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      They managed to get accepted to US universities. But they’re still stuck in Gaza

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      Within days of 7 October 2023, much of Maryam’s world had been wiped out: her home in Gaza City, her children’s schools, and the Islamic University of Gaza, where she was a graduate student in physics, were all destroyed by airstrikes. In early December, Maryam’s mentor – Sufian Tayeh, a prominent Palestinian scientist and president of the Islamic University of Gaza – was killed along with his family in an Israeli strike.The professor has been a “father figure” to her, Maryam told the Guardian. When she learned of his death, she remembers closing the physics notebooks she had grabbed as she fled her home and thinking her studies would be over. “My entire world had collapsed,” she said.But as she repeatedly fled Israel’s bombs, Maryam sought ways to keep not only her family alive, but also her dream of becoming a physicist. While living in a tent in Rafah, with no stable access to internet or electricity, she learned of a spot near the border where she could get a faint internet signal from Egypt. Despite the risks, she started going there to research opportunities abroad, eventually managing to earn admission to a fully funded PhD program at the University of Maryland. After deferring her start date by a year, she was meant to start this month.But Maryam remains in Gaza. She is one of dozens of students from the devastated territory who have been admitted to US universities and colleges but are stuck, advocates say, after the Trump administration suspended nearly all non-immigrant visas for Palestinian passport holders.As part of its campaign against US universities, the administration has made it more difficult for international students to travel to the US, and claims it has revoked the visas of thousands of foreign students already in the US over unspecified violations.But for Palestinians in Gaza, the policy change is uniquely devastating.“I will never forget the moment I received the message confirming my acceptance into a fully funded PhD program. I rushed back to our tent to hold my children tightly and tell them the good news – that we would survive this nightmare,” said Maryam, who is using a pseudonym to protect her and her family. “Everything came crashing down again when I heard about the suspension of visa processing. It felt like my dreams had been destroyed once more.”Leila, a 22-year-old from Gaza City, was four years into a five-year engineering program when the war started. She would walk up to two hours a day to find wifi, relying on solar power to charge her phone, and managed to apply and be admitted to a university in the north-western US as a transfer student. (Leila is also a pseudonym, and she asked that the Guardian not publish the name of the university.)Then came the news that all visas were suspended. “We are just stuck in Gaza right now,” she told the Guardian in a series of voice memos.A spokesperson for the state department said in a statement that the department had suspended the processing of nonimmigrant visas for Palestinian Authority passport holders “while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to vet individuals from Gaza” and that it will “take the time necessary to conduct a full and thorough review”.“Every visa decision is a national security decision,” the spokesperson added.According to a cable viewed by the Associated Press, department officials said the new restrictions were intended “to ensure that such applications have undergone necessary, vetting, and screening protocols to ensure the applicants’ identity and eligibility for a visa under US law”. The suspension doesn’t apply to Palestinians who hold passports from other countries – unless they are found to have ties to the Palestinian Authority, or the Palestine Liberation Organization.The Student Justice Network, a US-based collective formed after Donald Trump signed orders in January targeting international students, has been supporting students from Gaza who are seeking to continue their interrupted studies abroad. But of the dozens of students the group says it has helped with university and visa applications, only a handful have made it to the US. (They declined to provide more specific numbers.)Securing a visa to travel to the US from Gaza was an arduous process even in quieter times. Before the war, Palestinians in Gaza had to secure appointments at US embassies outside the territory – usually Egypt or Israel. Obtaining a permit to travel to Israel has been impossible since the war began, while the border with Egypt has remained largely closed.International students have been targeted with a series of federal actions aimed both at Palestinian students specifically and the broader community of more than one million foreign nationals studying in the country.The state department has enlisted consulates overseas into the effort. Earlier this year, it paused all student visa appointments. They have resumed, but prospective students are now being subjected to additional vetting for, among other things, “anti-American” views.But for Palestinians the restrictions are blanket. “Every single one of them has been impacted by this,” Majid said of the students her group has been helping who were meant to start their studies this fall. “There’s no clear understanding as to when their applications will be processed, and this affects their ability to attend their universities on time – and in some cases it could actually impact whether or not they’re able to maintain their scholarships.”Looking elsewhereThomas Cohen, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, told the Guardian that Maryam was one of two physics students from Gaza admitted to the university last year. But getting them out of Gaza proved so difficult that the university ended up deferring the students’ admissions by a year as they tried to get visa appointments.Maryam was able to book an interview at the US embassy in Egypt, and Cohen offered to personally pay for her way there – but the border was shut down when Israeli forces took control of it in May 2024. She was still looking for a way out when the US announced the suspension of visas for Palestinians.Cohen said he tried all he could to help Maryam and the other student – because their academic records earned them a spot at the university but also because he understood that the opportunity could save their lives. He spoke of the Holocaust survivors in his own family, and those who “didn’t survive because they had no way to leave” Nazi-occupied Poland.Cohen is now advising the students to pursue opportunities in Europe or Canada. Even if they were to get a visa to the US, “the political climate we’re in, it’s dangerous for Palestinians”, he says.Majid, of the Student Justice Network, said the group had also been encouraging the students they support to pursue options in other countries. But even if they gain admission elsewhere, the border with Egypt remains sealed shut as Israel has intensified its military campaign.“These are students who have gone through two plus years without an educational infrastructure,” Majid said, noting that all of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed.“Think about having applied to university when you were 17 or 18, and then think about applying under bombardments, and starvation, and with limited resources, and having your documents destroyed, and having lost your family members,” she added. “To yank these fully funded opportunities away from them is devastating.” More

