The Senate has confirmed former Arkansas governor and fervent Christian Zionist Mike Huckabee as the U.S.’s next ambassador to Israel after numerous rights groups called on the Senate to oppose his nomination. Huckabee was confirmed 53 to 46, in what was a largely party line vote — except for Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), who voted with Republicans in favor.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced that it is monitoring immigrants’ social media accounts for supposed “antisemitism” — a seeming code word for speech criticizing Israel’s U.S.-backed occupation of Palestine and genocide of Palestinians. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced the initiative in a press release on Wednesday, saying that it is…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The latest phase of Israel’s genocide in Gaza has made the Strip into “a killing field,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned as Israel is blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid and is continuing its relentless bombardments. “More than an entire month has passed without a drop of aid into Gaza. No food. No fuel. No medicine. No commercial supplies. As aid has dried up…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The strike on Yemen that was celebrated by Trump administration officials in a now-infamous leaked Signal chat killed a newborn baby and charred and killed a 5-year-old boy, according to new witness testimony of the strike. In a New Yorker interview published on Tuesday with a man who survived the strike, identified by the pseudonym Hassan, the man said that he and his neighbors rushed to the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Israeli military is now occupying over half of the land area of Gaza after having massively expanded the “buffer zone” spanning the entirety of Gaza’s border and systematically destroyed everything in it, as Israeli and U.S. officials are pushing a plan for the total ethnic cleansing of the besieged enclave. The buffer zone, which Israel has forcibly evacuated of all Palestinians…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Trump administration’s latest sweeping cuts to international food aid will kill millions of people across the world if implemented, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has cautioned, in the latest warning of the deadly consequences of the Elon Musk-led USAID cuts. Citing numerous officials and organizations, The Associated Press reported on Monday that the Trump administration has ended…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Trump administration has reportedly advanced a shipment of over 20,000 assault rifles to Israel that was paused by the Biden administration over concerns that the weapons would be used by settlers to further their illegal occupation of the occupied West Bank. The State Department notified Congress of the sale totalling $24 million in value last month, Reuters reports.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On Thursday, the Senate rejected Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vermont) resolutions to block the sale of $8.8 billion in weapons to Israel by an even wider margin than in similar votes last year — despite Israel having since violated the Gaza ceasefire agreement. The Senate’s opposition to the resolutions comes as Israel has maintained a total humanitarian aid blockade on Gaza for over a month.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The first known Palestinian child to be killed in an Israeli prison, Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmad, was starved, had untreated diseases, and was repeatedly beaten by guards before he died last month, his autopsy report shows. The autopsy shows that Ahmad suffered from “extreme body muscle and fat wasting, evidenced by a sunken abdomen,” caused by “extreme, likely prolonged malnutrition,”…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Lack of access to health care has hit a new high in the U.S., with over a third of Americans now unable to access quality care due to cost, new West Health-Gallup polling finds. The poll, released Wednesday, finds that 35 percent of Americans say they wouldn’t be able to afford quality health care if they needed it today, compared to 29 percent in 2021, when Gallup began polling this question.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz and his staff have used personal Gmail accounts to conduct government business, a new report released Tuesday reveals, in the latest instance of Waltz seemingly using methods of communication that are unsecured and vulnerable to breaches. In at least one instance, a senior aide to Waltz used Gmail to discuss “sensitive military…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
President Donald Trump is reportedly considering pushing “shadow president” Elon Musk out of his administration after the billionaire spent $25 million to elect a Republican to the Wisconsin state Supreme Court — and lost badly. Sources within the administration have told Politico, later confirmed by ABC, that Trump has informed top advisers that Musk may be stepping out of his “special…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli forces bombed a UN clinic in Gaza serving as a shelter for displaced Palestinians on Wednesday, killing at least 22 people just days after officials discovered 15 first responders who had been executed by Israeli soldiers and buried in a mass grave in Gaza. The military bombed a UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) clinic in Jabalia refugee camp…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
More journalists have been killed in Israel’s genocide in Gaza than in the past seven major U.S.-involved wars combined, marking the “worst ever conflict” for reporters in history, a new report says. As of late March, at least 232 journalists have been killed in the Gaza genocide, with the vast majority being Palestinians, according to a new paper by the Costs of War project in Brown…
Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) have introduced legislation to block nearly $4 billion in proposed weapons sales to Israel, after Israel has unilaterally ended the ceasefire agreement in Gaza and embarked on what appears to be the most violent phase of its genocide yet. On Sunday, Jayapal’s office announced the introduction of four Joint…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Palestinian children in Gaza are so hungry that they’re drawing pictures of food in the sand, according to a Gaza reporter, as the population is being starved by the most brutal form of Israel’s aid blockade yet for the past three weeks. “My friend told me today that he keeps watching food videos because he wishes to have a plate of meat or fish. Many children in my neighborhood outside were…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Trump administration seemingly labeled hundreds of Venezuelan people in the U.S. as gang members simply because they had tattoos, defying court orders earlier this month in order to send them to a torture center in El Salvador. Mother Jones reports in an article published Wednesday that numerous families of deported Venezuelan men say that their loved ones were targeted by Immigration and…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) is demanding the release of her constituent, Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after the PhD candidate was “kidnapped in plain sight” on Tuesday and locked away in a horrific immigration jail in Louisiana. “Rumeysa Ozturk was kidnapped in plain sight and sent to Louisiana…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Mar. 26, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was abducted by federal agents on Tuesday and has reportedly had her visa revoked, the university says, in what seems to be the latest instance of the Trump administration targeting and detaining an immigrant for their pro-Palestine advocacy.
