision. It chose the electric chair.The decision whether electrocution “would be by Alternating Current (AC) or Direct Current (DC)” was informed by a competition between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, both pioneers in the development of electricity.That was then. Today, as the Arizona example shows, such expertise does not govern the choice of execution methods.In the wake of the Gunches execution, Governor Hobbs and the “down with experts crowd” may feel vindicated because nothing seemed to have gone awry. But they should not rest easy, and neither should any of the 112 inmates on Arizona’s death row.Studies have shown that lethal injection has the worst track record of any method of execution used in the last century in this country. That is why it is only a matter of time before an execution in Arizona proves the folly of ignoring experts and the insights they offer. More

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      Trump’s defiance of court orders is ‘testing the fences’ of the rule of law

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      Donald Trump’s second administration has shown an “unprecedented degree of resistance” to adverse court rulings, experts say, part of a forceful attack on the American judiciary that threatens to undermine the rule of law, undercut a co-equal branch of government and weaken American democracy.The attacks, experts say, threaten one of the fundamental pillars of American government: that the judicial branch has the power to interpret the law and the other branches will abide by its rulings.The attack came to a head this week when the Trump administration ignored an order from US district judge James Boasberg to turn planes carrying deportees around. “I don’t care what the judges think,” Thomas Homan, charged with enforcing Trump’s deportation agenda, said in a Fox News television interview on Monday as the decision came under scrutiny. The next day, Trump called for Boasberg to be impeached, calling him a “radical left lunatic”.For months, the Trump administration has made it clear they believe they can ignore judicial orders. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” vice-president JD Vance tweeted on 9 February. Elon Musk, Trump’s top adviser, has repeatedly called for impeaching judges, and is donating to Republicans in Congress who have supported doing so. House Republicans have introduced resolutions to impeach Boasberg and four other judges who have ruled against Trump.Trump’s call for impeachment prompted a rare public rebuke from chief justice John Roberts, who said in a statement on Wednesday: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate process exists for that purpose.”Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University who studies the federal courts, said there was no parallel situation in American history. Trump officials, he said, were trying to see what they could get away with in front of federal judges.“They’re testing the fences in ways in which they can claim plausible deniability when congressional Republicans say, you can’t defy the courts,” he said. “Whether you call it a crisis or not, this is certainly an unprecedented degree of resistance on the part of the executive branch to adverse court rulings.”J Michael Luttig, a well-respected former conservative federal judge, said on MSNBC on Tuesday that “America is in a constitutional crisis”. “The president of the United States has essentially declared war on the rule of law in America,” he said.Luttig told the Guardian that he believed the US supreme court’s ruling last summer finding Trump had immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undergirded his attacks on the courts. “It is the reason for his emboldenment,” he said.During Trump’s first administration, the federal courts played a major role in constraining administration policies that violated the US constitution and federal law. Of the 246 cases litigated involving efforts to implement policies through federal agencies, the Trump administration won 54 cases and lost 192 cases or withdrew the actions, according to the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University.Since Trump’s second term began in January, more than a dozen judges have blocked his executive actions, including efforts to mass fire federal workers, freeze federal funding and end birthright citizenship.During the first Trump administration, Vladeck noted, officials appeared more willing to “go back to the drawing board” to rework policies after they had been halted by the courts to make them comply with the law, he said.“You saw a lot more effort to rationalize everything the administration was doing in law, as opposed to in power,” he said.The attack on the judiciary has not just included impeachment, but also has extended to personal attacks on judges, prompting concerns about their safety. Supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett’s sister received a hoax bomb threat, the New York Times reported. Some of the attacks have included sending pizza orders to the homes of judges and family members as a way of threatening jurists that the public knows where they live.Another judge, John Coughenour of the western district court in Washington, told the Times he had been the victim of a “swatting” attempt in which law enforcement descended on his home after he blocked a Trump administration order ending birthright citizenship.Unlike politicians and public figures, judges are prohibited from speaking out on political matters and saying anything about a case that could give the impression they are biased. That leaves them unable to correct misinformation and respond to attacks against them.“It is difficult when you’re in a position where you can’t necessarily traditionally respond to what you think might be unfair and unwarranted attacks,” said Esther Salas, a federal district judge in New Jersey who has been outspoken about the need for protections for jurists after an unhappy litigant killed her son in 2020 and shot her husband at their home.