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    Netanyahu flies home without a Gaza peace deal but still keeps Trump onside

    Benjamin Netanyahu arrived back in Israel on Friday without a ceasefire in the Gaza war despite heady predictions from US and Israeli officials that this week could provide a breakthrough in negotiations. But he did not come home completely empty-handed.The Israeli PM’s visit was his third since Donald Trump’s inauguration, with several high-profile meetings at the White House, a nomination for Trump to receive the Nobel peace prize, and suggestions from Trump and the special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, that peace could be achieved in a week.But as Netanyahu’s trip ended, no clear results had been achieved. Witkoff postponed a trip to Doha on Tuesday as it became clear that the negotiations had not reached a point where they could produce a ceasefire agreement.While Netanyahu repeated a refrain that a ceasefire could be announced within days, a deal to bring peace to more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip remained elusive.“I hope we can complete it in a few days,” Netanyahu said during an appearance on Newsmax, a conservative, pro-Trump news network on Wednesday. “We’ll probably have a 60-day ceasefire. Get the first batch [of hostages] out and then use the 60 days to try to negotiate an end to this.”By Thursday, when he attended a memorial service for two Israeli embassy staff killed in Washington, Netanyahu said Israel would not compromise on its demands for Hamas to disband. “I am promoting a move that will result in a significant liberation, but only on the conditions Israel demands: Hamas disarm, Gaza demilitarise,” he said. “If it is not achieved through diplomacy, it will be achieved by force.”Several officials suggested during the week that only a single sticking point remained between negotiators in Doha: the extent of a withdrawal by the Israel Defense Forces that would follow the release of some of the hostages being held by Hamas. The White House had pushed back against an initial map that would have left Israel with significant zones of control in Gaza, which Witkoff had compared to a “Smotrich plan”, referring to the hardline Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. Israel reportedly redrew that map to make it more palatable to the US administration.But Hamas has said there were other disagreements, including negotiations over whether the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, an Israeli and US-backed logistics group, would be allowed to continue to deliver food to the territory (the UN said on Friday that 798 people had been killed trying to reach GHF sites since its introduction in May) and whether Israel would agree to a permanent truce, which it has said it would not. US mediators sought to bridge the gap by telling Qatari intermediaries they would guarantee the ceasefire’s continuation after 60 days as negotiations continued.The upshot is that while Netanyahu leaves the US without a ceasefire, he has managed his relationship with Trump through high-profile assurances that he is seeking a peace in Gaza, while maintaining a status quo that members of his rightwing coalition, including the ministers Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have said is preferable to a peace deal.For Netanyahu, the trip produced images that reinforced Israeli claims there was “no daylight” between him and Trump, and came as the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced a decision to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, a UN expert on the occupied Palestinian territories, for urging the international criminal court to investigate Israeli officials and US companies over the Gaza war.Trump’s frustrations with Netanyahu appeared to be boiling over a month ago as the US president sought to negotiate a truce between Iran and Israel, which had been trading airstrikes and missile barrages as Israel sought to dismantle the Iranian nuclear programme.“I’m not happy with Israel,” he said on the White House lawn. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”That recalled remarks by Robert Gates, a former US secretary of defence, about successive White House administrations’ difficulties in managing an ally in the region that also had considerable political influence in the US.“Every president I worked for, at some point in his presidency, would get so pissed off at the Israelis that he couldn’t speak,” Gates said.But a full breach with the US would have been disastrous for Netanyahu, who is managing his own difficult coalition and has been targeted in a graft investigation at home that was again delayed as a result of his international travel. And, after joint strikes against Iran, the Israeli PM was keen to show that the two men were in lockstep, while giving the Trump administration an opportunity to show it was working toward a Gaza peace.Elliott Abrams, the senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said the Trump administration had sought, as it did during the first short-lived ceasefire, to bring “pressure to bear on Israel directly” through discussions with Netanyahu and his chief lieutenant, Ron Dermer, and “trying to bring pressure on Hamas mostly through the Qataris, when there are these talks in Doha”.He added: “Whether that pressure is effective is unclear.” More

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    Who is Nick Adams? From a Sydney council to Trump’s plum pick, the Hooters fan could be next US ambassador to Malaysia