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      For comedians around the world, the laughs often end as democracy fades

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      The exiled Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef has experienced firsthand how intolerant governments can silence political satire. And he had a short message this week for those living in an age of Donald Trump’s free speech clampdown: “My Fellow American Citizens,” he wrote on X. “Welcome to my world.”In his attacks on the most prominent of American satirists, the US president has joined a cadre of illiberal and sensitive leaders around the world who will not tolerate a joke.The latest target of what critics say is a campaign to silence dissenting voices was Jimmy Kimmel, who had his late-night ABC talkshow suspended after government pressure. The removal, weeks after the rival network CBS cancelled Stephen Colbert’s satirical show, follows other Trump-led crackdowns on media and academia.Political foes of the US president say the diminishing space for free speech shows Trump’s America is moving towards authoritarianism. Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking to MSNBC, said the country was on a path towards becoming more like oppressive regimes in Russia and Saudi Arabia. “This is just another step forward,” he said.From Egypt’s military ruler, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, to India’s populist prime minister, Narendra Modi, the laughs often end for comedians as democracy dwindles.One of the most famous global comedians to have his life turned upside down by his political satire is Youssef, who first found fame with a TV show panning the Egyptian regime.Known as the “Egyptian Jon Stewart” in reference to the US talkshow host whom he was inspired by (and looks like), Youssef is a former heart surgeon who became a household name.But his satire made him the target of two opposing governments. He was first arrested in April 2013, accused of insulting Islam and Egypt’s then president. Months later, when Sisi took power by force, Youssef had to cancel his show and flee the country.View image in fullscreenYoussef has said his struggle was as much against Egypt’s cloying, conservative culture as its repressive leaders. “We didn’t have a space for satire in Egypt. We carved out our own space. We had to fight for it,” he said in a 2015 interview.“And because there’s no platform, no space or infrastructure for that kind of satire to be accepted, we were basically pushed out … We are up against generations of people who don’t have this kind of mindset. That’s why it was an uphill battle for us.”Comedians elsewhere have often found themselves caught up in nationalist fervour.In India, which has a history of a lively and relatively free public discourse, critics of Modi argue space to criticise the policies of his rightwing nationalist government is shrinking.Comedians and comedy venues have increasingly been caught in the crosshairs since the rise of his Hindu Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which has ruled for more than a decade.A Muslim comedian was detained by police for weeks in 2021 for allegedly vulgar jokes insulting Hindu gods – despite never having performed at the show. The comedian Vir Das faced a backlash later the same year and police reports filed by BJP officials after a monologue that dealt with the country’s contradictions on women’s rights and religion.View image in fullscreenPolice in Mumbai registered a criminal case against a comedian in 2017 over a tweet of a photo of Modi modified by Snapchat’s popular dog filter, giving him a canine nose and ears.Similar cases have come out in Russia, including a standup of Azerbaijani origin and a citizen of Belarus, Idrak Mirzalizade, who was detained for 10 days and later banned from the country for a joke about open racism in Russia.Comedy, it seems, can also be treated by some as a transnational crime.The Turkish government asked for the prosecution of a German comedian in 2016 for performing a satirical poem about its president. In the late-night programme screened by the German state broadcaster ZDF, Jan Böhmermann sat in front of a Turkish flag beneath a small, framed portrait of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, reading out a poem that accused the president of repressing minorities and “kicking Kurds”.View image in fullscreenErdoğan’s lawyer Michael Hubertus von Sprenger wanted to enforce a complete ban on the poem, and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor at the time, was widely criticised for appearing to give in to Ankara’s demands.Böhmermann said at the time he felt Merkel had “filleted me [and] served me up for tea” to Erdoğan, and that she risked damaging freedom of speech in Germany. Charges brought against him were later dropped and he was given police protection. More

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      What does Donald Trump think free speech means? – podcast

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      Archive: CBS, Good Morning America, The Charlie Kirk show, ABC News, Katie Miller Pod, CBS Austin, PIX11 News, Fox News
      Listen to Science Weekly’s episode on the data behind political violence
      Listen to Politics Weekly, all about Trump’s state visit to the UK
      Purchase Jonathan Freedland’s new book, The Traitor’s Circle, here
      Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
      Support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politicspodus More

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      Trump suggests punishing TV networks for ‘negative’ coverage amid outrage over Kimmel suspension

