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      Stateless Palestinian woman detained after honeymoon released from Ice jail

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      Ward Sakeik, a stateless Palestinian woman who was detained in February on the way back from her honeymoon, was released from immigration detention after more than four months of confinement.“I was overfilled with joy and a little shock,” she said at a press conference on Thursday. “I mean, it was my first time seeing a tree in five months.”She ran to her husband, who had come to pick her up. “I was like, oh my God, I can touch him without handcuffs and without a glass. It was just freedom.”Sakeik, 22, was detained in February on her way home from her honeymoon in the US Virgin Islands. Prior to her arrest, she had been complying with requirements to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since she was nine.After she was detained, the US government tried – twice – to deport her. The first time, she was told she was being taken to the Israel border – just as Israel launched airstrikes on Iran. The second time, Sakeik was told once again she would be deported – despite a judge’s order barring her removal from her home state of Texas.Sakeik’s family is from Gaza, but she was born in Saudi Arabia, which does not grant birthright citizenship to the children of foreigners. She and her family came to the US on a tourist visa when Sakeik was eight and applied for asylum – but were denied. The family was allowed to remain in Texas as long as they complied with requirements to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.In the years that passed, Sakeik graduated high school and college at the University of Texas, Arlington, started a wedding photography business, and married her husband, 28-year-old Taahir Shaikh. She had begun the process of obtaining a green card.She and her husband had bought a home – and had begun the process of renovating it.But 10 days after her wedding, on the way back from her honeymoon, Sakeik’s life was upended. “I married the love of my life. We spent 36 hours in the house that we were renovating for six months,” she said. “After a few hours from returning from our honeymoon, I was put in a gray tracksuit and shackles.”Sakeik was joined by her husband, her attorneys and community leaders for the press conference, at a hotel in Irving, Texas, where she had previously photographed weddings. “I never thought that I would be back in this hotel giving a speech about something extremely personal,” she said.Sakeik said she was transferred between three different detention centers, and at various points faced harrowing conditions. During her first transfer, she was on a bus for 16 hours. “We were not given any water or food, and we could smell the driver eating Chick-fil-A,” she said. “We would ask for water, bang on the door for food, and he would just turn up the radio and act like he wasn’t listening to us.”Sakeik said she did not eat because she was fasting for Ramadan. Eventually, she said: “I broke my fast next to a toilet in the intake room.”At the Prairieland detention center, Sakeik said there was so much dust that “women are getting sick left and right”.“The restrooms are also very, very, very much unhygienic. The beds have rust everywhere. They’re not properly maintained. And cockroaches, grasshoppers, spiders, you name it, all over the facility. Girls would get bit.”Throughout, Sakeik was preoccupied with the worry that she would be deported. Had she been sent to Israel without documents proving her nationality, she worried she would be arrested.“I was criminalized for being stateless, something that I absolutely have no control over,” she said. “I didn’t choose to be stateless … I had no choice.”The Department of Homeland Security has claimed Sakeik was flagged because she “chose to fly over international waters and outside the US customs zone and was then flagged by CBP [Customs and Border Protection] trying to re-enter the continental US”.But the Virgin Islands are a US territory – and no passport is required to visit there.“The facts are: she is in our country illegally. She overstayed her visa and has had a final order by an immigration judge for over a decade,” said assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin.The agency did not respond to questions about why it tried to deport her despite a judge’s order barring her removal. Later, the agency amended its statement to add: “Following her American husband and her filing the appropriate legal applications for her to remain in the country and become a legal permanent resident, she was released.”Sakeik said she felt “blessed” that she had been released from detention – but also conflicted about all the women she had gotten to know during her confinement. They would often stay up late talking, share meals, and follow along with workout videos the detention facility had provided.“A lot of these women don’t have the money for lawyers or media outreach,” she said. “So if you’re watching this, I love you, and I will continue to fight for you every single day.” More

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      US supreme court clears way for deportation of migrants to South Sudan

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      The supreme court on Thursday cleared the way for the deportation of several immigrants who were put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan, a war-ravaged country where they have no ties.The decision comes after the court’s conservative majority found that immigration officials can quickly deport people to third countries. The majority halted an order that had allowed immigrants to challenge any removals to countries outside their homeland where they could be in danger.The court’s latest order makes clear that the South Sudan flight detoured weeks ago can now complete the trip. It reverses findings from federal Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts, who said his order on those migrants still stands even after the high court lifted his broader decision.The majority wrote that their decision on 23 June completely halted Murphy’s ruling and also rendered his decision on the South Sudan flight “unenforceable”. The court did not fully detail its legal reasoning on the underlying case, as is common on its emergency docket.Two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, saying the ruling gives the government special treatment. “Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the supreme court on speed dial,” Sotomayor wrote.Attorneys for the eight migrants have said they could face “imprisonment, torture and even death” if sent to South Sudan, where escalating political tensions have threatened to devolve into another civil war.“We know they’ll face perilous conditions, and potentially immediate detention, upon arrival,” Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said Thursday.The push comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Trump’s Republican administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally. The Trump administration has called Murphy’s finding “a lawless act of defiance.”The White House and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.Authorities have reached agreements with other countries to house immigrants if authorities cannot quickly send them back to their homelands. The eight men sent to South Sudan in May had been convicted of serious crimes in the US.Murphy, who was nominated by Democratic president Joe Biden, did not prohibit deportations to third countries. But he found migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in danger of torture if sent to another country. More