    “Nicholas Adams, of Florida, to be ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Malaysia,” the White House announced this week.There were those who had never heard of Australian-born Nick Adams. And then there were those who thought Nick Adams was just a satirical social media account, a troll who delighted in anti-wokery and Trump adoration.But he’s real, and he’s in line to pick up a plum diplomatic posting.Who is Nick Adams? Adams was, once upon a time, Australia’s youngest ever deputy mayor, with a penchant for talking about pigeons and dog poo. Twenty years after his stint at Ashfield council, the University of Sydney graduate is a Trump-loving, beer-swilling, steak-eating, self-described “alpha male”.He became a US citizen in 2021.And now, the US president, Donald Trump, has nominated him as the country’s ambassador to Malaysia – a conservative, Islamic country.Adams thanked his parents for giving him every opportunity. “I only wish my father were alive to see this,” he wrote on X, adding that “delusional self-belief and irrational optimism, along with endless hard work, make anything possible”.One of his most-quoted tweets includes the memorable lines:“I go to Hooters. I eat rare steaks. I lift extremely heavy weights. I read the Bible every night. I am pursued by copious amounts of women.”Why has Trump picked him for US ambassador to Malaysia?An ambassador is usually a lifelong diplomat or a former politician. They exist to grease the wheels of international relations, to represent their country in a foreign land, and to keep their country informed about what’s going on in that land.Adams is an “incredible patriot”, Trump wrote on social media, and “a bestselling author, speaker, and commentator”. He has “made it his life’s mission to extol the Virtues of American Greatness”.What is an ‘alpha male’?In the animal world the alpha male is the dominant one in a group. The term has been dragged into the murk of the manosphere.In Adams’ case, he posted a video on X in which he emerges, damply, from a sauna to declare himself an alpha male and to tell “all the beautiful ladies” whose birthday wishes he has made come true that they are “welcome”. He called for his birthday to be made a public holiday and for all alpha males to celebrate it, order a larger steak and smoke a “girthier cigar”.He also wrote a book called Alpha Kings (with a foreword by one Donald J Trump), which “makes the case for traditional masculinity” and promises to “show the young men of America what it means to be a true alpha male in today’s hyper-feminized world”.What are some of his Australian career highlights? “I’m not an expert,” Adams said in 2005. “I’m certainly not a pest controller … What I would like to see is no pigeons in our area.” Eradicating the rats of the sky would save the citizens of Ashfield from bird flu, he thought.In 2008, he proposed DNA testing dog poo left in public so their owners can be tracked down and fined.In 2009, the Channel Ten journalist Brett Mason asked him about council meetings he had missed. In return, Adams verbally abused Mason, which led to the Liberal party threatening to suspend him. He said he quit anyway.And what does he do now? He runs the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, a non-profit “dedicated to promoting and providing high-quality civics education that informs students and families about the greatness of America and the power of the American Dream”.Of about US$1.5m it brings in revenue, a jot over US$500,000 goes to salaries and other employee expenses – Adams being one of three employees, but the only one who draws a salary, according to the latest details lodged. About US$185,000 goes on travel and a bit over US$400,000 goes on social media campaigns.It’s a far cry from being a councillor, where you’d be doing well to take home A$50,000 – and maybe a bit more during a stint as deputy mayor.He also founded 1A Warriors, a “non-profit organization dedicated to securing, protecting, and preserving our beautiful and exceptional First Amendment” that is practically nonexistent online.And he’s written a bunch of books on top of Alpha Kings, including Green Card Warrior about his struggles to become a US resident.What happens next? He has to be confirmed by the Senate first, and if that goes through, he will replace Edgard Kagan as the US ambassador to Malaysia.The Malaysian media was relatively quiet on Friday about the appointment, but there are sure to be mutterings and raised eyebrows behind closed doors. Once Adams takes up residence in Kuala Lumpur, he will be hard-pressed to find a Hooters-like establishment, but he’ll be OK for steaks and beer.Then he will have to tread a delicate and sophisticated line as the US and Malaysia negotiate trade tariffs, joust over their respective relationships with China and deal with an increasingly unstable geopolitical climate. More

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    Why is the media paying millions to Trump? – podcast

    Archive: CBS News, PBS, NBC News, WHAS11, CNN, Fox 5 New York
    Read Edward Helmore’s piece on Trump’s war on the media
    Listen to Science Weekly’s episode on the Texas floods
    Listen to Season 10 of Comfort Eating with Grace Dent
    Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
    Help support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politicspodus More

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    Mahmoud Khalil says he filed $20m claim against Trump officials ‘because they think they are untouchable’ – US politics live