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      Donald Trump suggested on Thursday that TV networks which cover him “negatively” could lose their licenses after his celebration of ABC suspending late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.On Air Force One, the president spoke to reporters on his flight back to the US from his state visit to the UK. The president said major US networks were “97% against me”, though he did not offer evidence to prove this figure or detail how this conclusion was evaluated. He said he read the statistic “someplace”.“Again, 97% negative, and yet I won easily. I won all seven swing states,” Trump said. “They give me only bad press. I mean they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their licenses should be taken away.”Trump supported ABC’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, saying on Thursday that the comedian was “not a talented person” who “had very bad ratings”.“Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk,” Trump told reporters on Thursday during his state visit to the United Kingdom. “Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago.”According to Nielsen ratings as reported by LateNighter, although Stephen Colbert’s Late Show leads the time slot in total viewers with 2.42 million, Kimmel’s show averaged 1.77 million viewers in the second quarter of 2025 and edged out Colbert in the key 18-49 demographic.However, there was an 11% drop off in his show’s viewership the last month. Kimmel also has over 20 million subscribers on YouTube.The controversy began after Kimmel, in a recent broadcast, suggested that “many in Maga land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk”. Within a day, FCC chair Brendan Carr condemned the comments as “truly sick” and suggested ABC could face regulatory consequences.ABC suspended the show after affiliate operator Nexstar called Kimmel’s remarks “offensive and insensitive”.The indefinite suspension of the popular late-night show has prompted numerous calls for a boycott against Disney, ABC’s parent company, and other major media conglomerates that have refused to air Kimmel’s show.Writers Guild of America union members protested against the suspension of Kimmel outside Disney/ABC in Los Angeles on Thursday, with the union issuing a statement saying: “The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other – to disturb, even – is at the very heart of what it means to be a free people. It is not to be denied. Not by violence, not by the abuse of governmental power, nor by acts of corporate cowardice.”Carr further raised censorship concerns when he suggested that the FCC might be “looking into” The View, another ABC talkshow. Appearing on conservative podcast the Bulwark, Carr was asked if other shows could face similar issues.He said: “I think it’s worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether The View and some of these other programs that you have still qualify as bona fide news programs and therefore exempt from the equal-opportunity regime that Congress has put in place.”The View hosts did not comment about Kimmel during the show’s Thursday broadcast.View image in fullscreenDamon Lindelof, a powerful Hollywood showrunner and creator of the ABC series Lost and other dramas, has promised not to work with Disney unless it puts Kimmel back on the air.Lindelof wrote on Instagram: “I was shocked, saddened and infuriated by yesterday’s suspension and look forward to it being lifted soon. If it isn’t, I can’t in good conscience work for the company that imposed it.”He added: “If you know Jimmy … You know he loves his country. You know he appreciates a good roast and he can take as good as he gives. You know he supported his crew through multiple strikes and you know he is generous and philanthropic and most of all, you know that he is kind.”The feud between Trump and Kimmel stretches back years, most notably when Kimmel hosted the 2024 Academy Awards and Trump posted online calling him a “WORSE HOST”. Kimmel read that message out during the ceremony, and responded by asking Trump if it wasn’t “past your jail time?”The comedian also emerged as a vocal critic during Trump’s first term, leading the fight against Obamacare repeal efforts after revealing his newborn son’s heart surgery had been made possible by the Affordable Care Act.Kimmel is the second prominent US late-night host to lose his show in the past few months. CBS announced in July that it would be cancelling Stephen Colbert’s show after he was also critical of Trump.JD Vance added to the pile-on Thursday, joking on social media that secretary of state Marco Rubio would be taking over as host of ABC’s late night show, a quip referencing Rubio’s multiple roles in the Trump administration.Barack Obama condemned what he called a “dangerous” escalation by the Trump administration. “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” Obama wrote on X.FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat on the commission, also accused ABC of “shameful” corporate capitulation that “has put the foundation of the first amendment in danger”. She said the FCC “does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes”.House Democratic leaders called for Carr’s resignation, accusing him of forcing ABC to suspend the show through regulatory threats.“Brendan Carr has engaged in the corrupt abuse of power,” said the Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and five other lawmakers in a joint statement. “He has disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC and forcing the company to bend the knee to the Trump administration.”Ro Khanna, a representative of California, issued a motion to subpoena Carr in the House oversight committee. “This administration has initiated the largest assault on the first amendment and free speech in modern history,” he said. “They’re making comedy illegal.”Democrats are also planning legislative action in response to what they see as escalating government censorship. Senator Chris Murphy and Congressman Jason Crow announced Thursday they will introduce bicameral legislation meant to protect anti-government speech from censorship and includes creating “a specific defense for those that are being targeted for political reasons”.In a press conference in Washington, Murphy warned that “Jimmy Kimmel is likely to not be the last person to lose their job, or face retaliation for their criticism of Donald Trump,” while Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called the administration’s threats “an assault on everything this country has stood for since the constitution has been signed”.Chris Stein contributed reporting More

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      ‘Censor-in-chief’: Trump-backed FCC chair at heart of Jimmy Kimmel storm