Ozturk, who hails from Turkey, is in the U.S. on a valid F-1 student visa, according to her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai. She is a doctoral candidate in the university’s Child Study and Human Development department and formerly attended Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar, according to The Tufts Daily.
Video of Ozturk’s arrest captured by a home security camera shows the student being apprehended by a group of six people in plain clothes whose faces are covered by masks and hats. A man first approaches and apprehends her, then grabs her wrists as the others convene from different directions. She asks if she can call the police for help, and they tell her, “we are the police.”
The group takes her backpack and handcuffs her before escorting her to an unmarked car parked nearby. The arrest and abduction take place in the course of less than two minutes.
Khanbabai says that the PhD candidate was on her way to meet friends for iftar, when those observing Ramadan break their fast, when she was apprehended by and detained by Department of Homeland Security agents.
Officials initially did not specify where Ozturk had been taken, and Khanbabai was unable to reach her. Later on Wednesday, Khanbabai said in a motion that she was informed by a senator’s office that the student was transferred to Louisiana. DHS agents also sent Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil to Louisiana, where he is being held in an immigration jail notorious for its abuses.
The transfer is despite the fact that a judge approved a petition barring Ozturk from being removed from Massachusetts without advance notice filed by Khanbabai on Tuesday. The Trump administration has been openly flouting court orders when it comes to its anti-immigrant onslaught; earlier this month, for instance, immigration officials deported Brown University assistant professor and doctor Rasha Alawieh to Lebanon, despite a judge having ordered the visa holder not to be removed.
Ozturk’s abduction comes just days after she was doxxed by Zionist vigilante group Canary Mission, advocates for Palestinian rights said. The group cited her activism against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including an op-ed published in Tufts Daily last year demanding that university leadership divest from Israel and condemn its slaughter of Palestinians.
Pro-Palestine activist groups have organized a rally in solidarity with Ozturk on Wednesday to demand her release. This is the first known instance of a student being targeted by immigration officials for their pro-Palestine activism in Boston.
Ozturk is the latest campus activist involved in the student movement against Israel’s genocide to be targeted by ICE in recent weeks. Recent Columbia University graduate and leader of student protests Khalil was abducted by ICE earlier this month and had his green card revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump officials openly admitted that Khalil was targeted for his activism, in what legal experts say is a clear violation of free speech rights.
Columbia student Yunseo Chung has also been targeted by the Trump administration for her participation in student protests. Immigration officials are seeking to deport Chung, a legal permanent resident who moved to the U.S. when she was 7 years old, according to a lawsuit filed by Chung against the administration this week.
Note: This story has been updated to reflect new information about Ozturk’s location.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Trump administration officials effectively admitted to and celebrated a war crime when discussing the U.S.’s airstrikes on Yemen earlier this month, a House Democrat and policy experts have said, citing newly leaked messages published by The Atlantic. On Wednesday, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published a full group chat exchange he had previewed in an article on Monday…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was abducted by federal agents on Tuesday and has reportedly had her visa revoked, the university says, in what seems to be the latest instance of the Trump administration targeting and detaining an immigrant for their pro-Palestine advocacy. Ozturk, who hails from Turkey, is in the U.S. on a valid F-1 student visa, according to her lawyer…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
An Israeli court upheld and extended north Gaza doctor Hussam Abu Safiya’s detention in a notorious Israeli torture camp for another six months on Tuesday, based on “secret evidence” submitted by prosecutors. The decision by the Israeli district court was based on a secret file submitted to the court that both the prosecution and the court refused to disclose to Abu Safiya’s legal team…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Palestinian co-director of Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land Hamdan Ballal was released bloodied and bruised from Israeli custody on Tuesday after Israeli officers subjected him to beatings and apparent torture. Ballal and two other Palestinians who were detained after being attacked by Israeli settlers have been taken to a hospital in the West Bank to retrieve treatment.
