The head of Fiji’s prison service has been caught on camera involved in a fist fight that appears to have taken place at the popular O’Reilley’s Bar in the capital of Suva.
Sevuloni Naucukidi, the acting Commissioner of the Fiji Corrections Service (FCS), can be seen in the viral video throwing punches at another man as staff at the establishment scramble to contain the situation.
The 30-second clip of the incident, shared online by The Fiji Times today, had been viewed more than half a million times, with more than 8200 reactions and almost 2000 shares by 1pm (NZT).
Naucukidi was appointed to act as the Fiji prison chief at the end of March after the FCS Commissioner Dr Jalesi Nakarawa was stood down by the Constitutional Offices Commission following allegations of misbehaviour.
Fiji’s Minister for Justice Siromi Turaga (left) and Correction Service acting Commissioner Sevuloni Naucukidi on 30 March 2025. Image: Fiji Corrections Service/RNZ Pacific
Police spokesperson Wame Boutolu told The Fiji Times that no complaint had been filed with police regarding the incident.
The newspaper reported that it was not clear whether the incident took place before or after Naucukidi’s appointment as FCS acting commissioner.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Fiji Times reported later that Justice Minister Siromi Turaga had said that a “certain level of decorum is expected at all times — particularly when in uniform, whether that be Bula Friday wear or your official work attire”.
He made the comments in relation to the controversial video.
Turaga said preliminary investigations indicated that the footage was from an earlier date.
“We have contacted the owners of the establishment, who have confirmed that the video likely dates back to early March 2025,” he said.
Police conspired to violently attacks anti-genocide protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles last year, according to a suit filed last week in Los Angeles Superior Court.
At the height of the school’s encampment against Israel’s war on Gaza last spring, one of hundreds across the country, a mob of pro-Israel protesters attacked pro-Palestine protesters for more than four hours. On the night of April 30, 2024, police stood by and watched as counter-protesters aimed and shot fireworks, sprayed chemical agents, harassed, and sexually assaulted pro-Palestine protesters, students and faculty alleged last month in a separate, ongoing lawsuit.
The day after the melee, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, UCLA administrators, and seven different law enforcement agencies laid plans to dismantle the school’s encampment for good.
UCLA invited multiple outside police forces to campus to clear the encampments on May 1. More than 700 police officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol, the University of California Police Department, and private security were on campus the night of the raid.
Protesters are now suing the state of California, which oversees California Highway Patrol, and the city of Los Angeles, which oversees the LAPD, for violence against the demonstrations. The police fired more than 50 rounds of rubber bullets at protesters, striking several people in the head; some of the injuries sent demonstrators to the hospital.
The projectiles shattered bones in one student’s hand and required her to undergo surgery and extensive rehab. Another person, who police shot in the head, was diagnosed with internal bleeding.(The governor’s office referred questions to California Highway Patrol. CHP, LAPD, and UCLA did not respond to requests for comment.)
“If you want to talk about fascism, they deployed a police state on campuses all across California.”
A lawyer for the protesters said it was important to hold Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, often mentioned as possible future party leaders, to account because, though the governing authorities are Democrats, their actions against the protesters helped give rise to Donald Trump’s extreme crackdown.
“These attacks also happened in Democratic-run cities and blue states,” said attorney Ricci Sergienko, who filed the suit on Thursday. “That is a clear, direct path to what’s happening now with Trump, because the Democratic Party and their leaders made enemies out of these young people.”
“If you want to talk about fascism, they deployed a police state on campuses all across California,” Sergienko said. “We want to talk about what fascism is, and authoritarian repression and suppression — that is modeled here in California.”
Rules on Rubber Bullets
The new lawsuit says police violated that law and protesters’ rights under the state constitution when they attacked people at the encampment last May.
After protests against police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020, police took heavy criticism for repeatedly shooting protesters with rubber or foam bullets, even losing a major lawsuit over the issue. Agencies like the LAPD and LA Sheriff’s Department faced injunctions restricting the use of weapons like rubber bullets — also known as 40-millimeter kinetic impact projectiles.
In California, lawmakers responded by passing a law that prohibited officers from using the projectiles against protests unless the situation presented an objective, reasonable defense against a threat to life or serious injury.
In the wake of the 2020 protests, UCLA also changed its guidelines to prioritize deescalation tactics and minimize use of outside police forces on campus.