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      “The FCC should promote freedom of speech,” Brendan Carr, now the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, wrote in his chapter on the agency in Project 2025, the conservative manifesto that detailed plans for a second Trump administration.It’s a view he’s held for a long time. He wrote on X in 2023 that “free speech is the counterweight – it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.”And in 2019, in response to a Democratic commissioner saying the commission should regulate e-cigarette advertising, Carr wrote that the government should not seek to censor speech it does not like. “The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest’,” he wrote on Twitter at the time.But Carr has found himself at the center of the much-criticized decision by ABC to indefinitely cancel Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show over comments the host made about Charlie Kirk’s killing. Despite the decision being, on its face, in opposition to free speech, Carr has used his position as chair of the commission, tasked with regulating communications networks, to go after broadcasters he deems are not operating in the “public interest”.Before he was named chair, Carr said publicly that “broadcast licenses are not sacred cows” and that he would seek to hold companies accountable if they didn’t operate in the public interest, a vague guideline set forth in the Communications Act of 1934. He has advocated for the FCC to “take a fresh look” at what operating in the public interest means.He knows the agency well: he was nominated by Trump to the commission in 2017 and was tapped by the president to be chair in January. He has also worked as an attorney at the agency and an adviser to then-commissioner Ajit Pai, who later became chair and appointed Carr as general counsel.Tom Wheeler, a former FCC chair appointed by Democratic president Barack Obama, said Carr is “incredibly bright” and savvy about using the broad latitude given to the chairman, “exploiting the vagaries in the term ‘the public interest’.”Instead of the deregulation Trump promised voters, the administration “delivered this kind of micromanagement”, Wheeler said.“It’s not the appropriate job of the FCC chairman to become the censor-in-chief,” Wheeler said.Since Kimmel’s suspension, Carr has said Kimmel’s comments were not jokes, but rather attempts to “directly mislead the American public about a significant fact”. During Monday’s show, Kimmel said that the “Maga gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it”. The comments came before charging documents alleged the shooter had left-leaning viewpoints.Kimmel is just Carr’s latest target. As chair, he has used the agency’s formal investigatory power, and his own bully pulpit, to highlight supposed biases and extract concessions from media companies who fear backlash from the Trump administration if they don’t pre-emptively comply.The commission itself hasn’t directly sought these actions from broadcasters. Carr has instead said publicly what the commission could do – for instance, signaling he would not approve mergers for any companies that had diversity policies in place – and companies have responded by doing what he wants.Nexstar, a CBS affiliate operator which first said it would not air Kimmel’s show on the local channels it owns, wants to buy Tegna.Carr is honing a playbook, and so far it’s working. “It’s rinse and repeat,” Wheeler said. “I think we’ll continue to see it for as long as he can get away with it.”Top Democrats on Thursday called for Carr’s resignation, and some suggested they would find a way to hold Carr accountable, either now or if they regain power in Congress.The lone Democrat on the FCC, Anna Gomez, criticized Carr for “using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression”. Gomez called ABC’s decision “a shameful show of cowardly corporate capitulation” that threatens the first amendment, and said the FCC is operating beyond its authority and outside the bounds of the constitution.“If it were to take the unprecedented step of trying to revoke broadcast licenses, which are held by local stations rather than national networks, it would run headlong into the first amendment and fail in court on both the facts and the law,” Gomez wrote in a statement. “But even the threat to revoke a license is no small matter. It poses an existential risk to a broadcaster, which by definition cannot exist without its license. That makes billion-dollar companies with pending business before the agency all the more vulnerable to pressure to bend to the government’s ideological demands.”Trump has cheered Carr as he collected wins against the president’s longtime foes in the media. On Wednesday, Trump called Kimmel’s suspension “Great News for America” and egged on NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, their late-night hosts.“Do it NBC!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Amid the criticism of Carr, Trump said the FCC chair was doing a great job and was a “great patriot”.Breaking norms at the FCCAt the FCC, the chair has wide latitude and operates as a CEO of the agency, Wheeler said. There are four other commissioners, but the chair sets the agenda and approves every word of what ends up on an agenda, he said. The commissioners are by default in a reactionary position to the power of the chair.“What Chairman Carr has raised to a new art form is the ability to to achieve results without a formal decision by the commission and to use the coercive powers of the chairman,” Wheeler said.Without a formal decision by the commission, he said, there can’t be appeals or court reviews, one of the key ways outside groups have sought to hold the Trump administration accountable for its excesses.The agency has historically been more hands-off about the idea of the “public interest”. On the FCC’s website, for instance, it notes that the agency has “long held that ‘the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views’” and that instead of suppressing speech, it should “encourage responsive ‘counter-speech’ from others.”In Trump’s first term, when Pai was chair, the president called for the agency to revoke broadcast licenses. At the time, Pai said, “the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content”.Wheeler and a former FCC chair appointed by a Republican, Al Sikes, noted in an op-ed earlier this year that Trump has also used executive orders to undermine the independence of the FCC, instead making it into a “blatantly partisan tool” subject to White House approval rather than an independent regulator.What Carr is trying to doIn an appearance on conservative host Benny Johnson’s show that proved fateful for Kimmel, Carr alluded to ways the commission could take action against the late-night host. Carr carefully explained that he could be called upon to judge any claims against the broadcasters while also calling Kimmel’s comments “some of the sickest conduct possible.”“But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”The companies could handle it by issuing on-air apologies or suspending Kimmel, Carr said. He cited the idea of the “public interest” but also claimed there was a case that Kimmel was engaging in “news distortion”. In further comments to Johnson, he talked about the declining relevance of broadcast networks and credited Trump for “smash[ing] the facade”.“We’re seeing a lot of consequences that are flowing from President Trump doing that,” Carr said. “Look, NPR has been defunded. PBS has been defunded. Colbert is retiring. Joy Reid is out at MSNBC. Terry Moran is gone and ABC is now admitting that they are biased. CBS has now made some commitments to us that they’re going to return to more fact-based journalism.“I think you see some lashing out from people like Kimmel, who are frankly talentless and are looking for ways to get attention, but their grip on the narrative is slipping. That doesn’t mean that it’s still not important to hold the public interest standard.” More