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      Twisted arms and late-night deals: how Trump’s sweeping policy bill was passed

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      Just a few months ago, analysts predicted that Republicans in Congress – with their narrow majorities and fractured internal dynamics – would not be able to pass Donald Trump’s landmark legislation.On Thursday, the president’s commanding influence over his party was apparent once again: the bill passed just in time for Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.But while the GOP may call the budget bill big and beautiful, the road to passing the final legislation has been particularly ugly. Arm-twisting from Trump and last-minute benefits targeting specific states cajoled holdouts, despite conservative misgivings over transformative cuts to Medicaid and the ballooning deficit.Here’s the journey of the sprawling tax-and-spending bill.The first hurdleThe initial version of the mega-bill passed by the House in May extended tax cuts from 2017.It also increased the debt limit by about $4tn, and added billions in spending on immigration enforcement while adding work requirements to Medicaid and requiring states to contribute more to Snap nutrition assistance. The Budget Lab at Yale estimated the House bill would add $2.4tn to the debt over the 2025-34 period.Several conservative Republicans balked at several aspects of the bill during long debate sessions. Mike Lawler, a congressman representing New York, wanted a larger Salt deduction – which concerns offsetting state and local taxes – while the California congressman David Valadao was concerned about the Medicaid cuts, which his district heavily relies on for healthcare.Then Trump traveled to Capitol Hill in late May to help assuage the holdouts. At his meeting with lawmakers, “he was emphatic [that] we need to quit screwing around. That was the clear message. You all have tinkered enough – it is time to land the plane,” the South Dakota congressman Dusty Johnson told reporters.“Ninety-eight per cent of that conference is ready to go. They were enthused. They were pumped up by the president, and I think with the holdouts, he did move them. I don’t know that we are there yet, but that was a hugely impactful meeting.”In the end, there were only two House Republicans who voted against the bill: Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, both of whom are fiscal hawks concerned about the federal deficit. The bill moved on to the Senate.The bill lands in the SenateThe Senate version of the budget bill passed on a 50-50 vote with JD Vance, the vice-president, breaking the tie. Until the final stages, however, all eyes were on the Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, both noted moderates, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky, both noted fiscal conservatives.The bill’s authors added tax provisions to benefit Alaska’s whaling industry to win the support of Murkowski. They also tried to add provisions protecting rural hospitals from Medicaid cuts in “non-contiguous states”, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the amendments would violate restrictions on what the bill could contain without triggering the 60-vote filibuster.Murkowski acquiesced after winning new tax revenues from oil and gas drilling leases for Alaska, provisions protecting clean energy tax credits, and delays on Snap changes.View image in fullscreen“Do I like this bill? No,” Murkowski said as she stared down an NBC reporter who had just relayed a comment by the Kentucky Republican Rand Paul describing her vote as “a bailout for Alaska at the expense of the rest of the country”.Other changes to the Senate bill were made in the final days of negotiations, including the striking of a 10-year federal ban on state regulation of AI. A record number of amendments were proposed.Tillis, who announced he would not run again in his politically competitive state, gave a rousing speech about the perils of Medicaid cuts and voted against the bill. Collins and Paul remained in opposition.With few other options, Democrats tried to delay the vote by requiring the entire bill to be read out loud on the floor the night before the vote.But in the end, with Murkowski’s vote, the Senate had a tie, allowing Vance to cast the deciding vote.The last mileGiven the total opposition of Democrats to the bill’s passage, Republicans in the House could lose no more than three of their own to get the bill to the finish line.On Wednesday, the last push still felt dubious. Even the procedural vote that is required to move to an actual vote was delayed for hours, as some Republicans considering holding their vote.Ralph Norman of South Carolina told C-Span after voting against the bill in committee that he opposed the Senate version’s inclusion of tax credits for renewable energy and its failure to restrict Chinese investment in American property.“We have one chance, one moment to curb the spending that has plagued this country and will take this country down if we don’t get it under control,” he said. “What I see right now, I don’t like.”Victoria Spartz of Indiana had withheld support over concerns about increases in the federal debt.“I’ll vote for the bill, since we need to make it happen for our economy & there are some good provisions in it. However, I will vote against the rule due to broken commitments by Speaker Johnson to his own members,” she wrote on X on Wednesday. “I’m on Plan C now to deal with the looming fiscal catastrophe.”Spartz referred to a promise Johnson made to fiscal conservatives that he would not bring a budget bill to a vote if it increased the debt beyond a certain amount. Spartz said this bill exceeded the agreed-upon amount by about $500bn.Shortly before midnight there were five Republicans voting no on the procedural rule. But deals were still being made – executive orders promised and other negotiations done on the floor.Once again Trump stepped in, joining the speaker, Mike Johnson, in coaxing the party members to cast their final approval. The president called several House members and posted on his Truth Social account. “What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!” he wrote early on Thursday morning.View image in fullscreenJohnson held the vote open for seven hours, the longest vote recorded. And it worked. On Thursday morning, Norman voted yes to advance the bill.So did Andrew Clyde of Georgia, a notable second amendment rights activist in Congress, who failed in his push for an amendment to the bill to remove the registration requirement for firearms suppressors, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns from the National Firearms Act, creating a path for legal civilian use without registration and paying a federal tax.The holdouts fell into line, and the House voted early on Thursday morning 219-213 in a procedural vote to move forward.There was still a way to go. Johnson had expected to open the vote at 8am. But the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, commandeered the dais for more than eight hours – setting a record previously held by the Republican Kevin McCarthy – in a marathon stemwinder of a speech attacking the perils of the legislation and delaying the vote.But Johnson remained confident after a night of promises and threats.Massie remained the face of conservative holdouts on the bill. He has faced withering personal attacks from Trump on social media, the creation of a Super Pac to fund a primary challenge and local advertisements attacking his stance on the bill.In the end it was only Massie and Brian Fitzpatrick, a congressman in Pennsylvania who voted for Kamala Harris last year, who voted against a bill that will now rewrite the American political landscape. More