    Mahmoud Khalil said in a statement that he wanted to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence. In lieu of a settlement, Khalil suggested he would accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.He said of the Trump administration: “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”Khalil is planning to share any settlement money with others targeted by officials over pro-Palestinian protests.The Senate Appropriations Committee narrowly voted to adopt an amendment on Thursday that blocks the Trump administration from changing the site of a new FBI headquarters building.Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, cast the deciding vote on the amendment introduced by Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, which bars the Trump administration from spending any of the previously appropriated $1.4 billion in funds to move the FBI anywhere but the site in Greenbelt, Maryland which was chosen in a competetive process.Last week the administration notified congress that it intended to permanently relocate the FBI to the Ronald Reagan building in Washignton, DC instead of proceeding with the planned building in suburban Maryland.Such an “unauthorized use of funds” Van Hollen said in a statement, would have been “directly at odds with what has been passed by the Congress on a bipartisan basis” and would have set “a dangerous precedent for executive overreach into Congress’s power of the purse.”The measure passed 15-14.In her comments before the vote, Murkowski said that she had no information on how the administration had determined that the Reagan building was a secure enough location.“I, for one, would like to know”, Murkowski said, “this is the right place and it’s the right place, not for a Trump administration, not for a Biden administration, not for a Jon Ossoff administration, but this is the right place for the FBI”.Murkowski paused after her reference to the possibility that the Democratic senator from Georgia could be the next president.“Sorry, I didn’t mean to start any rumors”, she added to laughter from her colleagues.Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, has reportedly accepted an invitation to visit Donald Trump during the US president’s expected trip to Scotland this month, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters on Thursday.There is, as yet, no word on the details of the rumored visit to the homeland of Trump’s mother, but Severin Carrell, the Guardian’s Scotland editor, reports that police in Scotland are gearing up for a possible visit to his golf resort in Aberdeenshire.“It is thought Trump will officially open a new 18-hole golf course at his resort on the North Sea coast at Menie, north of Aberdeen, being named in honour of his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump”, Severin reported on Wednesday.“Planning is under way for a potential visit to Scotland later this month by the president of the United States” , assistant chief constable Emma Bond said. Police are bracing for likely large-scale protests, given Trump’s deep unpopularity in his mother’s homeland. There were demonstrations in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen during Trump’s last official visit as president in 2018.That year, Trump was greeted at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland by a Greenpeace activist who paraglided directly over his head trailing a banner that read: “Trump: Well Below Par.” The scene was captured on video by the activist group and journalists.Trump’s first visit to Scotland as a politician came the morning after the UK voted to leave the European Union. He hailed the result that morning, despite the fact that Brexit was opposed by nearly two-thirds of Scottish voters.Trump, whose mother was from a remote part of Scotland (the Western Isles, where 55 percent of voters opposed leaving the EU), seemed oblivious to nationalist sentiment there that day, telling reporters the vote meant, “Basically, they took back their country.”During his first official state visit to the UK as president in 2018, Trump started to claim, falsely, that his 2016 visit had been “the day before” the Brexit referendum, not the day after it, and took credit for having “predicted” the outcome. Trump’s obviously false claim about the date of a foreign visit baffled reporters who accompanied him on the trip.In an Oval Office meeting with Ireland’s leader in 2019, as Brexit negotiations stalled, in part over the issue of the Irish border with the North of Ireland, Trump again repeated his fictional account of having visited Scotland ahead of the Brexit vote, claiming that he had “predicted it” at a news conference at one of his golf courses in Scotland which actually took place the day after the vote.Oregon’s junior senator, Jeff Merkley, announced on Thursday that he is running for re-election next year, citing the threat posed by “Donald Trump and his Maga cronies”.Merkley, a liberal Democrat, will turn 70 before election day in 2026, and his decision to run for a fourth term will not please party activists who are concerned that there are too many older Democrats in Congress. He was first elected to the senate in 2008.Oregon’s senior senator, Democrat Ron Wyden, who is 76, was elected to a fifth term in 2022.In an interview with the Washington Post in 2023, Merkley said that while he did not support calls for a mandatory retirement age for senators: “I do say to my team, when I am at that point, that pivot in my life, where you start to see the changes in my abilities, don’t let me run for re-election.”The Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a claim against the Trump administration seeking $20m in damages, alleging he was falsely imprisoned. The suit comes as Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who has not been charged with a crime, is out on bail and the administration continues to actively seek his removal from the US. The Thursday filing is a precusor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act. “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked,” Khalil said in a statement.Here’s what’s also happened so far today:

    A US district judge issued an injunction blocking Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, certifying a nationwide class of plaintiffs

    Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, pushed back against new evidence from a whistleblower suggesting Department of Justice lawyers were instructed to ignore court orders.