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I will tell you that judges are human, just like everybody else. We have emotions, we have fears, we have concerns for our family members and for our own safety,” she said. “It does impact a judicial officer.”Judges have some tools at their disposal to force compliance with their orders. They can sanction attorneys, or if a party refuses to comply with a directive, a judge can issue civil or contempt orders. A civil contempt order, which could be something like a daily fine, punishes the non-compliant party until they adhere to a court ruling. Criminal contempt is more akin to a prosecution. In 2017, Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio after the former sheriff was found in criminal contempt of court.Federal courts also depend on US marshals, who are part of the justice department to enforce their rulings, prompting concerns Trump could interfere with their functioning.Indeed, Boasberg has already asked the Trump administration to “show cause” as to why the administration did not comply with his ruling to turn around the plane.But a motion of contempt and a finding of one often comes at the end of a long legal process and there can be long legal disputes about whether a party is actually complying with a court order.When a court blocked the Trump administration’s freeze of federal funds, for example, there was evidence the administration was not complying. The 22 states that sued filed a motion to enforce the court’s ruling, which they won, and were considering asking for a contempt order, but ultimately decided not to, Letitia James, the New York attorney general, one of the state attorneys general involved in the suit, said on Thursday.“We were considering a motion for contempt, but there was some explanations that they provided to us,” she said. They went ahead with the motion to enforce, which released the remaining funds, she told reporters at an event on Thursday.Vladeck speculated there were other actions courts could take if the Trump administration’s defiance reached a “break the glass moment”. The government, he said, relies on the federal courts for many things, including approving warrants and allowing criminal cases to proceed.“If noncompliance in case A led courts to be less likely to do the federal government’s bidding in case B, that’d be a real problem from the government’s perspective,” he said. The federal court in Washington , for example, could hypothetically dismiss all of the indictments the government brought out of hand. “That would be quite an escalation, but I think we’d be in response to quite a provocation.”But the larger point, Vladeck said, was that no one benefits from an unstable legal system in the United States. Economic markets depend on everyone being able to accept that the judgments of courts will be followed.“There’s no long-term political endgame that results from openly defying a judgment,” he said.Rachel Leingang contributed reporting More

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      The new definition of antisemitism is transforming America – and serving a Christian nationalist plan

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      View image in fullscreenIn 1919, Jacob Israël de Haan, an Orthodox Jewish queer poet and lawyer, arrived in British Mandate Palestine from the Netherlands. Despite his initial sympathies with Zionism, within a few years de Haan would become an outspoken critic of the movement. Driven by what he called a “natural feeling for justice”, he advocated for “another Jewish community in Palestine” – one that sought cooperation with the Arab-Palestinian community. His steadfast opposition to mainstream Zionism made de Haan a controversial figure, drawing the ire of Zionist leadership. On 30 June 1924, de Haan was assassinated by a member of the Zionist organization Haganah.This political assassination represented not merely the elimination of one man, but a portentous statement about which perspectives would be tolerated in the emerging political landscape. A century later, we are witnessing a similar troubling pattern. As attacks against universities and intimidation of Palestinian activists become ever more rife, those who challenge Zionist orthodoxy – whether out of political conviction, religious belief or ethical principle – face exclusion, vilification and worse. This time, the main tool is a sweeping legal redefinition of antisemitism in American law and policy.Something unprecedented – and deeply unsettling – is unfolding: under the guise of a legal redefinition of antisemitism, the basic architecture of American public life is being radically transformed. What appears, at first glance, to be a technical change in terminology has become a powerful instrument for political control, solidifying executive power to enforce a narrow, state-sanctioned definition of Judaism. In the name of combating antisemitism, this effort threatens to reshape American public life – and with it, the pillars of American liberalism. But despite what some will have you believe, two things are clear: first, this campaign does not protect Jews – it endangers them; and second, this redefinition plays into a larger Christian nationalist project.The clash over the definition of antisemitismFollowing the horrendous Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, and the subsequent war and utter destruction of Gaza, two sharply contrasting positions have emerged. On the one hand, many Jewish organizations and advocates have seen the emerging pro-Palestinian protest movement as a manifestation of antisemitism, a classic example of the over-scrutinization of Israel, and the denial of Israel’s right to defend itself.On the other hand, many critics of Israel and of Zionism argue against this conflation and in favor of their right to support the Palestinian struggle. For them, labeling anti-Israel positions as antisemitic is a way to silence dissenting opinions and to prevent an honest discussion of Israel’s actions in Gaza.Even before this clash entered the mainstream in the last year and a half, American decision-makers and institutions had already taken a clear side, framing anti-Israel positions as antisemitic. A landmark moment in the emergence of this new understanding of antisemitism is no doubt the 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has rapidly become a legal benchmark for defining antisemitism in the US and has a growing presence in both state and federal law.