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      ‘It’s harsh. It’s mean, brutal’: Trump bill to cause most harm to America’s poorest

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      Last November, Donald Trump made a solemn vow to all Americans: “Every citizen, I will fight for you, your family and your future every single day.” Eight months later, Trump is vigorously backing many policies that will mean pain for millions.Trump has pushed to enact the Republican budget bill, which would make significant cuts to Medicaid, Obamacare, and food assistance, and would do the greatest damage to those Americans struggling hardest to make ends meet – the 30% of the US population that lives in households earning under $50,000 a year.Even as Trump and Republican lawmakers are rushing to cut over $1.4tn in health and food assistance for non-affluent Americans, Trump continues to pressure Congress to extend over $3tn in tax cuts that disproportionately help the wealthy and corporations.Trump has embraced these Robin-Hood-in-reverse policies, even though it was voters earning less than $50,000 a year who delivered victory to him last November. They favored him over Kamala Harris by 50% to 48%, according to exit polls, while Trump and Harris tied among voters earning $50,000 or more a year.Several social policy experts said Trump has engaged in hypocrisy at best and betrayal at worst when it comes to the working-class and blue-collar Americans he promised to fight for. Speaking about the Republicans’ “big, beautiful” budget bill, Sharon Parrott, president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said: “Who’s getting hit, who’s bearing the cost? It’s people with low and middle incomes, people that the president and many Republican policymakers promised to serve and support in the last election.”View image in fullscreenThe budget bill would mean a net financial loss for the bottom 30% of American households by income – after factoring in its tax provisions and cuts in benefits. The House bill would hit the lowest-earning 10% of Americans hardest: for them, it would mean a painful $1,600 cut in income on average (a 3.9% drop), according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). At the same time, the Trump-backed bill would be a boon to wealthy households – it would mean a $12,000 increase in net income, on average, for households in the top 10%, those earning above $692,000 a year. According to the Yale Budget Lab, the top 0.1% – those with income over $3.3m – would receive tax cuts of $103,500 on average.The CBO says the income of the bottom 10% tops off at $22,868 (before factoring in government transfers). The second lowest decile earns from $22,868 to $43,137; the third decile earns up to $55,628; and the fourth up to $68,601.The Yale Budget Lab found that the bottom 20% of US households would see their incomes drop by 2.9% on average over the next decade, and the second lowest quintile – moderate-income households – would suffer a 0.4% loss of income on average. But the richest 20% would see their incomes rise by 2.3%. Those in the top 1% would see their incomes climb by $29,585 on average.Trump is demanding these big tax cuts for the rich even though the CBO says the budget bill will increase the federal debt by $3.3tn – a move that will push up interest rates and make mortgages and home-buying more expensive.According to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning thinktank, the $121bn tax cuts that would go just to the richest 1% next year are significantly more than all the tax cuts that would go to the bottom 60% of Americans in terms of income.The poorest 20% of Americans would receive just 1% of the bill’s tax cuts next year, while the highest earning 5% would receive 44% of the cuts.Last week, Trump urged lawmakers to enact the bill, saying: “There are hundreds of things in there. It is so good.” At a news conference, the president said the more than $1tn in Medicaid and food assistance cuts wouldn’t hurt anyone.“It won’t affect anybody,” he said. “It is just fraud, waste and abuse.”But Parrott took a sharply different view: “The bill stands alone historically for its unique upside-down mix of large tax cuts for the top, deep cuts that affect low- and middle-income people, and massive increases in deficits and debt.”John Ricco, the Yale Budget Lab’s associate director of policy analysis, said: “It’s unambiguous that low- and moderate-income Americans will be worse off on average under the budget bill, and that’s principally because the cuts in Medicaid and Snap [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] would by definition fall most heavily on these groups,” Ricco said.Jeanne Lambrew, the Century Foundation’s director of health policy reform, estimates that at least 16 million Americans will lose health coverage because of the budget bill – refuting White House claims that “no one will lose coverage”. Lambrew said the bill would cause a more than 50% increase in the number of uninsured nationwide, to nearly 45 million people.What’s more, the Trump-backed plan sharply reduces Affordable Care Act subsidies, and that will force millions of Americans to either drop coverage or pay far more for coverage. Millions of Americans will find it harder to obtain healthcare, with many forced to take on far more medical debt.While Trump and many Republicans say the Medicaid cuts are all about reducing “waste, fraud and abuse”, Lambrew calculates that a mere 3.5% of the $1tn in healthcare cuts come from cutting waste and abuse. “What Trump has been saying is, ‘We’re not cutting Medicaid. We’re just cutting fraud.’ That’s gaslighting.” Lambrew said.Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent the Senate a letter that harshly criticized the budget bill. “As Pope Leo XIV recently stated, it is the responsibility of politicians to promote and protect the common good, including by working to overcome great wealth inequality,” he wrote. “This bill does not answer this call. It takes from the poor to give to the wealthy.”According to a Quinnipiac University poll, only 27% of registered voters support the GOP budget bill, while 53% oppose it. A Fox News poll found that 38% support the bill, while 59% oppose it.The House bill’s deep cuts in food benefits will cause 7 million people, including over 2 million children, to lose food aid or have their food aid cut significantly. The Trump-supported bill also makes sharp cuts in Pell grant awards. The Center for American Progress says this means 4.4 million students from low- and moderate-income families could lose some or all of their federal grant aid.In another blow to Americans earning under $50,000, Trump pushed to have the budget bill eliminate the “Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program”, which, as one website put it, “keeps poor people from freezing to death at home”. Killing the program would end heating subsidies for 6 million Americans, but so far congressional Republicans have spared the program and not bowed to Trump on this.View image in fullscreenIn another blow to blue-collar Americans, the bill would undo much of Joe Biden’s efforts to speed the creation of clean-energy industries, and that could put hundreds of thousands of potential jobs at risk, many of them factory jobs.“In this bill, folks in Congress went out of their way not to give anything to low-income people,” said Chuck Marr, vice-president for federal tax policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. He noted that in previous tax cut bills that favored the rich, GOP lawmakers made sure to include some sweeteners for low- and moderate-income Americans.“But in this bill,” Marr said, “folks in Congress said: no, we’re going to go after these people. They’re going after healthcare and food, and these are the people who are also going to get hammered by Trump’s tariffs.” Lower-income people spend a higher percentage of their income on goods.“This bill is a major shift,” Marr added. “They’re taking away from poor people and working-class people and channeling it to very high-income people. I think it’s punitive. It’s harsh. It’s mean, brutal.”Trump’s tariffs would also hit less affluent Americans hardest. One study found that Trump’s planned tariffs would cause the bottom 20% of households to pay up to 5.5% of their income toward tariff-caused higher prices. That’s more than two and a half times the percentage that those in the top 20% would pay (2.1% of income).Trump has repeatedly boasted that the bill contains several provisions he championed to help working-class Americans. At a White House event to promote the bill, he pointed to a DoorDash driver from Wisconsin who was on hand to help make his case that the “no tax on tips” provision would help workers.But tax experts say that provision will help only a tiny fraction of those earning under $50,000. Only 4% of workers in the bottom half by income are in tipped jobs. Moreover, nearly two-fifths of tipped workers are already earning so little that they don’t pay federal income taxes.“Given how the current income tax system works, this provision will provide little or no benefit to those workers,” said Ricco. “Those workers tend to have low incomes, and the US system doesn’t basically tax their incomes, and this won’t offer them any additional tax reduction.” In other words, the server making $100,000 a year at a high-end restaurant will benefit substantially from no tax on tips, while the hotel housekeeper or 20-hour-a-week waiter at a diner making $25,000 a year will be helped little or not at all.As for Trump’s much-ballyhooed “no tax on overtime” provision, that, too, will do little for those earning under $50,000, Ricco said. “That provision is really geared to middle- and upper-middle groups,” he said. “People in the bottom 50% aren’t paying much income tax, and so no tax on overtime wouldn’t benefit them much. People in the bottom 40%, they’re often in a precarious employment situation. They’re generally not working 45 or 50 hours a week.”Ricco estimated that for Americans in the bottom 40% by income, the no tax on overtime provision will mean “less than a $10 tax cut per year”. “It’s essentially a rounding error,” he said.Republicans boast that increasing the child-tax credit will help millions of struggling families – the House bill would increase that credit, now $2,000, to $2,500, while the Senate raises it to $2,200. Under current law, one in four children – about 17 million – are ineligible to qualify for the full $2,000 credit because their family’s income is too low to qualify for the full credit. A two-parent family with two children needs to earn over $48,000 to obtain the full credit.Under the House bill, a single parent with two children who earns $16,000 a year would get no additional tax credit, while a married couple with two kids and a $400,000 income would see their tax credit jump by $1,000.With their eagerness to cut the social safety net, Republicans seem to be treating millions of Americans who earn less than $50,000 as undeserving takers. “People earning under $50,000 are major targets of the Republican agenda. Their health coverage is targeted. Their food security is targeted,” said Marr. “They are left out of key provisions expanding tax cuts, like the child tax credit. They are most at risk from the Republican tariffs. They’ll be hurt across the board.”Marr said the budget bill treats “these people very harshly”.“It’s the harshest bill we’ve ever seen since budget deficits became an issue 40 years ago,” he said. “This is the first bill that simultaneously targets programs for poor people and working-class people to pay for it, and then takes that money to pay for tax cuts for very wealthy people. It makes poor and working-class people worse off. That’s not been done before.” More