    US senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said Kristi Noem was responsible for deaths related to flooding in Texas.
    Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and his wife, state senator Angela Paxton, announced on Thursday they were getting divorced.The Texas radio station KUT obtained the petition for divorce filed in Collin county. The petition accuses the attorney general of adultery and says the couple hasn’t lived together since June 2024.Ken Paxton, who is running for US Senate, said on X:
    After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives. I could not be any more proud or grateful for the incredible family that God has blessed us with, and I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time.
    Angela Paxton said on X:
    Today, after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds. I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage. I move forward with complete confidence that God is always working everything together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.
    The fossil fuel industry poured more than $19m into Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, accounting for nearly 8% of all donations it raised, a new analysis shows, raising concerns about White House’s relationship with big oil.The president raised a stunning $239m for his inauguration – more than the previous three inaugural committees took in combined and more than double the previous record – according to data published by the US Federal Election Commission (FEC). The oil and gas sector made a significant contribution to that overall number, found the international environmental and human rights organization Global Witness.The group pulled itemized inaugural fund contribution data released by the FEC in April, and researched each contributor with the help of an in-house artificial intelligence tool. It located 47 contributions to the fund made by companies and individuals linked to the fossil fuel sector, to which Trump has voiced his fealty.Six Secret Service agents have been suspended without pay after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last July.The suspensions range from 10 to 42 days, with a loss of both salary and benefits during the absence, the agency’s deputy director, Matt Quinn, told CBS News.The disciplinary action comes nearly a year after the 13 July 2024 shooting at the Butler farm show grounds, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired multiple rounds from an unsecured rooftop, grazing Trump’s ear and killing firefighter Corey Comperatore.Quinn defended the agency’s decision not to dismiss the agents outright, telling CBS News the service would not “fire our way out of this” crisis.“We’re going to focus on the root cause and fix the deficiencies that put us in that situation,” he said, adding that suspended personnel would return to reduced operational roles.In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, called Khalil’s claim “absurd,” accusing him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric” that threatened Jewish students.The state department said its actions toward Khalil were fully supported by the law.Mahmoud Khalil said in a statement that he wanted to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence. In lieu of a settlement, Khalil suggested he would accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.He said of the Trump administration: “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”Khalil is planning to share any settlement money with others targeted by officials over pro-Palestinian protests.The AP has more on the filing. It says the Trump administration smeared Mahmoud Khalil as an antisemite while it sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests.The filing — a precursor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act — names the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the state department.It comes as the deportation case against Khalil, a 30-year-old recent graduate student at Columbia University, continues to wind its way through the immigration court system.Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose role in college campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza led to his detention for over three months in immigration jail, is now seeking $20m in damages from the Trump administration.His lawyers filed a claim Thursday, alleging false imprisonment and malicious prosecution after his March arrest by federal agents. Khalil, a legal US resident, said he suffered severe anguish in jail, and continues to fear for his safety. The government has accused him of leading protests aligned with Hamas, but has not provided any evidence of a link to the terror group.Citing the CNN report about bureaucratic hurdles at Fema, US senator Ron Wyden said homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was responsible for deaths related to the flooding.“Kids in Texas died as a direct result of Kristi Noem’s negligence. She should be removed from office before her incompetence gets Oregonians killed in a wildfire,” Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, posted on the social media network Bluesky.New cost-cutting measures at FEMA may have slowed the agency’s response to the Texas floods, CNN reported on Thursday.
    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.
    For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.
    In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.
    “We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”
    For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.
    In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.
    But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.
    Read the full story here.Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, is pushing back amid new disclosures from a fired DoJ lawyer suggesting justice department attorneys were instructed to defy court orders.“We support legitimate whistleblowers, but this disgruntled employee is not a whistleblower – he’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote,” she wrote in a post on X. “As Mr. Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order.”“And no one was ever asked to defy a court order. This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts. This “whistleblower” signed 3 briefs defending DOJ’s position in this matter and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department.”As temperatures soared on a sweltering July day in New York City, shoppers at Queens’s largest mall said they were feeling the heat – of rising prices.“T-shirts, basic t-shirts, underwear, the basic necessities – the prices are going up,” said Clarence Johnson, 48, who was visiting the Macy’s at the Queen Center mall to pick up shirts he ordered online.As Donald Trump presses on with his trade wars, retailers have been passing price increases onto customers. Department stores – which rely on a variety of imported goods and materials, from shoes to t-shirts – have particularly been scrambling to deal with the flux in prices.At Macy’s, signs advertising sales of as much as 60% off original prices were sprinkled around the store – even next to diamond-encrusted necklaces locked inside display cases in the jewelry department. But for some customers, the prices are still too high.The future of the US government’s premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades.Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life.But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed.A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website. The Guardian replicated the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access. More

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    Bhutan tried to erase us. Now, Trump’s America is helping | Lok Darjee