      The redefinition of antisemitism isn’t simply a policy shift – it’s part of a deeper transformation of American democracy
      While the core definition makes no explicit mention of Israel, the examples of purported antisemitism that IHRA provides tell a different story. Among the illustrative cases, it notes that antisemitism “might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”. Other examples include “claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor”, and “[d]rawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”.Back in his first term, Donald Trump issued a 2019 executive order directing federal agencies to consider the IHRA definition when enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in federally funded programs, cementing this problematic standard. It has been formally adopted in multiple federal and state statutes, in which it is used to equate criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism. These laws have been applied in a range of legal and policy contexts – restricting free speech, shaping civil rights protections and even influencing the classification of hate crimes in state criminal codes.Trump’s January 2025 executive order on “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” marks a dangerous escalation in this trend. The order directs multiple federal agencies to “prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence”.Just days after the order, the administration slashed $400m in federal research funding from Columbia University over what it claimed was a systemic tolerance of antisemitic activity and demanded changes to the school’s policies – a move widely seen as retaliation for pro-Palestinian campus activism, to which Columbia has consented in an extraordinary surrender of its academic freedom. Similar threats have followed against numerous additional universities. In a recent chilling development, the Department of Homeland Security arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian permanent resident and student organizer whom the government is now seeking to deport, with more arrests promised. (Indeed, they have begun.) The redefinition of antisemitism isn’t simply a policy shift – it’s part of a deeper transformation of American democracy.We have never been secularNo doubt, proponents of the IHRA definition raise an important point. To understand why, we need to recognize something distinctive about Jewish identity: it has always been deeply political. Unlike modern Christianity, which developed alongside a strong liberal separation of church and state, Judaism has never drawn such a sharp line. Jewish identity has long resisted the tidy categories that liberal theory prefers – religious or secular, ethnic or political, private or public. From biblical times through the diaspora and into modernity, Jewish communities understood religious life not just as a set of spiritual beliefs but as the foundation of a political community. Jewish religious leadership traditionally held legal and political authority – issuing binding rulings on property, taxation, even criminal law. This isn’t a historical anomaly – it’s a defining feature of Jewish tradition. Zionism, despite the secular aspirations of many of its founders, built on this legacy by channeling the political dimension of Jewish identity into the framework of a modern nation-state.View image in fullscreenAccordingly, for many Jews, Israel is a crucial element of their Jewish identity. As Noah Feldman writes in To Be a Jew Today, for many American Jews, “Israel can function as the chosen focal point of their Jewish identity and connection. Caring about and supporting Israel can be constitutive of what makes them actively Jewish.” An attack on that element, a denial of its legitimacy, feels to many like an attack on who they are as Jews.But this does not necessarily cast anti-Israel opinions as antisemitic. When we criticize something important to someone’s identity, it doesn’t automatically mean we’re attacking their identity itself. When political positions become enshrined as essential components of personhood, substantive disagreements risk being recast as attacks on identity. The result, as the scholar Richard Ford once put it, is the potential to “camouflage” ideological conflict as discrimination.Take male circumcision – a ritual at the heart of Jewish tradition practiced by most Jewish families worldwide. When medical experts or rights advocates question circumcision based on concerns about bodily autonomy or health risks, most people understand they aren’t being antisemitic. No matter where they stand on circumcision, they recognize critics may be raising ethical questions that exist independently of Jewish identity. This same logic must apply to Israel. Criticizing Israeli policies may, for instance, reflect genuine concerns about human rights rather than prejudice against Jews, even as the criticism is directed at a defining feature of their Jewishness.The labeling of criticism against Israel as antisemitism has already worked to quash serious discussions on Israel-Palestine in the United States. Even Kenneth Stern, who drafted the original working definition, argued in an opinion piece for the Guardian that the IHRA definition has been weaponized against legitimate political expression.Silencing dissentFederal measures such as Trump’s 2019 executive order have fueled a wave of investigations by the Department of Education into universities over pro-Palestinian activism, pressuring administrators to police student speech. At NYU, political statements such as “Fuck Israel” have led to antisemitism charges against students. At Columbia, students faced disciplinary charges for acts as simple as hanging Palestinian flags from dorm windows or displaying them on campus statues, underscoring the growing constraints on Palestine-related activism in academic spaces. Relatedly, recently New York’s governor ordered Hunter College to remove a job posting for a Palestinian studies position, claiming the need to “ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom”. This interference with academic hiring marks a dangerous precedent.The pressure from federal and state authorities has led universities to internalize this surveillance logic. Last week, Columbia University unveiled an expansive compliance plan in response to the administration’s $400m funding cut, pledging stricter enforcement of student discipline, new security forces empowered to arrest demonstrators, mandatory identification checks at protests and a top-down review of academic programs, including scrutiny of hiring decisions and curricula. These measures reflect not only institutional capitulation, but the chilling normalization of ideological policing on campus.