California Highway Patrol, on the other hand, responds less frequently to protests and was not accused of using similar weapons in 2020. CHP officers nonetheless stormed UCLA encampments last spring and fired more than 50 rounds of the kinetic impact projectiles, said Becca Brown, another attorney working on the lawsuit.
“LAPD did it as well, but they did not use them quite as heavily as CHP,” Brown said.
The new California law restricts the indiscriminate use of rubber bullets into a crowd because they can be — and have been — deadly, Brown explained.
“They cannot be used indiscriminately,” she said. “They cannot be used simply because someone is non-compliant.”
Following criticism, police offered justifications for the use of force in some cases, according to an LAPD after-action report on the agency’s response to the UCLA encampments. Examples included someone throwing a traffic cone at police or removing an officer’s helmet.
“They cannot be used simply because someone is non-compliant.”
The report offered several recommendations for the LAPD, including proper reporting of use-of-force incidents and the need for clear commands from police leaders. The report called on the police to improve communication between agencies because LAPD officers “did not appear to have a clear understanding of their mission.”
Plaintiffs in the suit include a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA, an undergraduate student, another college student, and an architectural designer. Police shot all three of them with rubber bullets and hit several of them in the head.
The police attack on the protests has had effects beyond the physical, the complaint says, and has caused plaintiffs to reconsider exercising their First Amendment rights to demonstrate against Israel’s war on Gaza. The protesters are also concerned that if they participate in future protests, they’ll be subject to further attacks from the state and police.
“The encampment clearance by means of violence, excessive force, and kinetic energy projectiles traumatized Plaintiffs, chilled their protest activity, and justifiably made them less willing to engage in any further Palestine-related protest activity,” the complaint says. “This was the natural consequence of the dramatic and violent clearing organized and carried out by CHP and LAPD, which would have certainly chilled any ordinary person from engaging in Palestine solidarity advocacy in the future.”
One plaintiff, UCLA Ph.D. candidate Abdullah Puckett, “has become more hesitant and afraid of continuing his participation in protests,” the complaint said. “He now feels that he must reconsider whether he can participate in protests and if so, to what extent he can participate. He now fears that he will experience violent retaliation at the hands of law enforcement if he participates in protests.”
UCLA Gaza Crackdown
Police arrested more than 200 people as a result of the UCLA encampment. The LAPD, which had a $3.2 billion budget last year, sought more than half a million dollars in reimbursement from the governor’s office for the response, in part for more than 2,400 overtime hours, the Daily Bruin reported.
“How are they supposed to go back to campus and feel safe?”
Arrested students wound up with criminal records. Those records are now being used by the Trump administration to target students for abduction and deportation.
“For international students that may have been arrested at any of these encampments, they then had that on their record, which led to the Trump administration running background checks on international students,” said Sergienko, the lawyer. “And if they had gotten arrested at an encampment, that got flagged and could be subject to deportation under Trump’s fascist policies.”
California’s Democratic lawmakers are now pushing for a bill that amounts to an “educational gag order” targeting ethnic studies classes over concerns about antisemitism.
“That’s another attack on speech coming from the blue state, the liberal paradise of California,” Sergienko said.
“A real question is, how are students supposed to feel safe on campus knowing that the administration would call in a thousand school shooters to come attack them while on campus?” Sergienko said. “How are they supposed to go back to campus and feel safe?
On Wednesday night, UCLA students showed “The Encampments,” a documentary released earlier this year. The school called in the LAPD to break up the screening. Police arrested three students.
Police conspired to violently attack anti-genocide protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles last year, according to a suit filed last week in Los Angeles Superior Court.
At the height of the school’s encampment against Israel’s war on Gaza last spring, one of hundreds across the country, a mob of pro-Israel protesters attacked pro-Palestine protesters for more than four hours. On the night of April 30, 2024, police stood by and watched as counter-protesters aimed and shot fireworks, sprayed chemical agents, harassed, and sexually assaulted pro-Palestine protesters, students and faculty alleged last month in a separate, ongoing lawsuit.
The day after the melee, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, UCLA administrators, and seven different law enforcement agencies laid plans to dismantle the school’s encampment for good.
UCLA invited multiple outside police forces to campus to clear the encampments on May 1. More than 700 police officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol, the University of California Police Department, and private security were on campus the night of the raid.