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      After 47 years in the US, Ice took this Iranian mother from her yard. Her family just wants her home

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      Kaitlynn Milne says her mother is usually always up first thing in the morning, hours before the rest of the family. She enjoys being productive in the quiet hours around sunrise. It’s an especially optimal time to do yard work, when the rest of her New Orleans neighborhood still sleeps and she can count on peacefully completing chores.Gardening and rearranging the shed is how an average morning would go for Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian, a 64-year-old Iranian mother, wife, home cook, parent-teacher association (PTA) member and lifelong community service volunteer.“She always says: ‘I’ve already done most of my day before y’all even wake up,’ complaining at us,” said Kaitlynn, 32. It was always done with love, she says, as her mother adores taking care of others and would wake up every morning excited to do just that.But the morning of Sunday, 22 June, didn’t go like every other morning. In the early hours, while her husband, Russell Milne, slept inside the house, Kashanian was approached in her yard by plainclothes men who identified themselves as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents.She was quickly arrested without her family being told anything. They only found out after a neighbor who happened to be awake witnessed the arrest and notified them.According to the neighbor, Kashanian was handcuffed before being taken away by multiple agents, details Kashanian herself was later able to confirm to her family. Her arrest involved three unmarked cars, including one that appeared to be a lookout, which her neighbor and family believe had been watching for a moment when Kashanian was outside and alone.“Had the neighbors not walked out at the same time they were pushing her into the car, we would not have known she was taken,” said Russell.Kashanian was able to call her family about an hour later, when she relayed to them what had happened and where she was. Ice officers told her that she was being taken to a holding center in Mississippi, before eventually being transferred back to a detention center in Louisiana. After that Sunday morning call, her husband and daughter didn’t hear from her again until Tuesday.She remains in Ice custody in Basile, Louisiana, despite having no criminal record.The timing of Kashanian’s detention was just hours after US airstrikes in Iran, a move that has coincided with the ramping-up of deportations of Iranians by the Trump administration. It also comes amid a nationwide crackdown by Ice, which has seen tens of thousands of immigrants detained, often by masked agents, plunged many communities into fear and outraged civil liberties advocates.View image in fullscreenKashanian arrived in the US in 1978 on a student visa and has lived in the country ever since. She later applied for asylum, citing fears of persecution due to her father’s ties to the US-backed Shah of Iran.Her asylum request was ultimately denied, but she was granted a stay of removal on the condition she comply with immigration requirements, a condition her family says she always met. Kashanian was so careful about regularly attending her meetings with immigration officials that she once checked in from South Carolina during Hurricane Katrina.Despite having to juggle constant immigration checks, Kashanian remained devoted to community service work. She volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, helping rebuild homes after Katrina. She worked with Nola Tree Project, a local non-profit that replants trees after disasters. She served on a PTA, volunteering at her daughter’s elementary school, middle school and high school.“She was constantly around,” said Kaitlynn. “She was constantly helping with upkeep of the schools. She was always there, always helping the teachers and custodial staff, anything to be supportive. Everyone knew Kaitlynn’s mom.”She also found the time to become a skilled home cook. Her YouTube channel, titled Mandonna in the Kitchen, is dedicated to sharing her favorite Persian recipes with aspiring cooks.According to her daughter and husband, Kashanian is an optimist who is almost impossible to upset. But there is one thing that never fails to unsettle her, and that’s improperly cooked rice.Now that she has been moved to a facility in Louisiana, her family has been able to set up a line of communication, speaking to her once a day. But she is given a limited amount of time to call or message, so communication is restricted. She says she has still not been assigned a case worker.“She’s in pretty good spirits,” said Russell. “She’s more worried about us, and about the lack of communication she’s getting about her situation. They’re not really giving her any information, and that’s what’s scary.”Russell and Kaitlynn have been working tirelessly to find legal help, but it has been challenging due in part to the complexity of Donna’s case, with some of her documents seeming to have been lost over decades of changing hands in the immigration offices.View image in fullscreenBut the other big challenge is the limited availability of immigration lawyers. As the Trump administration has escalated the number of Ice arrests, there is a shortage of legal counsel for immigrants and their families to go to for help.“We have been on the phone nonstop from 8am to 10pm almost every day the last week trying to find help, and it’s proving difficult because all the immigration lawyers are all dealing with everyone else’s crises as well,” said Kaitlynn. “So far, we haven’t gotten a lot of optimistic responses.”Like her mother, Kaitlynn remains in good spirits despite the constant obstacles, staying focused on helping someone else who currently needs it. But there is one moment in her show of resilience when her voice falters, as she recalls a memory from her childhood when her mother created a French book section in her New Orleans elementary school library.“I had forgotten that until just now,” Kaitlynn said, through tears. “Because there were no French books in the library. She organized that and got it together and painted this little tiny nook.”Russell says the focus currently is just to get his wife out of detention. “We’re working on a grassroots campaign and a letter-writing campaign on her behalf, that will hopefully be able to at least gain her release from the detention center,” he said.“After that, we can move forward with next steps through the immigration offices,” he added. “But right now, just getting her home is the challenge.” More

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      America is over neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Trump is not | Samuel Moyn