      The new definition of antisemitism imposes a straitjacket of Zionist identity on American Jews
      A similar pattern extends to Congress, where lawmakers such as Rashida Tlaib have been formally censured with another censure effort against Ilhan Omar introduced over statements critical of Israel, in effect framing Palestinian advocacy as beyond the bounds of legitimate discourse. Meanwhile, many individuals have lost jobs, been denied opportunities, or faced disciplinary measures for expressing pro-Palestinian views or criticizing Israeli policy. This dynamic narrows the space for legitimate discussion on US foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The charge of antisemitism shifts the focus from Israel’s actions to the credibility of its critics. While combating antisemitism is imperative, the sweeping application of this label to pro-Palestinian voices endangers dissenting voices and erodes free expression, making open debate on one of the world’s most enduring conflicts increasingly difficult.View image in fullscreenBut that’s not the only problem with the new definition of antisemitism. By legally enshrining support for Israel as a defining characteristic of Jewish identity, the new definition of antisemitism imposes a straitjacket of Zionist identity on American Jews, in effect telling them that certain political positions are incompatible with being authentically Jewish. But, precisely because Jewish identity has always also been political, we should not be delegitimizing those whose Jewish identity entails a criticism or even outright rejection of ethno-national Judaism.The historical diversity of Jewish identityJewish communities have always been diverse and plural in their orientations toward Jewish nationality. From the ultra-Orthodox Satmar community that opposes Zionism on religious grounds to the socialist Jewish Bund that promoted cultural autonomy without a state, to current-day Jewish American organizations that oppose Israel’s occupation and military control over Palestinians, anti-Zionist and non-Zionist movements have always been central to Jewish identity.Many anti-Zionist Jews aren’t rejecting Jewish political life or denying Jews the right to self-determination. Rather, they’re expressing different visions of Jewish political existence and self-determination. Some of them view opposition to the state of Israel as emerging from Jewish values and traditions – whether stemming from religious beliefs about exile and redemption, or interpretations of Jewish ethical traditions that emphasize universal justice and opposition to oppression.In his recent book The No State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto, the religion scholar Daniel Boyarin reflects on how he moved from Zionism into anti-Zionism, with “my commitment to Jewish identity and identification, Torah study, scholarship, practice, literature and liturgy, and modes of speech and thinking undiminished, even growing stronger and stronger”. Criticism of Israel can stem from deep Jewish religious commitment.The real question, then, isn’t what the proper connection between Israel and Jewish identity is, but rather how to allow for multiple, sometimes competing interpretations of this relationship. By bootstrapping the definition of antisemitism to Israel, IHRA narrows the boundaries of legitimate Jewish identity. While Palestinians have been, without a doubt, the primary targets of this effort, it also takes aim at a rich Jewish tradition. It restricts the freedom of Jews to define their own identity, limiting the ways in which Jewish beliefs, thought and activism can be expressed.And indeed, on college campuses and in workplaces, Jews who express solidarity with Palestinians report being called “self-hating Jews”, “un-Jews” or “traitors” by fellow students or colleagues. In fact, just this month, Trump – our self-appointed arbiter of religious authenticity – announced that the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, is “not Jewish anymore”.Defining antisemitism in the service of conservative ChristiansSmearing progressive Jews as “not real Jews” has ramifications that extend far beyond the Jewish community, serving a conservative Christian strategy to exploit religious liberties for the sake of suppressing progressive values.In recent years the US supreme court has taken a sharp turn towards conservative Christianity, altering the basic liberal structure of American constitutionalism. The court has upheld religious claims challenging pandemic restrictions on gatherings and vaccination requirements, LGBTQ+ non-discrimination laws, and the separation of church and state in public education.This strengthens conservative Christian influence by transforming political views into constitutional protections – for example, when the supreme court ruled the constitution allowed a Catholic foster care agency to exclude same-sex couples on religious grounds. However, as David Schraub, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, has pointed out, this strategy faces a significant obstacle: progressive Jews. Progressive Jews, and any other group whose religious commitments might be threatened by conservative policies, could leverage the expansion of precisely these religious protections to opt out of conservative policy initiatives.