Protesters are now suing the state of California, which oversees California Highway Patrol, and the city of Los Angeles, which oversees the LAPD, for violence against the demonstrations. The police fired more than 50 rounds of rubber bullets at protesters, striking several people in the head; some of the injuries sent demonstrators to the hospital.
The projectiles shattered bones in one student’s hand and required her to undergo surgery and extensive rehab. Another person, who police shot in the head, was diagnosed with internal bleeding.(The governor’s office referred questions to California Highway Patrol. CHP and LAPD said they would not comment on pending legislation. UCLA did not respond to a request for comment.)
“If you want to talk about fascism, they deployed a police state on campuses all across California.”
A lawyer for the protesters said it was important to hold Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, often mentioned as possible future party leaders, to account because, though the governing authorities are Democrats, their actions against the protesters helped give rise to Donald Trump’s extreme crackdown.
“These attacks also happened in Democratic-run cities and blue states,” said attorney Ricci Sergienko, who filed the suit on Thursday. “That is a clear, direct path to what’s happening now with Trump, because the Democratic Party and their leaders made enemies out of these young people.”
“If you want to talk about fascism, they deployed a police state on campuses all across California,” Sergienko said. “We want to talk about what fascism is, and authoritarian repression and suppression — that is modeled here in California.”
Rules on Rubber Bullets
The new lawsuit says police violated that law and protesters’ rights under the state constitution when they attacked people at the encampment last May.
After protests against police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020, police took heavy criticism for repeatedly shooting protesters with rubber or foam bullets, even losing a major lawsuit over the issue. Agencies like the LAPD and LA Sheriff’s Department faced injunctions restricting the use of weapons like rubber bullets — also known as 40-millimeter kinetic impact projectiles.
In California, lawmakers responded by passing a law that prohibited officers from using the projectiles against protests unless the situation presented an objective, reasonable defense against a threat to life or serious injury.
In the wake of the 2020 protests, UCLA also changed its guidelines to prioritize deescalation tactics and minimize use of outside police forces on campus.
California Highway Patrol, on the other hand, responds less frequently to protests and was not accused of using similar weapons in 2020. CHP officers nonetheless stormed UCLA encampments last spring and fired more than 50 rounds of the kinetic impact projectiles, said Becca Brown, another attorney working on the lawsuit.
“LAPD did it as well, but they did not use them quite as heavily as CHP,” Brown said.
The new California law restricts the indiscriminate use of rubber bullets into a crowd because they can be — and have been — deadly, Brown explained.
“They cannot be used indiscriminately,” she said. “They cannot be used simply because someone is non-compliant.”
Following criticism, police offered justifications for the use of force in some cases, according to an LAPD after-action report on the agency’s response to the UCLA encampments. Examples included someone throwing a traffic cone at police or removing an officer’s helmet.
“They cannot be used simply because someone is non-compliant.”
The report offered several recommendations for the LAPD, including proper reporting of use-of-force incidents and the need for clear commands from police leaders. The report called on the police to improve communication between agencies because LAPD officers “did not appear to have a clear understanding of their mission.”
Plaintiffs in the suit include a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA, an undergraduate student, another college student, and an architectural designer. Police shot all three of them with rubber bullets and hit several of them in the head.
The police attack on the protests has had effects beyond the physical, the complaint says, and has caused plaintiffs to reconsider exercising their First Amendment rights to demonstrate against Israel’s war on Gaza. The protesters are also concerned that if they participate in future protests, they’ll be subject to further attacks from the state and police.
“The encampment clearance by means of violence, excessive force, and kinetic energy projectiles traumatized Plaintiffs, chilled their protest activity, and justifiably made them less willing to engage in any further Palestine-related protest activity,” the complaint says. “This was the natural consequence of the dramatic and violent clearing organized and carried out by CHP and LAPD, which would have certainly chilled any ordinary person from engaging in Palestine solidarity advocacy in the future.”
One plaintiff, UCLA Ph.D. candidate Abdullah Puckett, “has become more hesitant and afraid of continuing his participation in protests,” the complaint said. “He now feels that he must reconsider whether he can participate in protests and if so, to what extent he can participate. He now fears that he will experience violent retaliation at the hands of law enforcement if he participates in protests.”
UCLA Gaza Crackdown
Police arrested more than 200 people as a result of the UCLA encampment. The LAPD, which had a $3.2 billion budget last year, sought more than half a million dollars in reimbursement from the governor’s office for the response, in part for more than 2,400 overtime hours, the Daily Bruin reported.