    In mid-March 2025, I sat quietly in the back of a small, crowded room at the Asian Refugees United center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, surrounded by members of the Bhutanese diaspora. The silence was heavy, thick with fear and uncertainty. This modest office, once a vibrant hub for refugee youth, cultural celebrations, and literary competitions, had become an impromptu crisis center, where community leaders scrambled to make sense of the Trump administration’s escalatingimmigration crackdown on Bhutanese refugees across the country.Robin Gurung, the organization’s executive director, briefly outlined our legal rights. Another organizer then read aloud the names of those detained, awaiting deportation – or worse, already deported to Bhutan, the very country that once expelled them.As their names echoed through the room, an elderly man, a former student activist who had protested Bhutan’s repressive monarchy decades ago, stood. His voice trembled as he asked: “Where are we supposed to go?”This question of belonging has haunted my entire life. I was born stateless in a refugee camp in eastern Nepal after Bhutan forcibly expelled more than 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese citizens in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Our language was banned, our citizenship revoked, and our books burned in an ethnic cleansing campaign Bhutan still denies. Nepal refused us citizenship, asserting children born behind barbed wire weren’t its responsibility. Even now, Bhutan maintains its pristine global image, recently praised by 60 Minutes for “zero-carbon cities”, with no mention of the atrocities that cleared land for these “mindfulness cities”.My childhood unfolded behind fences and military checkpoints, in a hut occasionally set on fire by local mobs who viewed refugees as threats to their livelihood. I was a child no country wanted. For years, I lived in limbo – stateless, invisible, expendable. I believed I had finally found a home in 2011, when, after rigorous vetting, my family was resettled in a small town in Idaho.Since then, I’ve navigated the complexities of belonging as a former refugee turned new American. My work at the non-profit Refugee Civic Action now focuses on empowering former refugees through civic education and engagement, echoing Frederick Douglass’s belief that voting rights carry an obligation to build an inclusive democracy for “unborn and unnumbered generations”.Yet no moment revealed the fragility of American citizenship more starkly than the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. What unfolded was not merely a shift in policy, but the emergence of a constitutional crisis – one in which due process, equal protection, and the rule of law became contingent upon a person’s immigration status, background or national origin. Refugee communities, legal immigrants and even naturalized citizens suddenly found their rights precarious and their sense of belonging under threat.This crisis, while alarming, is hardly unprecedented. It echoes America’s historical pattern – visible in the failure of Reconstruction after the American civil war, when the nation struggled over defining citizenship, often through violence and exclusion. It is the same logic that incarcerated Japanese Americans during the second world war, denied Black Americans civil rights for generations, and justified the surveillance of Muslim communities after September 11. Today, cloaked in the language of national security, that same impulse returns, driven by politics intent on reshaping US identity through exclusion rather than constitutional principles.For my Bhutanese community, these recent crackdowns on legal residents have felt like a haunting repetition of history. Trauma we thought we had left behind in Bhutan now replays in Harrisburg, Cincinnati, Rochester and so many other towns, including relatively quiet suburbs of Boise, Idaho. Ice raids targeting legally resettled Bhutanese refugees have rekindled deep, collective fear. More than two dozen refugees have been deported back to Bhutan, the very country that violently expelled us. While some deportees had minor offenses from years ago, their punishments – exile to a regime that once tortured them – are grotesquely disproportionate. Raids have reopened wounds we spent decades healing. These are legal residents, thoroughly vetted through one of the world’s strictest refugee resettlement programs. Yet their deportation has shattered the fragile sense of safety we once believed America guaranteed.America is not Bhutan; their histories, cultures and institutions differ profoundly. Yet I see troubling echoes emerging here. In Bhutan, exclusion began subtly with slogans promoting national unity – “One nation, one language, one people” – initially appearing patriotic, even benign. Soon, our Nepali language was banned, books burned and cultural practices outlawed. Families like mine were categorized arbitrarily to divide and destabilize. People were disappeared, tortured and jailed. Citizenship became conditional, a prize easily revoked. I see shadows of this pattern now emerging in the US as the president erodes checks and balances, attacks public institutions, and scapegoats vulnerable immigrant communities.But when it comes to Bhutanese refugees, Democratic leaders have remained troublingly silent.While Pennsylvania’s senator John Fetterman and governor Josh Shapiro have acknowledged the concerns of Bhutanese refugees through public statements and tweets, their engagement has fallen short. What’s needed now is not just words, but action: oversight, hearings and direct intervention. Democrats must speak up for the likes of Santosh Darji, a Bhutanese refugee quietly deported to a regime that once tried to erase him. Failing to do so risks eroding public trust in the party’s moral commitments.The Republican party, once a vocal supporter of refugee resettlement, has largely aligned itself with Trumpism – a politics rooted in fear, exclusion and racial hierarchy. During Trump’s first term, a few Republican governors resisted efforts to suspend refugee admissions by calling for more legal refugees. Today, that resistance is utterly gone; no single Republican governor resists nor demands that the president reverse his decision on refugee admission. The party that once embraced Ronald Reagan and George Bush can no longer credibly claim their legacies. Those presidents, whatever their flaws, understood that America’s greatness was built on its openness to refugees and immigrants.The Trump administration’s actions aren’t merely cruel; they may violate international law. Deporting refugees back to the country that ethnically cleansed them breaches the principle of non-refoulement – enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention – which prohibits returning refugees to countries where their lives or freedoms are threatened. Now, some deportees find themselves stateless once again, rejected by Bhutan, detained by Nepal police and trapped in legal limbo.America’s moral and constitutional credibility hinges on defending not just those who command headlines or electoral power but precisely those who do not. If legal refugees can be quietly deported to countries from which they fled persecution, America’s claim as a beacon of freedom is dangerously hollow. The haunting question “Where are we supposed to go?” must be answered by American institutions, unequivocally affirming that due process and human dignity apply universally.

    Lok Darjee is a former refugee, columnist and founder of Refugee Civic Action, who writes on immigration, identity and democracy More

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    Lobbyists linked to Donald Trump paid millions by world’s poorest countries