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      The convergence of the US Senate’s passage of Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” in domestic policy with his strike on Iran in foreign policy has finally resolved the meaning of his presidency. His place in history is now clear. His rise, like that of a reawakened left, indicated that America was ready to move on from its long era of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In office, Trump has blocked the exits by doubling down on both.The first of those slurs, neoliberalism, refers to the commitment across the political spectrum to use government to protect markets and their hierarchies, rather than to moderate or undo them. The second, neoconservatism, is epitomized by a belligerent and militaristic foreign policy. The domestic policy bill now making its way through Congress, with its payoff to the rich and punishment of the poor, is a monument to neoliberalism; the Iran strike a revival of neoconservatism.Up to now, uncertainty about Trump’s place in history has prevailed, in part because he has done little and dithered so much. From before he took office, apocalyptic premonition of the doom he might bring reigned supreme. Everyone assumed that the Trump era was going to be different, disagreeing only about the exact shape of the horror. On the right, some projected their hopes for transformation on the president, anticipating a different future, wishcasting without knowing whether (or when) their leader would side with them.Now, with his bill and his bombing, Trump has confirmed beyond any doubt that he is a man of a familiar past instead. Though the damage that neoliberalism and neoconservatism wrought helped make Trump’s charlatanry a credible choice for millions, the man himself stands for the eternal return of those very same policies. Trump’s appeal to the working class and more measured rhetoric about war from the start of his political career suggested that he might renege on these two dominant creeds from the beltway “swamp”. He renewed them both instead.This is where Trump’s ultimate significance so clearly lies: in continuity, not change. He busted a lot of norms from the first in 2017. Cries of abnormalcy and authoritarianism arose before there was evidence to back them – and evidence has accumulated through both terms. Charlottesville and January 6 in the first – intimations of deeper reservoirs of hate that could come out of American woodwork, with Trump coyly pandering to the mobs – were preludes to both mass and targeted immigration roundups in this term, reminiscent of classical fascism.Yet climactically, and when it mattered most, Trump has chosen to walk in lockstep with the dead consensus in domestic and foreign policy of the past half-century – not merely among conservatives, but among many liberals. Americans do best when the rich do best of all, with the poor punished for crime and sloth: that has long been our outlook. And the country must go it alone with military force, in order to back our interests or principles or both, Americans have long presumed.Neoliberalism and neoconservatism each has more complexity than this – but, leaning into both, Trump has shown in recent weeks they are not much more complicated either. And if so, Trump is far more a politician of American continuity with the past 50 years than many originally feared (or hoped).The “beautiful” domestic policy bill is one of the morally ugliest in American history. Making Trump’s signature tax cuts from his first term permanent requires both draconian cuts to programs (Medicaid for the poor, worst of all) and piling up even more debt for future generations to figure out. It turns out that Ronald Reagan and the Democrats who followed him in lowering taxation and “reforming” welfare (including by imposing work requirements, as this bill does) were not in another world from Trump. He is in theirs. Revealingly, the main trouble that Trump faced in getting the obscenity of a bill passed – and that he still