“How are they supposed to go back to campus and feel safe?”
Arrested students wound up with criminal records. Those records are now being used by the Trump administration to target students for abduction and deportation.
“For international students that may have been arrested at any of these encampments, they then had that on their record, which led to the Trump administration running background checks on international students,” said Sergienko, the lawyer. “And if they had gotten arrested at an encampment, that got flagged and could be subject to deportation under Trump’s fascist policies.”
California’s Democratic lawmakers are now pushing for a bill that amounts to an “educational gag order” targeting ethnic studies classes over concerns about antisemitism.
“That’s another attack on speech coming from the blue state, the liberal paradise of California,” Sergienko said.
“A real question is, how are students supposed to feel safe on campus knowing that the administration would call in a thousand school shooters to come attack them while on campus?” Sergienko said. “How are they supposed to go back to campus and feel safe?
On Wednesday night, UCLA students showed “The Encampments,” a documentary released earlier this year. The school called in the LAPD to break up the screening. Police arrested three students.
Update: May 5, 2025, 10:53 a.m. ET This story has been updated to include responses to requests for comment received after publication from the Los Angeles Police Department and the California Highway Patrol.
World Media Freedom Day reflections of a protester
Yesterday, World Media Freedom Day, we marched to Television New Zealand in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland to deliver a letter asking them to do better.
Their coverage [of Palestine] has been biased at its best, silent at its worst.
I truly believe that if our media outlets reported fairly, factually and consistently on the reality in Gaza and in all of Palestine that tens of thousands of peoples lives would have been saved and the [Israeli] occupation would have ended already.
Instead, I open my Instagram to a new massacre, a new lifeless child.
I often wonder how we get locked into jobs where we leave our values at the door to keep our own life how (I hope) we wish all lives to be. How we all collectively agree to turn away, to accept absolute substandard and often horrific conditions for others in exchange for our own comforts.
Yesterday I carried my son for half of this [1km] march. He’s too big to be carried but I also know I ask a lot from him to join me in this fight so I meet him in the middle as I can.
Near the end of the march he fell asleep and the saying “dead weight” came to mind as his body became heavier and more difficult to carry.
I thought about the endless images I’ve seen of parents in Gaza carrying their lifeless child and I thought how lucky I am, that my child will wake up.
How small of an effort it is to carry him a few blocks in the hopes that something might change, that one parent might be spared that terrible feeling — dead weight.
Republished from an Instagram post by a Philippine Solidarity Network Aotearoa supporter.
New York University School of Law barred 31 pro-Palestine law school students from campus facilities and demanded that they sign away their right to protest in exchange for being allowed to return. If the students — deemed “personae non grata,” or PNG — don’t renounce their right to protest on campus, they will be unable to sit for final exams.
“You may not participate in any protest activity or disruptive activity on Law School property,” says the so-called “Use of Space Agreement” sent to the students, which explicitly lays out conditions for being allowed to return to key campus buildings during the school’s “exam period.”
The law students, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid further repercussions from the school, are accused of participating in sit-ins, a time-honored form of nonviolent demonstration that is allowed according to NYU policy. The sit-ins on March 4 and April 29 took place, respectively, at the school’s Bobst Library and outside the office of the law school dean. (NYU did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
“What we’ve seen is a complete violation of our campus norms.”
Barring the students from campus and demanding they refrain from protesting represents a dramatic escalation against NYU students involved in demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza — breaking with school policy and upending precedents for disciplinary procedures, said seven of the PNG students who spoke with The Intercept, as well as other NYU students and faculty.
“What we’ve seen is a complete violation of our campus norms,” said Andrew Ross, a sociology professor who was himself barred from campus buildings in December before the school reversed the decision three weeks later. “If you take a step backward and see the walled-off campus spaces and heavily-patrolled entrances to buildings, the uniformed security personnel everywhere, this advanced security infrastructure, and all these new rules that have been established on the fly regarding speech and conduct — this is a very, very exceptional violation of every kind of campus norm that we were accustomed to.”
“Vague and Arbitrary”
According to emails to the students obtained by The Intercept, they are barred from campus while under investigation for failing to comply with directives from public safety, including to leave the areas of their sit-ins, and of disruptive conduct. NYU conduct policies say any protests at libraries are disruptive, but the law students pointed out that they were protesting outside NYU president Linda Mills’s office on the top floor of Bobst Library.