    Some of the world’s poorest countries have started paying millions to lobbyists linked to Donald Trump to try to offset US cuts to foreign aid, an investigation reveals.Somalia, Haiti and Yemen are among 11 countries to sign significant lobbying deals with figures tied directly to the US president after he slashed US foreign humanitarian assistance.Many states have already begun bartering crucial natural resources – including minerals – in exchange for humanitarian or military support, the investigation by Global Witness found.USAID officially closed its doors last week after Trump’s dismantling of the agency, a move experts warn could cause more than 14 million avoidable deaths over five years.Emily Stewart, Global Witness’s head of policy for transition minerals, said the situation meant that deal making in Washington could become “more desperate and less favourable to low-income countries”, which had become increasingly vulnerable to brutal exploitation of their natural resources.Documents show that within six months of last November’s US election, contracts worth $17m (£12.5m) were signed between Trump-linked lobbying firms and some of the world’s least-developed countries, which were among the highest recipients of USAID.Records submitted under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act reveal some countries signed multiple contracts, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has endured mass displacement and conflict over its mineral wealth for years.The DRC is primed to sign a mineral deal with the US for support against Rwanda-backed rebels, providing American companies access to lithium, cobalt and coltan.The DRC – a former top-10 USAID recipient – signed contracts worth $1.2m with the lobbyists Ballard Partners.The firm, owned by Brian Ballard, lobbied for Trump well before the 2016 US election and was a leading donor to the US president’s political campaign.Somalia and Yemen signed contracts with BGR Government Affairs – $550,000 and $372,000 respectively.A former BGR partner, Sean Duffy, is now Trump’s transport secretary, one of myriad links between the US president and the lobbying firm.The government of Pakistan, a country that struggles with extreme poverty but is extremely rich in minerals, has signed two contracts with Trump-linked lobbyists worth $450,000 a month.Pakistan is now tied up in deals with multiple individuals in Trump’s inner circle, including the president’s former bodyguard Keith Schiller.Access to key natural resources has become a priority for Trump, particularly rare earth minerals. These are considered critical to US security, but the global supply chains for them are dominated by China.Other nations are offering exclusive access to ports, military bases and rare earths in exchange for US support.Although Global Witness said the revolving door between governments and lobbyists was nothing new, the organisation said it was concerned by the broader, exploitative dynamics driving new deals.Stewart said: “We’re seeing a dramatic cut in aid, combined with an explicit rush for critical minerals, and willingness by the Trump administration to secure deals in exchange for aid or military assistance.“Dealmaking needs to be transparent and fair. It is vital to recognise the role that international aid plays in making a safer world for all, and that aid should retain its distinct role away from trade.” More

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    Supreme court lifts order blocking Trump’s federal layoffs, paving way for mass job cuts – US politics live