      This farcical performance of concern would merely be amusing were it not for the very real possibility that it serves as a prelude for persecution
      Progressive Jewish communities have already begun to challenge conservative policy agendas on religious freedom grounds – most notably around reproductive rights. In the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade and the wave of state-level abortion bans that followed, Jewish women, congregations and community leaders have filed lawsuits asserting that such bans violate their religious freedom. In some cases, plaintiffs have argued that Jewish law not only permits but may even require abortion under certain circumstances. While many of these cases are still pending, in a landmark ruling in April 2024, the Indiana court of appeals recognized, for the first time, the legitimacy of such claims.One way conservatives can eliminate this risk to their project is by questioning liberal Jews’ Jewishness. “If liberal Jews can be erased – either pushed out of the public eye or denied as genuine or authentic specimens of Judaism – then the challenge of liberal Jews disappears with it,” Schraub explains.This isn’t just a theoretical concern – it’s already happening. Project Esther, a new initiative launched by the Christian nationalist Heritage Foundation known for Project 2025, offers a blueprint for combating antisemitism that targets not only pro-Palestinian groups but what it calls a broader “coalition of leftist, progressive organizations” – including Jewish groups – through tools such as anti-terrorism prosecutions, deportations, public firings, and efforts to “disrupt and degrade” dissenting movements. Despite its use of Jewish religious language, the plan has virtually no Jewish authors and is riddled with basic errors, including misrepresentations of Jewish texts. It chastises American Jews who don’t align with its worldview, calling them “complacent” and their positions “inexplicable”.This farcical performance of concern would merely be amusing were it not for the very real possibility that it serves as a prelude for persecution.Reclaiming Jewish religious freedom from the stateThe increasingly aggressive use of “antisemitism” as a political instrument was never about Jewish safety. It has always been about power: consolidating a political order that merges religion, nationalism and authoritarianism under the veneer of minority protection.The ease with which progressive Jews have been thrown under the bus makes this painfully clear. Their erasure is not a side effect – it is the mechanism through which this agenda advances. Because once Jewish identity is defined from above – even with the active participation of some Jews – any Jew who resists can be disqualified and delegitimized. This was true for de Haan, and it is true today.The threat is immediate and ongoing. Already, whole sectors of society – educators, students, artists, political activists and immigrants – are paying the price. And if this continues, we can expect the same logic to be applied across a wider range of policies: tightening ideological control, redefining constitutional norms and re-engineering public institutions in the image of an authoritarian state.But there is another path. The unique position of progressive Jews offers a way to push back against the rise of the far right in the US, both with regard to Israel-Palestine, but also more broadly. Recognizing the unique harm caused to Jews by the new definition of antisemitism allows us to develop new ways to combat it.The establishment clause of the US constitution, for instance, prohibits the state from intervening in religious disputes. By adopting the IHRA definition into law, the US government has in effect taken sides in an intra-Jewish debate, recruiting Zionist Jews to side in a war against its ideological opponents. The redefinition of antisemitism is therefore not only an attack on political dissent – it is an intrusion into Jewish religious life. By codifying support for Israel as a requirement for being Jewish, these laws function as a state intervention in an ongoing Jewish theological and ethical debate.By pushing against the legal redefinition of antisemitism, Jews can refuse to surrender their identity to the state. By continuing to anchor it firmly in their communities, they can resist the instrumentalization of Judaism against others.Reclaiming religious freedom from the state, as part of this act of resistance, would not just protect Jewish dissenters – it would offer a broader framework for resisting state attempts to control religious identity. No government – not the Israeli government, and surely not the American government – should have the power to define what it means to be a Jew.