“The school’s policies are vague and arbitrary enough to be wielded in any situation against any kind of speech the university looks down upon, particularly pro-Palestine speech,” said a law student who received a PNG notice. “The school claims protests are banned in the library, which is conveniently where the main administrative offices, including the Office of the President, are located.”
While at the protests, the students were handed fliers quoting from the “failure to comply” and “disruptive conduct” rules, according to photos reviewed by The Intercept.
“No site or forum is acceptable to the university when it comes to pro-Palestine speech.”
“The school explicitly outlines sit-ins as permitted,” said a second student. “But as soon as they don’t like the sit-in or protest happening, they tell people to stop and, when they don’t, they then hand people policies on ‘failure to comply’ with orders. So, in essence they are communicating that they can immediately make any protest they want a violation of the rules based on whether they are amenable to the content.”
NYU students and faculty pointed to past protest actions that did not result in similar repressive sanctions as evidence that pro-Palestine organizers are being disproportionately punished because of their political beliefs. In 2015, for instance, a group of students staged a die-in in the library over Black Lives Matter, but did not face disciplinary consequences.
That same year, students staged a sit-in on the 12th floor of Bobst calling for the university to divest from fossil fuels. Students were granted a meeting with board of trustee members after the sit-in — and the school eventually divested from fossil fuels in 2023.
“The divestment sit-in at the same location in Bobst led to actual divestment from fossil fuels,” said the first PNG student. “There have been dozens of sit-ins in campus libraries since October of 2023, with no punishment meted out. Yet it seems the proximity of our action to the president’s office, and the clarity of our demands, made the university more eager to apply the rules to our group.”
“The truth is that no site or forum is acceptable to the university when it comes to pro-Palestine speech.”
The Law Student Sit-Ins
The PNG law students were themselves protesting NYU’s decision to suspend a group of 13 undergraduate students and 3 graduate students in December. The suspended students had participated in a sit-in protest at the university president’s office in Bobst Library demanding that NYU divest from Israel. For months, NYU’s administration stonewalled organizers who sought to intervene on behalf of the suspended students. Then, on March 4, the law students staged their own peaceful 8-hour sit-in at Bobst in support of the suspended students.
Later that day, Craig Jolley, the associate dean of students at NYU, emailed 28 law students who had allegedly participated in the sit-in to say that the protest violated university conduct policy and they had been referred to NYU School of Law’s executive committee for formal disciplinary review. The email noted the students were prohibited from accessing any university locations for any purpose aside from attending a scheduled class or entering an assigned residence hall.
Students barred from campus after the March 4 protest said the swipe function on their IDs was disabled as soon as they received Jolley’s email. They immediately began encountering issues accessing their assigned residences, health services, the gym, and religious centers. Among the group were Muslim students who were denied access to the NYU Islamic Center during Ramadan.
On March 7, Jolley clarified that the barred students should be permitted to access health centers, but with ID swipe disabled, students said access was permitted on an ad hoc basis by campus security officers. After they were stopped and questioned by campus security, at least one barred student missed an appointment for gender-affirming care at the health center — an appointment granted only after getting off a monthslong waitlist. On March 21, the law school notified PNG students they could now access religious centers, provided they email the school outlining specific dates, times, and information on their intended religious practice.
On April 29, a separate group of law school students who had not received PNG notices staged another sit-in, this time outside the law school dean’s office. Two days later, on May 1, three of those law students received PNG notices — and all 31 PNG law students received emails from the school demanding that they renounce protesting so that they would be allowed to return to the campus facilities and sit final exams.
“Making Up Its Own Rules”
The law school’s disciplinary process has historically been autonomous from the broader university, with more “due process” baked into its policies. The law school, nonetheless, appears to not have followed even its own rules in the case of the pro-Palestine protesters: the students say they were never served with the required formal complaints and the 20-day window for the university to investigate the alleged misconduct expired more than a month ago.
“There’s tremendous inconsistency across the schools, and sometimes even within the schools, about how things are done, and the law school does seem to be making up its own rules right now about how things are done,” said Sonya Posmentier, an English professor at NYU who, along with Ross, was one of two tenured faculty members that received PNG sanctions related to the December sit-in. “Universities have started to make this very erratic, on the fly, punitive response to protest really, really commonplace. At this point, there is not one place on campus ‘private property’ where students can protest without fear of pretty draconian repercussions.”