The embattled head of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Louis DeJoy abruptly resigned from his position as postmaster on Monday — just weeks after Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) paid a visit to the agency to force it to adopt agency-shrinking measures. In a statement, DeJoy did not give a reason for his resignation. He handed the job to Deputy Postmaster General Doug…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) has flamed Democrats for misplaced priorities as they rage over the Trump administration’s leak of sensitive information on the U.S.’s bombing of Yemen earlier this month — but not over the strikes themselves, which reportedly killed dozens of civilians. “More heat for using a group chat than for the bombing itself,” Tlaib said in a post on social media on…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Mar. 24, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Israeli forces killed two Palestinian journalists in Gaza on Monday in separate strikes, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists killed to at least 208 since October 7, 2023, according to a count by Gaza officials.
Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, was killed along with his wife and child when Israel struck his home in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Al Jazeera reported that Israel deliberately targeted Mansour in the attack.
Shortly after, Israeli forces killed Hossam Shabat with a targeted airstrike while he was driving his car in Beit Lahiya, local sources reported. Shabat, who was 23 years old, had become well-known for his reports from northern Gaza amid Israel’s total siege on the region. He was a contributor to U.S. outlet Drop Site News and a reporter for Al Jazeera Mubasher.
Shabat’s friends posted a message written by the young journalist that he requested to be published on social media in the event of his death.
“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces,” he said. “When this all began, I was only 21 years old — a college student with dreams like anyone else. For the past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury.”
“By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest — something I haven’t known in the past 18 months,” he wrote. “I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.”
Drop Site condemned the attack in a statement. “Drop Site News holds Israel and the U.S. responsible for killing Hossam,” the outlet said. “More than 200 of our Palestinian media colleagues have been killed by Israel — supplied with weapons and given blanket impunity by most Western governments — over the past seventeen months.”
Fellow journalists in Gaza mourned Shabat’s death. “I no longer have words,” said Gaza journalist Abubaker Abed, who was a colleague of Shabat at Drop Site. “This is just an incalculable loss. This is unbearable.”
Shabat, like Abed and many other young people in Gaza, became a war journalist when the genocide began despite having other aspirations. Last year, he thanked university students across the world for protesting for Gaza, noting that he was in his third year in college when the genocide began on October 7, 2023.
“I’ll never be able to finish my studies because Israeli occupation forces bombed my university and every other university in Gaza,” he wrote.
His life was upended as he went out to report on Israel’s genocide, separating from his family in order to show the world the barbarity of the killings.
In October 2024, Israeli authorities issued a list of journalists it was seemingly targeting for assassination, accusing them, without evidence, as being affiliated with “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist” groups. Shabat, who was one of the only journalists left in north Gaza at the time, was on that list. He had already survived another targeted attack in November, when Israeli forces injured him in an apparent “double tap” strike on a house in northern Gaza.
Despite the November attack and concerns he was being hunted by Israeli forces for his work, Shabat pledged to continue reporting.
Just a month ago, amid the ceasefire, Shabat posted a video of him and his mother being reunited after 492 days, having been separated due to Israel’s evacuation orders.
"Time now is measured not in minutes, but in lifetimes of pain and tears. With every passing moment the anxiety and tension of the people here grows, as they wonder whether they will stay alive long enough for the fire to cease," wrote Hossam Shabat in one of his stories for us.
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) March 24, 2025
Last week, shortly after Israeli authorities resumed their heavy bombing of Gaza despite the ceasefire agreement, Shabat posted a video of him once again putting on his flak jacket and helmet marked “press.”
“I thought it was over and I’d finally get some rest, but the genocide is back in full force, and I’m back on the front lines,” he said.
Shabat had continually pleaded for the world to intervene and end the genocide.
“On October 17th, 2023, Israel bombed Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza,” Shabat wrote in his final Instagram reel. “Israel denied it. Western media believed it. And the bombing continued as ‘Israel investigated itself.’ UN and NGO investigations proved that Israel indeed did it. No government acted. No condemnations.”
“So Israel continued bombing, besieging and targeting EVERY SINGLE HOSPITAL in Gaza,” he continued. “Eighteen months of genocide and impunity meant that they didn’t have to deny bombing hospitals anymore. No one cares… They say the magic H word and war crimes are justified.”
Even posthumously, Shabat pled for Palestinian rights.
“I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza,” the journalist wrote in his final message. “Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
A mob of Israeli settlers has attacked Palestinian filmmaker and activist Hamdan Ballal just three weeks after the documentary he co-directed on the violence of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, No Other Land, won an Oscar. According to his co-director Yuval Abraham and witnesses, per Haaretz, Ballal called an ambulance after settlers attacked him but was detained by Israeli soldiers who…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli forces bombed the largest hospital in southern Gaza on Sunday, killing at least five people and destroying a surgery ward just after U.S. doctors volunteering there gave an interview on CNN about Israel’s mass killings in Gaza, reports say. An airstrike hit the second floor of the surgical building of Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis. The attack ignited a fire and destroyed the ward…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli forces killed two Palestinian journalists in Gaza on Monday in separate strikes, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists killed to at least 208 since October 7, 2023, according to a count by Gaza officials. Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, was killed along with his wife and child when Israel struck his home in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.