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      Jury finds LA protester not guilty of assaulting border patrol agent

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      A Los Angeles protester charged with assaulting a border patrol agent in June was acquitted on Wednesday after US immigration officials were accused in court of lying about the incident.The not guilty verdict for Brayan Ramos-Brito is a major setback for the Donald Trump-appointed US attorney in southern California and for Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who has become a key figure in Trump’s immigration crackdown. The 29-year-old defendant, who is a US citizen, was facing a misdemeanor and was the first protester to go to trial since demonstrations against immigration raids erupted in LA earlier this summer.Border patrol and prosecutors alleged that Ramos-Brito struck an agent during a chaotic protest on 7 June in the south Los Angeles county city of Paramount outside a complex where the Department of Homeland Security has an office. But footage from a witness, which the Guardian published days after the incident, showed an agent forcefully shoving Ramos-Brito. The footage did not capture the demonstrator assaulting the officer.The jury delivered its not guilty verdict after a little over an hour of deliberations, the Los Angeles Times reported. Bovino testified earlier in the day and faced a tough cross-examination from public defenders.Bovino was one of four border patrol agents who testified as witnesses, but was the only one to say he saw the alleged assault by Ramos-Brito, according to the LA Times. Videos played in court captured the agent shoving Ramos-Brito, sending him flying backward, and showed the protester marching back toward the agent, the paper reported. The videos did not capture Ramos-Brito’s alleged assault.There were multiple factual discrepancies in DHS’s internal reports on the protest, which initially led to charges against five demonstrators, the Guardian reported in July. A criminal complaint suggested Ramos-Brito and others had attacked agents in protest of the arrests of two sisters, but records showed the women had been arrested in a separate incident that occurred after Ramos-Brito’s arrest.A supervisor later documented the correct timeline and “apologized” for errors, records showed.At trial, Cuauhtemoc Ortega, a federal public defender, sought to cast doubt on Bovino’s credibility, questioning him about facing a misconduct investigation several years ago, which resulted in a reprimand for referring to undocumented people as “scum, filth and trash”, the LA Times reported.After Bovino responded that his comment was in reference to a “specific criminal illegal alien”, Ortega read from the reprimand, signed by Bovino, which said he was describing “illegal aliens”, the newspaper said.Ortega also argued the agent who Ramos-Brito allegedly assaulted lied about the incident and Bovino was “trying to cover up for him”.Bovino has previously faced scrutiny for making false and misleading statements. He defended a major immigration sweep in January by claiming agents had a “predetermined list of targets”, many with criminal records, but documents showed that 77 out of 78 people taken into custody during the operation had no prior record with the agency, a CalMatters investigation revealed.And in June, while defending the arrest of a US citizen in a high-profile case, Bovino falsely claimed on social media that the man was charged with assaulting an officer.In Ramos-Brito’s trial, videos also contradicted initial claims of a border patrol agent who had said he was chasing a man who assaulted him, but was stopped by Ramos-Brito and Jose Mojica, another protester, the LA Times said. The footage showed no chase.Mojica first shared his account of the incident with the Guardian days after his arrest, saying he was assaulted and injured and had not attacked officers. The US attorney’s office subsequently dismissed felony assault charges it had initially filed against Mojica and Ramos-Brito, but then filed a lower-level misdemeanor against Ramos-Brito.Ramos-Brito’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.A spokesperson for Bill Essayli, the US attorney appointed by the president earlier this year, declined to comment on the acquittal. Border patrol officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry and requests for comment from Bovino.Essayli’s office has aggressively prosecuted protesters and people accused of interfering with immigration arrests, with more than 40 cases filed in June and July. But prosecutors have repeatedly dismissed some of the felony charges soon after filing them.Carley Palmer, an attorney who served as a supervisor in the US attorney’s office in LA until she left last year, said Thursday it was notable that the federal government had devoted significant resources to a misdemeanor case against an individual with no reported criminal history. Bovino, a senior official, flew in from Chicago for the trial.It is challenging to win convictions in cases like these without video evidence, she said: “The government bears the burden of proof, and if you don’t have footage of the relevant events, then everything is going to rise and fall on the credibility of your witnesses. If the witnesses are law enforcement officers and jurors believe they had bias … that’s really going to hurt their credibility.”The discussion at trial of Bovino’s past misconduct could create challenges for the government moving forward, she added: “In addition to harming the individual case, if a law enforcement witness has their credibility impeached on the stand, that can impact if they can testify in future cases and if their word can be relied on in sworn affidavits going forward.”Meghan Blanco, an attorney who represented Mojica, said it was significant that jurors did not believe the statements of such a senior official.“These jurors had the opportunity to listen firsthand to the CBP officer overseeing enforcement nationally and could not have found his testimony to be credible,” said Blanco, a former federal prosecutor. “It is a bad sign for the federal government. They are doing everything they can to try to legitimize their prosecutions, and thank God the jury and the public are seeing right through it.” More