“At this point, there is not one place on campus ‘private property’ where students can protest.”
On April 20, attorneys for some of the law students pressed law school administrators on the decision to impose PNG restrictions — which, as an ostensibly interim measure, violates NYU law school requirements for due process, the students’ lawyers said. The lawyers also said administrators had failed to adhere to the law school policy’s timeline. In response, according to an email exchange obtained by The Intercept, a lawyer with NYU’s general counsel said that the school was conducting only a “preliminary factual inquiry” to determine whether any rule had been violated and determine if a formal or informal disciplinary process was required. According to a policy guide, formal disciplinary processes are reserved for “severe violation of university or Law School policy,” such as “serious violations of academic integrity or threats or acts that imminently endanger members of the community.”
William Miller, the lawyer with the general counsel’s office, wrote that the preliminary investigation into what kind of process to undertake obviates the objection: “The 20-day timeline that you reference in your letter is therefore not applicable.” (Miller did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Miller said in the email that NYU had retained the firm Latham & Watkins to assist in the investigation of the PNG students — one of the Big Law titans that cut a deal with the Trump administration to carry out millions of dollars of pro bono work.
The Dean’s Office
Another group of law students met with NYU Law School Dean Troy McKenzie on April 28 to demand explanations for their fellow students’ PNG status and raise concerns that the school’s partnership with Latham & Watkins could potentially imperil pro-Palestine students. Students said they felt they were granted the interview because they did not request it under the auspices of Law Students for Justice in Palestine and instead focused the intent of the meeting on student disciplinary proceedings.
Even so, the students said McKenzie did not offer answers.
“He abdicated any sort of agency he had in the decision-making process,” said one law student at the meeting. “We said, ‘We hear you, what can you offer us?’ And he said absolutely nothing.”
That’s when law students decided to stage the second sit-in outside of McKenzie’s office on April 29. It lasted around four hours. (McKenzie did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
On May 1, three law students who participated in the second sit-in received notice that they too were now under PNG status due to “particularly egregious” conduct and another 15 law students received a warning that they were under investigation. The students bristled at having their conduct called “egregious,” noting that the protesters left the office area before 5 p.m. when it closed.
The 31 total PNG students then received an email that their interim access restrictions would continue unless they signed the “Use of Space” agreement that said they cannot access the academic buildings where their final exams are held unless they pledge not to participate in protests at the law school. Exams, which count for 100 percent of a student’s final grade, start Monday.
One law student and pro-Palestine organizer who was declared PNG in March noted that some students’ pro bono work — including deportation defense and civil rights lawsuits — is carried out in a building that they are now unable to access unless they sign the agreement.
“Not being able to put our full energy and do client meetings,” said the student, “as an official legal services provider is not only impeding our ability to comply with our professional responsibilities as legal representatives but also putting our clients’ lives at risk.”
Targeting Leaders?
As of May 2, nearly 300 NYU students, alumni, and community members, as well as groups like the graduate student union, NYU Law Latinx Law Students Association, and NYU Law Jews for Palestine signed an open letter to the administration expressing concerns over the school’s indefinite use of PNG status with no due process.
Ross, the sociology professor, noted that the use of disciplinary actions seems to be part of a national strategy to target leaders in pro-Palestine movements on campus.
“The point of the suspensions is to take out student leaders, to withdraw them from the field of deployment, and they’ve been very successful at doing this,” said Ross. “At NYU, the ranks of student leaders have really been depleted by this strategy over the last year.”
“While some of the responses have been inconsistent and seemingly random,” he said, “I do think they have been aimed overall at targeting the leaders.”
New York University School of Law barred 31 pro-Palestine law school students from campus facilities and demanded that they sign away their right to protest in exchange for being allowed to return. If the students — deemed “personae non grata,” or PNG — don’t renounce their right to protest on campus, they will be unable to sit for final exams.
“You may not participate in any protest activity or disruptive activity on Law School property,” says the so-called “Use of Space Agreement” sent to the students, which explicitly lays out conditions for being allowed to return to key campus buildings during the school’s “exam period.”
The law students, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid further repercussions from the school, are accused of participating in sit-ins, a time-honored form of nonviolent demonstration that is allowed according to NYU policy. The sit-ins on March 4 and April 29 took place, respectively, at the school’s Bobst Library and outside the office of the law school dean. (NYU did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
“What we’ve seen is a complete violation of our campus norms.”