      This article was amended on 23 March 2025 to clarify that Ilhan Omar was not formally censured by Congress

      Itamar Mann is an associate professor of law at the University of Haifa, and currently a Humboldt fellow at Humboldt University. He holds a doctorate from Yale Law School

      Lihi Yona is an associate professor of law and criminology at the University of Haifa. She holds a doctorate from Columbia Law School. Her research focuses on antidiscrimination law in the United States and Israel
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      in US Politics

      Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the courage to brawl for the working class

      by

      Bernie Sanders is not running for president. But he is drawing larger crowds now than he did when he was campaigning for the White House.The message has hardly changed. Nor has the messenger, with his shock of white hair and booming delivery. What’s different now, the senator says, is that his fears – a government captured by billionaires who exploit working people – have become an undeniable reality and people are angry.“For years, I’ve talked about the concept of oligarchy as an abstraction,” Sanders, an independent who votes with Democrats and twice sought the party’s presidential nomination, said in an interview after a joint rally in Tempe, Arizona, with the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Vermont senator recalled Donald Trump’s inauguration, when the three wealthiest people on the planet – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg – were seated in front of his cabinet nominees in what many viewed as a shocking display of power and influence.“You gotta be kind of blind not to understand that you have a government of the billionaire class, for the billionaire class, by the billionaire class,” he said. “And then, on top of all that, you’ve got Trump moving very rapidly toward an authoritarian form of society.”Two months after Trump was sworn in for a second term, Democratic activists and an increasingly vocal chorus of voters say they are terrified, angry and desperate for leadership. In something of a third act, the 83-year-old democratic socialist is stepping in to fill the void.But his aim is not only to revive the anti-Trump resistance movement – he wants a bottom-up overhaul of the American political system.“It’s not just oligarchy that we are going to fight. It’s not just authoritarianism that we’re going to fight,” Sanders told an arena full of supporters at Arizona State University on Thursday night. “We will not accept a society today in which we have massive income and wealth inequality, where the very rich have never done better while working families are struggling to put food on the table.”For weeks, voters have been showing up at town halls to vent their alarm and rage over the president’s aggressive power grabs and the Musk-led mass firings of federal workers. But they are also furious at the Democratic leadership, charging that their party spent an entire election season warning of the threat Trump posed to US democracy, and yet now appeared either unable or unwilling to stand up to him.At the rally in Tempe, several attendees demanded more defiance.“Them just holding paddle boards up and staying quiet or wearing pink blazers is not enough,” said Alexandra Rodriguez, 20, of Mesa, referring to the Democrats’ acts of protest during Trump’s address to Congress earlier this month. “I think they do need to be willing to go to extremes.”They also expressed outrage at the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, who, faced with what he called a “Hobson’s choice” between supporting a Republican-authored funding bill or inciting a government shutdown, wrangled a coalition of Democrats to pass the spending measure. The decision has unleashed a torrent of anger from his party’s base, forcing him to postpone a book tour as he defends himself against calls to step down as leader. On Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s western tour, the New York representative was interrupted by intermittent calls to “Primary Chuck!”“This isn’t just about Republicans, either. We need a Democratic party that fights harder for us, too,” Ocasio-Cortez said in Arizona, drawing some of the loudest, most sustained applause of the evening. She urged the crowd to help elect candidates “with the courage to brawl for the working class”.Democrats “absolutely need to get stronger”, Audree Castro, 52, said as she waited with her mother and aunt to enter the venue on Thursday night. “I want my democracy back.”In recent weeks, Democrats have sought to capitalize on the bubbling backlash to the disorienting opening months of Trump’s second term. Following Sanders’ lead, many Democrats are hosting town halls in Republican-held districts to draw attention to Musk’s slash-and-burn cost-cutting project and Republican proposals that would almost certainly result in cuts to social safety net programs.Robbie Lambert, 70, a retired special education teacher, said keeping up with the turmoil in Washington was beginning to feel like a full-time job. Just that afternoon, Trump had signed an executive order aimed at dismantling the Department of Education.