faces in the House – is convincing Republicans who claim to hate deficit spending so much to rationalize even greater cuts to welfare.On the world stage, Trump has longed for the recognition of a Nobel peace prize. But the deals he thinks will deserve it have proved elusive. In Israel/Palestine, the ceasefire he helped force has broken down and the civilian toll has worsened. In Ukraine, the considerable distance between the warring parties has meant that Trump has not managed to either antagonize or lure either to come to terms. Unlike during his first four years, his Iran intervention means that, rather than bringing peace, exacerbating war is his foreign policy legacy for now.Squandering the inclinations of his base and outraging many more lukewarm supporters sick of foreign entanglements, it was a surprise that he acted with the reckless militarism that was once American common sense. He is no doubt open to any deals that come his way – apparently thinking that Canada or Greenland should clamor to be annexed. But it was foolish in response to the early rhetoric of his second term to expect Trump to revert to expansionist war by sending troops. But in sending B-2 bombers on so escalatory a mission to Iran, he clarified his support for war – incurring risks like no other presidents have taken. If the peace he wants to brag about doesn’t materialize, he is not above a dose of coercive violence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIronically, Trump’s warlike turn meant that a long list of his neoconservative “never Trump” scourges became “sometimes Trump” supporters overnight. Where populist Republicans have had to grit their teeth and support a neoliberal bill – so much for the working-class party they promised – it was even more spectacular that neoconservatives overcame the hatred for Trump that had helped them launder their former reputations for catastrophic warmongering.With neocon scion Bill Kristol in the lead, after the Iran strike they fawned over the man whom they had spent years castigating as irresponsible, or malignant, or both. No wonder: Trump, far from acting as an isolationist or realist, was executing one of the longest-held and longest-denied neoconservative fantasies: that bombing Iran’s nuclear program off the map would work, and might have the fringe benefit of causing the regime to fall. It remains a fantasy. But Trump’s place in history is now defined by that fantasy more than by any other foreign policy choice he has made so far.Like in his first term, when he ordered the assassination in Iraq of Iranian general and terror master Qassem Suleimani in 2020, Trump’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was illegal. But as the saying goes, Trump’s escalatory and risky use of bunker-busting munitions to wipe Fordow and other sites off the map was worse than a crime; it was a mistake. At best, it elicited a face-saving attack from Iran so that it could come to the negotiating table with a nuclear program to continue in the future; at worst, it will prompt Iran to intensify its efforts to achieve the weapon. And while Israel has certainly set back Iran’s regional designs and capacity for sponsoring terror, there are no signs the regime will relent in its policies.With hopes that he might stand for restraint shredded, it is likelier that a lackey will find a place on Mount Rushmore than that Trump will get the call from Oslo he badly wants. But like the politicians whose faces are already carved in the granite of South Dakota, Trump is a man of the past – and never more clearly than in recent weeks, as America continues to look for someone to liberate it from the zombie neoliberalism and neoconservatism that still define their disastrous present and president.

      Samuel Moyn is the Kent professor of law and history at Yale University, where he also serves as head of Grace Hopper College More

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      Kilmar Ábrego García was tortured in Salvadorian prison, court filing alleges