Barring the students from campus and demanding they refrain from protesting represents a dramatic escalation against NYU students involved in demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza — breaking with school policy and upending precedents for disciplinary procedures, said seven of the PNG students who spoke with The Intercept, as well as other NYU students and faculty.
“What we’ve seen is a complete violation of our campus norms,” said Andrew Ross, a sociology professor who was himself barred from campus buildings in December before the school reversed the decision three weeks later. “If you take a step backward and see the walled-off campus spaces and heavily patrolled entrances to buildings, the uniformed security personnel everywhere, this advanced security infrastructure, and all these new rules that have been established on the fly regarding speech and conduct — this is a very, very exceptional violation of every kind of campus norm that we were accustomed to.”
“Vague and Arbitrary”
According to emails to the students obtained by The Intercept, they are barred from campus while under investigation for failing to comply with directives from public safety, including to leave the areas of their sit-ins, and of disruptive conduct. NYU conduct policies say any protests at libraries are disruptive, but the law students pointed out that they were protesting outside NYU President Linda Mills’s office on the top floor of Bobst Library.
“The school’s policies are vague and arbitrary enough to be wielded in any situation against any kind of speech the university looks down upon, particularly pro-Palestine speech,” said a law student who received a PNG notice. “The school claims protests are banned in the library, which is conveniently where the main administrative offices, including the Office of the President, are located.”
While at the protests, the students were handed flyers quoting from the “failure to comply” and “disruptive conduct” rules, according to photos reviewed by The Intercept.
“The school explicitly outlines sit-ins as permitted,” said a second student. “But as soon as they don’t like the sit-in or protest happening, they tell people to stop and, when they don’t, they then hand people policies on ‘failure to comply’ with orders. So, in essence they are communicating that they can immediately make any protest they want a violation of the rules based on whether they are amenable to the content.”
“No site or forum is acceptable to the university when it comes to pro-Palestine speech.”
NYU students and faculty pointed to past protest actions that did not result in similar repressive sanctions as evidence that pro-Palestine organizers are being disproportionately punished because of their political beliefs. In 2015, for instance, a group of students staged a die-in in the library over Black Lives Matter but did not face disciplinary consequences.
That same year, students staged a sit-in on the 12th floor of Bobst calling for the university to divest from fossil fuels. Students were granted a meeting with board of trustee members after the sit-in — and the school eventually divested from fossil fuels in 2023.
“The divestment sit-in at the same location in Bobst led to actual divestment from fossil fuels,” said the first PNG student. “There have been dozens of sit-ins in campus libraries since October of 2023, with no punishment meted out. Yet it seems the proximity of our action to the president’s office, and the clarity of our demands, made the university more eager to apply the rules to our group.”
“The truth is that no site or forum is acceptable to the university when it comes to pro-Palestine speech.”
The Law Student Sit-Ins
The PNG law students were themselves protesting NYU’s decision to suspend a group of 13 undergraduate students and three graduate students in December. The suspended students had participated in a sit-in protest at the university president’s office in Bobst Library demanding that NYU divest from Israel. For months, NYU’s administration stonewalled organizers who sought to intervene on behalf of the suspended students. Then, on March 4, the law students staged their own peaceful 8-hour sit-in at Bobst in support of the suspended students.
Later that day, Craig Jolley, the associate dean of students at NYU, emailed 28 law students who had allegedly participated in the sit-in to say that the protest violated university conduct policy and they had been referred to NYU School of Law’s executive committee for formal disciplinary review. The email noted the students were prohibited from accessing any university locations for any purpose aside from attending a scheduled class or entering an assigned residence hall.
Students barred from campus after the March 4 protest said the swipe function on their IDs was disabled as soon as they received Jolley’s email. They immediately began encountering issues accessing their assigned residences, health services, gym, and religious centers. Among the group were Muslim students who were denied access to the NYU Islamic Center during Ramadan.
On March 7, Jolley clarified that the barred students should be permitted to access health centers, but with ID swipe disabled, students said access was permitted on an ad hoc basis by campus security officers. After they were stopped and questioned by campus security, at least one barred student missed an appointment for gender-affirming care at the health center — an appointment granted only after getting off a monthslong waitlist. On March 21, the law school notified PNG students they could now access religious centers, provided they email the school outlining specific dates, times, and information on their intended religious practice.