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      Judges rule against Trump administration on deporting Guatemalan children and Venezuelans

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      The Trump administration has been handed a double defeat by judges in immigration cases, barring the executive branch from deporting a group of Guatemalan children and from slashing protections for many Venezuelans in the US.A federal judge on Thursday ordered the administration to refrain from deporting Guatemalan unaccompanied immigrant children with active immigration cases while a legal challenge plays out.Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee based in Washington DC, kept in place an earlier judicial block on the policy, sharply criticizing the administration’s unproven assertion that the children’s parents wanted them deported.The administration attempted to deport 76 Guatemalan minors being held in US custody in a surprise move in the early morning on 31 August, sparking a lawsuit and emergency hearing that temporarily halted the move.The Department of Justice lawyer Drew Ensign initially said that the children’s parents had requested they be returned home, but the department later withdrew that claim. Reuters published a Guatemalan government report saying that most parents of the roughly 600 Guatemalan children in US custody could not be contacted and of those who could, many did not want their children forced back to the country.Kelly said the justice department’s explanation “crumbled like a house of cards” in light of that report.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the justice department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Kelly said some children were unexpectedly taken from their shelter beds in the middle of the night, driven to the airport and, in some cases, put on planes, leaving them worried and confused. At one shelter in McAllen, Texas, a young girl was so scared that she vomited, Kelly wrote, citing evidence submitted in the case.Immigrant children who arrive at US borders without a parent or guardian are classified as unaccompanied and sent to federal government-run shelters until they can be placed with a family member or foster home, a process outlined in federal law.Meanwhile, late on Wednesday, a federal appeals court rejected an attempt by the Trump administration to set aside a judge’s order holding that it unlawfully rolled back temporary protections from deportation granted to 600,000 Venezuelans living in the US.A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals declined to pause a judge’s 5 September ruling holding that the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, lacked the authority to end the program, known as temporary protected status or TPS.“Vacating and terminating Venezuela’s TPS status threw the future of these Venezuelan citizens into disarray, and exposed them to a substantial risk of wrongful removal, separation from their families, and loss of employment,” the panel said.The justice department has said that if a stay were denied, it might take the case to the US supreme court, which in May put on hold an earlier injunction Chen issued and cleared the way for the administration to end temporary protections for about 348,000 of the Venezuelans at issue.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the DHS, in a statement said the ninth circuit’s ruling “is nothing short of open defiance against the US Supreme Court”. The administration had contended the supreme court’s May decision meant Chen’s latest ruling had to be similarly paused.“Luckily for us, and for all Americans, the Ninth Circuit is not the last stop,” McLaughlin said.TPS is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event. It provides eligible migrants with work authorization and temporary protection from deportation. The program was created in 1991 and extended under Joe Biden to cover about 600,000 Venezuelans and 521,000 Haitians. Noem reversed the extensions, saying they were no longer justified, prompting legal challenges.Chen’s decision had also applied to 521,000 Haitians. The administration did not ask the ninth circuit to put that part of Chen’s ruling on hold as a second judge in New York had already blocked the revocation of the Haitians’ status. More

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      in US Politics

      Starmer and Trump to hold talks as PM warned UK faces ‘huge dilemma’ over relationship with US – UK politics live