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      Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and detained in one of that country’s most notorious prisons, was physically and psychologically tortured during the three months he spent in Salvadorian custody, according to new court documents filed Wednesday.While being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador, Ábrego García and 20 other men “were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM”, according to the court papers filed by his lawyers in the federal district court in Maryland.Guards struck anyone who fell from exhaustion while kneeling, and during that time, “Ábrego García was denied bathroom access and soiled himself”, according to the filing.Detainees were held in an overcrowded cell with no windows, and bright lights on 24 hours a day. They were confined to metal bunk beds with no mattresses.Ábrego García’s testimony is one of the first detailed insights the world has into the conditions inside Cecot, a megaprison that human rights groups say is designed to disappear people.His lawyers say he lost 31 pounds during his first two weeks of confinement. Later, they write, he and four others were transferred to a different part of the prison “where they were photographed with mattresses and better food–photos that appeared to be staged to document improved conditions”.The filings also note that officials within the prison acknowledged that Ábrego García was not a gang member, and that his tattoos did not indicate a gang affiliation. “Prison officials explicitly acknowledged that plaintiff Ábrego García’s tattoos were not gang-related, telling him ‘your tattoos are fine,’” per the filing, and they kept him in a cell separate from those accused of gang membership.The prison officials, however, threatened to move Ábrego García into a cell with gang members whom officials said “would ‘tear’ him apart”.Ábrego García is currently in federal custody in Nashville. The Trump administration brought him back from El Salvador after initially claiming it was powerless to do so. The US justice department wants him to stand trial on human-smuggling charges. The administration has also accused him of being a member of the street gang MS-13, and Donald Trump has claimed that Ábrego García’s tattoos indicate that he belonged to the gang.Ábrego García has pleaded not guilty to the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify the administration’s mistake in deporting him after the fact.On Sunday , a Tennessee judge ordered his release while his criminal case plays out, but prosecutors said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) would take Ábrego García into custody if that were to happen and he would be deported before he was given the chance to stand trial.A justice department lawyer, Jonathan Guynn, also told a federal judge in Maryland that the administration would deport Ábrego García not to El Salvador but to another, third country – contradicting statements from attorney general Pam Bondi that he would be sent to El Salvador.Amid the confusion, Ábrego García’s lawyers requested that their client remain in criminal custody, fearing that if he were released, he would be deported. Upcoming hearings in both Maryland and Tennessee will help decide whether Ábrego García will be able to remain in the US and be released from jail. More

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      Pentagon says US strikes set back Iran nuclear program ‘one to two years’

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      The Pentagon has collected intelligence material that suggests Iran’s nuclear program was set back roughly one to two years as a result of the US strikes on three key facilities last month, the chief spokesperson at the defense department said at a news conference on Wednesday.The spokesperson, Sean Parnell, repeated Donald Trump’s claim that Iran’s key nuclear sites had been completely destroyed, although he did not offer further details on the origin of the assessments beyond saying it came from inside the defense department.“We have degraded their program by one to two years,” Parnell said at a news conference held at the Pentagon. “At least, intel assessments inside the department assess that.”Parnell’s description of the strikes marked a more measured estimate than Trump’s assertions about the level of destruction. A low-confidence Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report based on early assessments said Iran’s program was set back several months.The evolving picture of the severity of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program comes as US intelligence agencies have continued to push out new assessments, using materials that suggested the centrifuges at the key Fordow enrichment site were destroyed even if it was unclear whether the facility itself had caved in.Trump advisers have used that material, which include the use of video taken from B-2 bombers to confirm simulation models of shock waves destroying centrifuges and other Israeli intel from outside Fordow, to defend Trump’s assertions, two people familiar with the matter said.The extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program and the fate of the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium – which could quickly be turned into a crude nuclear weapon – is important because it could dictate how long the program has been set back.The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said on Sunday that Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months.“They can have in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium,” Rafael Grossi the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said, adding “Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology … You cannot undo the knowledge that you have or the capacities that you have.”The Pentagon’s preliminary DIA assessment, which was based on information from little more than 24 hours after the strikes, the Guardian previously reported, found the damage could range from Iran being able to restart the facility with new centrifuges to having to abandon it for future use.The DIA report assessed the program had been pushed back by several months, although that finding was made at the so-called “low-confidence” level, reflecting the early nature of the assessment and the uncertainty intelligence agencies have with initial conclusions.Trump advisers have pushed back on the DIA report and said privately the destruction of the centrifuges alone meant they had taken out a key component of Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons and meant it delayed the nuclear program by years.Battles over the conclusions of intelligence agencies have been at the center of American foreign policy determinations for decades, from warnings about Iraq’s weapons programs that the Bush administration used to justify the 2003 invasion that were later found to be false, to claims that a Chinese lab leak was responsible for Covid.Still, much of the controversy about the US strikes has been generated by Trump’s claiming that they “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites, which no intelligence agency has directly repeated because it is not a characterization used in intelligence assessments.Verifying the extent of the damage was made more difficult on Wednesday, after Iran put into effect a new law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA. Iran has accused the nuclear watchdog of siding with western countries and providing a justification for Israel’s airstrikes.A state department spokesperson called the move “unacceptable” and said Iran must fully comply with its nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations, including by providing the IAEA with information on undeclared nuclear material and providing unrestricted access to any newly announced enrichment facility. More