    The supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume carrying out mass job cuts and the restructuring of agencies, key elements of his campaign to downsize and reshape the federal government.The justices lifted San Francisco-based US district judge Susan Illston’s 22 May order that had blocked large-scale federal layoffs called “reductions in force” affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs, while litigation in the case proceeds.Workforce reductions were planned at the US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.Illston wrote in her ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority in ordering the downsizing, siding with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments that challenged the administration.“As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston wrote.The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programs. She also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.Illston’s ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul being pursued by Trump and Doge.The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 ruling on 30 May denied the administration’s request to halt the judge’s ruling.It said the administration had not shown that it would suffer an irreparable injury if the judge’s order remained in place and that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail in their lawsuit.The ruling prompted the justice department’s 2 June emergency request to the supreme court to halt Illston’s order.Controlling the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of the president’s executive branch authority, the justice department said in its filing to the supreme court.“The constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the president does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers,” the filing said, referring to the constitution’s section delineating presidential authority.The plaintiffs urged the supreme court to deny the request. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its “breakneck reorganization”, they wrote, would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs”.The Supreme Court’s ruling today will allow the Trump administration to proceed with its plans to layoff vast swaths of federal workers. The impacted agencies will include: the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, State, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.Pam Bondi, the attorney general, applauded the supreme court’s ruling today allowing the Trump administration’s mass federal layoffs to proceed.Writing on social media, Bondi said: “Today, the Supreme Court stopped lawless lower courts from restricting President Trump’s authority over federal personnel.”“Now, federal agencies can become more efficient than ever before,” she added.The supreme court’s ruling to allow Donald Trump’s mass federal layoffs to continue “dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy”, the unions, non-profits and local governments that filed the lawsuit said in a statement today.The plaintiffs added that the court’s ruling “does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our constitution”.It appears that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived at the White House for his closed-door meeting with Donald Trump.A White House pool reporter says that Netanyahu’s motorcade has arrived, though press did not see Netanyahu enter the White House as he used a different entrance.Travelers will soon be able to keep their shoes on while traversing US airport security, the Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem announced today, in a reversal of a nearly two decades old policy.In a press conference at Reagan airport today, Noem announced the new Transportation Security Administration policy, which she said she hoped would make travel to the United States easier ahead of the Olympics, World Cup and 250th anniversary of the country.“The Golden Age of America is here,” she said. “We’re so excited that we can make the experience for those individuals traveling throughout our airports in the United States more hospitable.”The TSA policy requiring travelers to remove their footwear dates back to 2006.Donald Trump’s scheduled meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is starting later than the announced 4.30pm ET start time. We’ll bring you the top lines once it begins.Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member of the Supreme Court to dissent in the court’s recent ruling clearing the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume mass job cuts and the restructuring of federal agencies.In her dissent, Jackson criticized the court’s “enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture” and called the decision “hubristic and senseless”.She warned that the administration’s actions “promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it”.Marco Rubio is headed to Malaysia this week, the Washington Post reports. The trip will mark the secretary of state’s first visit to Asia, which comes as the White House has just announced steep tariffs on goods imported from many other Asian nations.Yesterday, Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on goods from Malaysia, and equal or higher tariffs on goods from Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.Relatedly, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, told CNBC today that US officials will meet with their Chinese counterparts to discuss trade between the two countries next month.The supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume carrying out mass job cuts and the restructuring of agencies, key elements of his campaign to downsize and reshape the federal government.The justices lifted San Francisco-based US district judge Susan Illston’s 22 May order that had blocked large-scale federal layoffs called “reductions in force” affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs, while litigation in the case proceeds.Workforce reductions were planned at the US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.Illston wrote in her ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority in ordering the downsizing, siding with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments that challenged the administration.“As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston wrote.The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programs. She also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.Illston’s ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul being pursued by Trump and Doge.The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 ruling on 30 May denied the administration’s request to halt the judge’s ruling.It said the administration had not shown that it would suffer an irreparable injury if the judge’s order remained in place and that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail in their lawsuit.The ruling prompted the justice department’s 2 June emergency request to the supreme court to halt Illston’s order.Controlling the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of the president’s executive branch authority, the justice department said in its filing to the supreme court.“The constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the president does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers,” the filing said, referring to the constitution’s section delineating presidential authority.The plaintiffs urged the supreme court to deny the request. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its “breakneck reorganization”, they wrote, would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs”.Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet again on Tuesday evening to discuss Gaza, a day after they met for hours while officials conducted indirect negotiations on a US-brokered ceasefire.Trump and Netanyahu dined together on Monday at the White House during the Israeli leader’s third US visit since the president began his second term on 20 January.Netanyahu spent much of Tuesday at the Capitol, telling reporters after a meeting with House speaker Mike Johnson that while he did not think Israel’s campaign in the Palestinian territory was done, negotiators are “certainly working” on a ceasefire.“We have still to finish the job in Gaza, release all our hostages, eliminate and destroy Hamas’ military and government capabilities,” Netanyahu said.Netanyahu’s plan to return to the White House at 4.30pm ET pushed back his meeting with Senate leaders to Wednesday.Shortly after Netanyahu spoke, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff said he hoped to reach a temporary ceasefire agreement this week.“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we’ll have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire. Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released,” Witkoff told reporters at a meeting of Trump’s cabinet earlier.In his remarks to reporters at Congress, Netanyahu praised Trump, saying there has never been closer coordination between the US and Israel in his country’s history.A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was described as a “continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing”.The report from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War program at Brown University said that the Trump administration’s new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark.That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration such as JD Vance, the report said.The report is compiled of statistics of Pentagon spending and contracts from 2020 to 2024, during which time the top five Pentagon contractors (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman) received $771bn in contract awards. Overall, private firms received approximately 54% of the department’s discretionary spending of $4.4tn over that period.Taking into account supplemental funding for the Pentagon passed by Congress under Trump’s flagship sweeping tax and spending bill, the report said, the US military budget will have nearly doubled this century, increasing 99% since 2000.“The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in September 2021 did not result in a peace dividend,” the authors of the report wrote. “Instead, President Biden requested, and Congress authorized, even higher annual budgets for the Pentagon, and President Trump is continuing that same trajectory of escalating military budgets.”That contradicts early indications from Trump in February that he could cut military spending in half, adding that he would tell China and Russia that “there’s no reason for us to be spending almost $1tn on the military … and I’m going to say we can spend this on other things”. Instead, the spending bill pushed by Trump through Congress included a $157bn spending boost for the Pentagon.The government of El Salvador has acknowledged to United Nations investigators that the Trump administration maintains control of the Venezuelan men who were deported from the US to a notorious Salvadoran prison, contradicting past public statements by officials from both countries.The revelation was contained in court filings on Monday by lawyers for more than 100 migrants who are seeking to challenge their deportations to El Salvador’s mega-prison known as Cecot.“In this context, the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities,” Salvadorian officials wrote in response to queries from the unit of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.The UN group has been looking into the fate of the men who were sent to El Salvador from the US in mid-March, even after a federal judge had ordered the planes that were carrying them to be turned around.The Trump administration has argued that it is powerless to return the men, as they are beyond the reach of US courts and no longer have access to due process rights or other US constitutional guarantees.But lawyers for the migrants said the UN report shows otherwise. American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt said in an email:
    El Salvador has confirmed what we and everyone else understood: it is the United States that controls what happens to the Venezuelans languishing at Cecot. Remarkably the US government didn’t provide this information to us or the court.
    Skye Perryman, CEO and president of Democracy Forward, said the documents show “that the administration has not been honest with the court or the American people”. The ACLU and Democracy Forward are both representing the migrants.A justice department spokesperson declined to comment. White House and homeland security department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Associated Press.The US education secretary, Linda McMahon, yesterday threatened the state of California with legal action after the state refused to ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports as demanded by the Trump administration.“@CAgovernor, you’ll be hearing from @AGPamBondi,” McMahon wrote on X, using the handles for California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi.McMahon’s statement was the latest salvo in the culture wars over transgender youth and ratchets up the personal rivalry between Trump and Newsom. Trump has made reversing advances in transgender rights a priority since returning to office on 20 January, while California law has allowed student athletes to participate in sports in alignment with their gender identity since 2013.The justice department declined to comment and the education department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for clarification on the meaning of McMahon’s comment.California’s state education department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Newsom’s office and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), the governing body for high school sports, declined to comment.The US education department issued a statement in June declaring California in violation of the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IV, the education law banning sex-based discrimination, and demanding the state alter its policy. The state rejected the federal government’s directive, and in June filed a pre-enforcement lawsuit against the US justice department in anticipation of legal action.With controversy brewing ahead of the state high school track and field championship in June, the CIF allowed girls displaced from the finals by a transgender athlete to also be granted space to compete. The CIF also allowed girls to appear on the winners’ podium if they would have won a medal without a transgender athlete competing.As a result, the CIF crowned two champions in the girls’ high jump and triple jump after transgender girl AB Hernandez won both events.During his cabinet meeting, Donald Trump also suggested his administration was looking into taking over governance of Washington DC.Trump said his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was in close touch with the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, a Democrat.It is not the first time the president floated a federal takeover of the city, home to the White House, Congress and the supreme court.Trump told reporters in February: “I think we should take over Washington DC – make it safe. I think that we should govern District of Columbia.”Under home rule, Congress already vets all laws in the city and federal lawmakers can overturn some of them. However, it would take an act of Congress to make federal rule a reality.Both houses would have to vote to repeal the 1973 Home Rule Act. It would be a controversial move and unlikely to make it through.Donald Trump said he would announce a 50% tariff on imported copper on Tuesday. The Trump administration announced a so-called Section 232 investigation into US imports of the red metal in February.Trump had ordered the investigation into possible tariffs on copper imports to rebuild US production of a metal critical to electric vehicles, military hardware, semiconductors and a wide range of consumer goods.Trump signed an order directing the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to start a new national security investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the same law that Trump used in his first term to impose 25% global tariffs on steel and aluminum.A White House official said any potential tariff rate would be determined by the investigation, adding that Trump preferred tariffs over quotas.The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said first responders in Texas are “still looking for a lot of little girls” who remain missing after a devastating flood in Texas.Noem described the scene in Texas as Trump met with his cabinet at the White House on Tuesday.Noem visited Camp Mystic in Kerrville on Saturday after the catastrophic flood on Friday.You can read our Texas live coverage here:A temporary ceasefire agreement in Gaza could be finalized by the end of the week, Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said at the cabinet meeting.Witkoff added that proximity talks had reduced outstanding issues from “four issues … to one”.“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire,” Witkoff said. “Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released.”Trump added that he would meet with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, later to discuss Gaza “almost exclusively”, describing the situation as “a tragedy” while claiming that the prime minister has been “very unfairly treated” because of his corruption trial.“He’s been very unfairly treated. I think what they’ve done to him in Israel is very unfair. Having to do with this trial, he’s a wartime prime minister, had an unbelievable outcome, and I think he’s been treated very unfairly,” Trump said of Netanyahu. More