“You feel helpless. It’s like, what can we do?” said Lambert, who was on vacation in Arizona and decided she had to attend the Tempe rally. “Coming together, talking with people here, makes you feel like you’re doing something.”The Arizona representative Yassamin Ansari, who attended Thursday’s rally, said she had been hearing similar calls for action from constituents across her district this week, including at an event with LGBTQ+ business leaders and an at-capacity town hall, where several people shared that it was the first political event they had ever attended.“People are really fed up,” Ansari said in an interview.For now, at least, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are the most prominent Democrats offering both a strategy to confront Trump and an alternative vision for the party.In 2024, Democrats lost support among young people and Latino voters – core constituencies – and recent polling found that the party’s popularity is at an all-time low. Few Democrats disagree that their party needs to course-correct, but how and to what degree remains a topic of intense debate.Supporters say the success of Sanders’ tour, which began last month in Omaha, Nebraska, is a clear sign that Democrats want the party to aggressivelyfight what they view as Trump’s encroaching authoritarianism – not “roll over and play dead”, as veteran strategist James Carville suggested in an op-ed. They also view it as an endorsement of Sanders’ policy agenda, arguing that his brand of economic populism is the right match for this turbulent political moment.According to a memo by Sanders’ longtime adviser, Faiz Shakir, the senator has raised more than $7m from more than 200,000 donors since February, and is drawing crowds 25% to 100% larger than at the height of his presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. On Friday, more than 30,000 people attended a rally in Denver – the largest audience Sanders has ever drawn, his team said.“We’re living in an intensely populist moment right now,” Shakir wrote. “It’s not ‘left versus right’. It’s ‘very top versus everyone else’.” The title of his memo: “It’s a populist revolt, stupid.”The joint appearance by the 35-year-old New York representative and the Vermont senator who she has said inspired her to run for office naturally raised the question: is Ocasio-Cortez the heir to the progressive movement Sanders has been building since before she was born? Several rally-goers in Tempe believed she had the potential to lead the party – and perhaps even the country.“When AOC has something to say, I listen,” said Jonas Prado, 32, a first responder.“I hope she’s the first woman president,” said Norman Ellison, 60, a mechanical engineer.There was also a tinge of wistfulness in the arena. Supporters dressed in old campaign t-shirts and hats and one person sported a pin that said, “Bernie was right.”Sanders, who has all but ruled out a third run for president, was in vintage form, delivering a blistering, 50-minute critique of the “top 1%” with the moral ferocity that has long endeared him to legions of politically disaffected supporters.The senator named names, accusing executives from the fossil fuel, insurance and pharmaceutical industries of being “major criminals”, while sharing stark statistics on wealth inequality in the US that elicited boos and gasps from the audience. At one point, Sanders cited an analysis released by his Senate committee that found the wealthiest Americans live an average of seven years longer than poorer Americans.“In other words, being working class in America is a death sentence,” he bellowed.Ocasio-Cortez’s opening remarks were no less visceral. She charged that Trump and Musk, his billionaire lieutenant, were “taking a wrecking ball to our country” and “screwing over” working people. “We’re gonna throw these bums out,” she declared.While both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez share a political vision, their double act showcased the distinct styles of two progressive leaders at opposite ends of their career arcs.Ocasio-Cortez offered a more personal touch, weaving elements of her biography into her speech – something Sanders is typically loath to do. She spoke of her mother, who cleaned homes, and her father, whose death from a rare form of cancer plunged the family into economic uncertainty.“I don’t believe in healthcare, labor and human dignity because I’m an extremist,” she said, pushing back on the rightwing caricature of her. “I believe in these things because I was a waitress.”She said she empathized with Americans who felt overwhelmed and demoralized, and encouraged them not to give in to despair. “We won’t do that,” someone in the crowd yelled.When the event concluded, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez left the arena to address an overflow crowd that hadn’t been able to get in.“This is where the future is,” said Sebastian Santamaria, 25, gesturing toward the empty podium adorned with a “Fight Oligarchy” placard. “As a person who has supported Democrats in the past, I don’t want to keep supporting you if it doesn’t look more like this.” More