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      Donald Trump and his wife Melania posed for a photograph with King Charles and Queen Camilla in the grand grand Green Corridor at Windsor Castle before Trump headed to the PM’s country residence Chequers, PA Media reports. PA says:
      The four posed for a joint photograph together in the atmospheric corridor which is lined with gilt edged historic paintings and antique furniture.
      Outside at the sovereign’s entrance, the Kkng said a solo goodbye with Trump shaking his hands warmly and placing his other hand on top. The president said “thank you very much, everybody. He’s a great gentleman and a great King”.
      The Windsor Castle detachment of The King’s Guard turned out in the Quadrangle outside to mark Trump’s departure. Although Melania attended the official parting of ways, she is in fact staying behind to carry out joint engagements, first with Camilla, and then the Princess of Wales.
      She was joining the Queen for a tour of Queen Mary’s Doll’s House and the Royal Library in Windsor Castle.
      President Trump is now leaving Windsor Castle. He will be flying to Chequers by helicopter.Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, has thanked King Charles for what he said at the state banquet last night strongly supporting the Ukrainian cause.In a post on social media, Zelenskyy said:
      I extend my deepest thanks to His Majesty King Charles III @RoyalFamily for his steadfast support. Ukraine greatly values the United Kingdom’s unwavering and principled stance.
      When tyranny threatens Europe once again, we must all hold firm, and Britain continues to lead in defending freedom on many fronts. Together, we have achieved a lot, and with the support of freedom-loving nations—the UK, our European partners, and the US—we continue to defend values and protect lives. We are united in our efforts to make diplomacy work and secure lasting peace for the European continent.
      In his speech Charles said:
      Our countries have the closest defence, security and intelligence relationship ever known. In two world wars, we fought together to defeat the forces of tyranny.
      Today, as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace. And our Aukus submarine partnership, with Australia, sets the benchmark for innovative and vital collaboration.
      Donald Trump is likely to become “much more aggressive” towards Russia in support of Ukraine, one of his allies has claimed.Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax, a rightwing news organisation in the US, was a guest at the state banquet last night. In an interview with the Today programme, Ruddy, who has been a friend and informal adviser to the president for years, predicted that Trump would soon harden his stance against Russia. He said:
      President Trump is not against Ukraine, like some people might think, and he’s moved a long way in his posture. And I think we’re going to see much more aggressive action in the weeks and months ahead.
      Ruddy conceded that Trump was not in favour of sending US troops into action.
      I think the president is highly reluctant to put troops on the ground. That’s nothing to do with Ukraine. He just doesn’t like American troops put in harm’s way. He doesn’t like physical engagements. He’ll do these kinetic strikes from time to time, you saw that in Iran, but it’s still not really deploying American troops and putting them in a lot of risk.
      Instead, Trump sees this as “an economic battle”, Ruddy said.
      He’s been pushing for [lower oil prices]. He wants sanctions. He wants Nato countries to stop buying Russian oil. So he sees this in economic war, as a businessman.
      Asked about Trump’s views on Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, Ruddy said Trump viewed him as “a bad guy, even though he won’t say that publicly”.Trump thought it was worth trying to win Putin round, Ruddy said. But Trump has now decided that’s “not going to work”, Ruddy claimed.
      Putin hasn’t talked to anyone. He hasn’t talked to any American president – reluctant, won’t do anything. So Trump looks at this and says, let me see if I can be his friend. I’ll reach out. I’ll be overly generous, I’ll be overly kind.
      And he tried that. I think he really honestly thought it was going to work.
      And I think he’s coming to the conclusion that it’s not going to work and that he needs to do [things] and that’s why he’s ramping up talk about tariffs and secondary tariffs on India and China.
      Four men who were arrested after images of Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein were projected on to Windsor Castle have been bailed, PA Media reports. PA says:
      A 60-year-old man from East Sussex, a 36-year-old man from London, a 37-year-old man from Kent and a 50-year-old man from London were arrested on suspicion of malicious communications on Tuesday night after the stunt at the Berkshire royal residence, Thames Valley police (TVP) said.
      They were released on conditional bail on Wednesday night until December 12 while inquiries continue, according to the force.
      “Those arrested are being investigated for a number of possible offences including malicious communications and public nuisance,” a spokesperson for TVP said.
      The nine-minute film created by British political campaign group Led By Donkeys went over the history of the US president’s links to Epstein, including the recent release by US legislators of documents said to include a letter from Trump to the paedophile financier to celebrate his 50th birthday.
      The film was projected from a hotel room with a direct view over the castle as an act of “peaceful protest”, a Led By Donkeys spokesperson said on Wednesday.
      “My colleagues were arrested for malicious communications, which seems ridiculous, because we’ve done 25 or 30 projections before, no-one’s ever been arrested,” the spokesperson told PA.
      “So suddenly, because it’s Trump, you get this reaction, which is surprising, disappointing and very heavy-handed from police. I think they’ve been arrested for embarrassing Donald Trump.”
      Back to Nick Clegg (see 8.56am), and this is what the former deputy PM told the Today programme about why he was not over-impressed by the US tech investments in the UK that have been announced alongside the state visit. He said:
      Of course it’s great there’s investment in the UK, and it’s better still that a young, London-based company like Nscale is involved.
      But these really are crumbs from the Silicon Valley table.
      If you consider that the total compute capacity in the UK is estimated to be around 1.8 gigawatts, withI’ve read ambitions to reach six gigawatts by 2030. Well, that is about the same as one single data centre being built by my former employer Meta in Louisiana.
      And so I just think some sort of perspective needs to be applied to all the hype that comes from the government and the tech companies at times like this, especially when we are never going to compete with the Chinese and America on infrastructure. We’re never going to develop our own frontier foundation models – the base layer of the AI industry.
      Where we can complete is how you deploy AI in the workplace innovatively through new applications and so on.
      And, crucially, none of this does anything to deal with our perennial Achilles heel in technology in the United Kingdom, which is we’re a very innovative place, with great entrepreneurs, scientists, people who create new companies. But the moment those companies start developing any momentum, they have to go to Palo Alto, to the VC [venture capital] firms there to get money. They then say, well, you’ve got to move to the West Coast if you’re going to take our money.