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    Netanyahu vows to combat what he calls ‘vilification against Israel’ online

    Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he’s vowed to combat an orchestrated social media campaign of “vilification and demonization” that he says is responsible for a drop in support for Israel among US voters, especially Democrats.“I think there’s been a concerted effort to spread vilification and demonization against Israel on social media,” the Israeli prime minister told journalists on Capitol Hill after being asked to respond to opinion polls showing a move away from the historic trend of strong backing for Israel.“It’s directed, it’s funded. It is malignant. We intend to fight it, because nothing defeats lies like the truth, and we shall spread the truth for everyone to see once people are exposed to the facts, we win hands down. That’s what we intend to do in the coming months and years.”Netanyahu’s comments came during a visit to Congress, where he met the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.They also followed the recent victory of Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary race for the mayor of New York, which commentators believe was partly fueled by the candidate’s vocal support for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.A range of surveys have shows a marked decline in support for Israel among Democratic-leaning voters amid rising disquiet about the impact of the war in the now devastated coastal territory. The ongoing war has killed about 60,000 people – most of them Palestinians – and has seen much of the population threatened with starvation.A Gallup poll in March showed less than half of the US public sympathized with Israel’s position, the lowest figure recorded since the organization started taking surveys on the issue. Among Democrat voters, 38% sympathize with the Palestinians over the Israelis, a reversal of a 2013 Gallup survey, which saw Democrats sympathizing with Israelis by a margin of 36%.Other polls have shown similar trends, raising concerns for the future of the traditional strong bipartisan US support for Israel.The Israeli leader said his government had accepted a proposal from Qatari mediators for a fresh ceasefire with Hamas, saying it matched what had been proposed by Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWitkoff, speaking at a cabinet meeting earlier on Tuesday, had spelled out the terms of a proposed deal to broker a 60-day ceasefire he hoped would be in place by the end of the week, saying it would involve the release of Israeli hostages.“Ten live hostages will be released, nine deceased will be released,” Witkoff said. “We’re meeting at the president’s direction with all the hostage families to let them know, and we think that this will lead to a lasting peace.”Netanyahu said: “We accepted a proposal that came from the mediators. It’s a good proposal. It matches Steve Witkoff’s original idea and we think that we’ve gotten closer to it, and I hope we can cross the line.”He also said he expected to meet the US president again during his current visit, his third to Washington since Trump was inaugurated in January. The two met at the White House on Monday evening, when Netanyahu presented Trump with a letter nominating him for a Nobel peace prize.Netanyahu said the the military coordination with Washington during Israel’s recent 12-day war with Iran, which resulted in repeated strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, was unprecedented.“In the entire 77 years of Israeli history, there has never been the degree of coordination of cooperation and trust between America and Israel as we have today,” he said. “And I credit President Trump with this extraordinary achievement.” More