      So not only do we import all their technology, we export all our good people and good ideas as well.
      And that’s why I just think it’s worth keeping some of the hyperbole at moments like this in context.
      Clegg says everyone in the UK was using phones designed in America, run with US software and US operating systems, with the data stored on American cloud infrastructure
      I sometimes wonder how we would react as a body politic if all that infrastructure, all of that technology that we depend on for every sort of minute detail of our lives, were produced by the French. I think there’d be absolute uproar from Nigel Farage and others.
      Yet because of the very close partnership we’ve had with the United States, understandably so in the cold war period, I think we’ve been quite relaxed about this very heavy dependency … both in the public and the private sector, on American technology.
      Here is a Guardian explain on what the US-UK tech deal actually involves.Jennifer Rankin is the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent.Keir Starmer’s government is expected to soon begin talks with the EU to negotiate Britain’s entry into the EU’s €150bn (£130bn) defence loans scheme.The negotiations can start because EU member states on Wednesday agreed a negotiating mandate for the European Commission, but must conclude quickly if British companies are to be involved.The scheme, called Security Action for Europe (Safe), provides EU member states with cheap EU-backed loans to finance defence equipment, either for their armies or for Ukraine. The UK is not applying for a loan, but would like the biggest possible role for British companies in winning contacts.The first loans are expected to be disbursed in early 2026, with member states due to submit spending plans to the commission by the end of November.Europe minister Nick Thomas-Symonds made clear the deadline was on his mind when he spoke at a conference in Brussels on Wednesday. Asked by politics professor Anand Menon whether the UK could miss out on the first round, he said:I profoundly hope not … But my sense on this is that you’re absolutely right to emphasise the deadline.The Guardian reported this week that France has called for a 50% ceiling on the value of UK components in projects financed by Safe. The final EU negotiating mandate leaves the point vague, giving EU negotiators flexibility.The EU and UK must also negotiate a British entry fee to cover administrative costs. EU sources have suggested the fee will be linked to the level of British participation.Asked about the French position, Thomas-Symonds said the UK and EU were in a live negotiation, without commenting on details. He said:
      The bigger picture here is the real importance, when we have seen the return of war to our continent, that what we are doing is making sure we don’t fragment European defence production at this moment.
      Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, has been accused of putting lives at risk by the anti-slavery watchdog.Yesterday Mahmood said the use of modern slavery legislation to block deportations of migrants made a “mockery of our laws”. Rajeev Syal and Diane Taylor have the story.Today the independent anti-slavery commissioner Eleanor Lyons condemned the Home Secretary’s comments. She told Radio 4 comment like this “have a real-life impact on victims of exploitation, who may now be more scared to come forward and talk about what’s happened to them”.She went on:
      The Home Office are the deciders in this country on whether someone is a victim of modern slavery. They have the final decision-making.
      Both the House of Commons and the House of Lords select committees have looked at this issue in recent years, and they found there’s no misuse of the system.
      It puts vulnerable lives at risk when the Home Secretary is claiming that is the case.
      The ABC has been barred from attending Donald Trump’s press conference near London this week after a clash between the broadcaster’s Americas editor, John Lyons, and the president in Washington DC over his business dealings, Amanda Meade reports.Good morning. It’s day two of the state visit and, after the pomp, today we’re on to the policy. Donald Trump is leaving Windsor Castle and heading for Chequers where he will have private talks with Keir Starmer before the two leaders hold a press conference.In his speech at the state banquet last night, Trump delivered used some uncharacteristically sophisticated and lovely metaphors to describe the US/UK relationship. He said:
      We’re joined by history and faith, by love and language and by transcendent ties of culture, tradition, ancestry and destiny.
      We’re like two notes in one chord or two verses of the same poem, each beautiful on its own, but really meant to be played together.
      Starmer defends his use of flattery diplomacy with Trump on the grounds that it delivers for Britain and, with No 10 announcing US investments in the UK worth £150bn there is evidence to suggest it’s working.But, to return to Trump’s analogy, there are others who suspect that, if anything is being “played” in all of this, it’s us.On the Today programme this morning Nick Clegg came close to expressing this view. As a former Lib Dem deputy prime minister in the 2010-15 coalition government, and a former president of global affairs at Meta, he is very well placed to comment on the relationship. Clegg told Today that the AI investments being anounced for the UK were “crumbs from the Silicon Valley table”. He said he thought the UK had become over-dependent on American technology. And he went on:
      Because of the very close partnership we’ve had with the United States, understandably so in the cold war period, I think we’ve been quite relaxed about this very heavy dependency … both in the public and the private sector, on American technology.
      I just so happen to believe that is now changing because the rupture – notwithstanding the pomp and ceremony of the state visit by Donald Trump this week – the transatlantic rupture, in my view, is real.
      I think the Americans – and we’ve been on notice for this for ages – are turning their attention to the Pacific. They have much less attachment to the transatlantic relationship.
      So my view is, over time, British governments need to learn to ask themselves different questions to how we can roll out the red carpet to American investment, welcome as that is. We need to ask ourselves questions about how we can develop and grow … our own technology companies to the size the need to be.
      Clegg said the UK faced “a huge dilemma”.
      We’ve got to learn, technologically, as much as in so many other walks of life, to stand more on own two feet, rather than just cling on to Uncle Sam’s coattails.
      While that served us well for a while, I think that’s no longer going to be the paradigm that works for us going forward.
      Today I will be focusing mostly on the Trump visit, although I will cover some other UK politics too. Here is the agenda for the day.10am: Donald Trump leaves Windsor CastleMorning: Melania Trump and Queen Camilla visit Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House in Windsor and Frogmore Gardens10.45am: Trump is due to arrive at Chequers, where he will hold bilateral talks with Keir Starmer. The two leaders are also speaking at an event for business leaders, and viewing items from the Winston Churchill archive at the mansion, the official country residence of the PM. And there will be a parachute display by the Red Devils.Around 2.30pm: Starmer and Trump hold a press conference at Chequers.If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog. More