On April 29, a separate group of law school students who had not received PNG notices staged another sit-in, this time outside the law school dean’s office. Two days later, on May 1, three of those law students received PNG notices — and all 31 PNG law students received emails from the school demanding that they renounce protesting so that they would be allowed to return to the campus facilities and sit final exams.
“Making Up Its Own Rules”
The law school’s disciplinary process has historically been autonomous from the broader university, with more “due process” baked into its policies. The law school, nonetheless, appears to not have followed even its own rules in the case of the pro-Palestine protesters: The students say they were never served with the required formal complaints, and the 20-day window for the university to investigate the alleged misconduct expired more than a month ago.
“There’s tremendous inconsistency across the schools, and sometimes even within the schools, about how things are done, and the law school does seem to be making up its own rules right now about how things are done,” said Sonya Posmentier, an English professor at NYU who, along with Ross, was one of two tenured faculty members who received PNG sanctions related to the December sit-in. “Universities have started to make this very erratic, on-the-fly, punitive response to protest really, really commonplace. At this point, there is not one place on campus ‘private property’ where students can protest without fear of pretty draconian repercussions.”
“At this point, there is not one place on campus ‘private property’ where students can protest.”
On April 20, attorneys for some of the law students pressed law school administrators on the decision to impose PNG restrictions — which, as an ostensibly interim measure, violates NYU law school requirements for due process, the students’ lawyers said. The lawyers also said administrators had failed to adhere to the law school policy’s timeline. In response, according to an email exchange obtained by The Intercept, a lawyer with NYU’s general counsel said that the school was conducting only a “preliminary factual inquiry” to determine whether any rule had been violated and determine if a formal or informal disciplinary process was required. According to a policy guide, formal disciplinary processes are reserved for “severe violation of university or Law School policy,” such as “serious violations of academic integrity or threats or acts that imminently endanger members of the community.”
William Miller, the lawyer with the general counsel’s office, wrote that the preliminary investigation into what kind of process to undertake obviates the objection: “The 20-day timeline that you reference in your letter is therefore not applicable.” (Miller did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Miller said in the email that NYU had retained the firm Latham & Watkins to assist in the investigation of the PNG students — one of the Big Law titans that cut a deal with the Trump administration to carry out millions of dollars of pro bono work.
The Dean’s Office
Another group of law students met with NYU Law School Dean Troy McKenzie on April 28 to demand explanations for their fellow students’ PNG status and raise concerns that the school’s partnership with Latham & Watkins could potentially imperil pro-Palestine students. Students said they felt they were granted the interview because they did not request it under the auspices of Law Students for Justice in Palestine and instead focused the intent of the meeting on student disciplinary proceedings.
Even so, the students said McKenzie did not offer answers.
“He abdicated any sort of agency he had in the decision-making process,” said one law student at the meeting. “We said, ‘We hear you, what can you offer us?’ And he said absolutely nothing.”
That’s when law students decided to stage the second sit-in outside of McKenzie’s office on April 29. It lasted around four hours. (McKenzie did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
On May 1, some students who participated in the second sit-in received notice that they were being investigated for “particularly egregious” conduct. The students bristled at having their conduct called “egregious,” noting that the protesters left the office area before 5 p.m. when it closed. Another three students were assigned PNG status.
The 31 total PNG students then received an email that their interim access restrictions would continue unless they signed the “Use of Space” agreement that said they cannot access the academic buildings where their final exams are held unless they pledge not to participate in protests at the law school. Exams, which count for 100 percent of a student’s final grade, start Monday.
One law student and pro-Palestine organizer who was declared PNG in March noted that some students’ pro bono work — including deportation defense and civil rights lawsuits — is carried out in a building that they are now unable to access unless they sign the agreement.
“Not being able to put our full energy and do client meetings,” said the student, “as an official legal services provider is not only impeding our ability to comply with our professional responsibilities as legal representatives but also putting our clients’ lives at risk.”
Targeting Leaders?
As of May 2, nearly 300 NYU students, alumni, and community members, as well as groups like the graduate student union, NYU Law Latinx Law Students Association, and NYU Law Jews for Palestine, signed an open letter to the administration expressing concerns over the school’s indefinite use of PNG status with no due process.
Ross, the sociology professor, noted that the use of disciplinary actions seems to be part of a national strategy to target leaders in pro-Palestine movements on campus.
“The point of the suspensions is to take out student leaders, to withdraw them from the field of deployment, and they’ve been very successful at doing this,” said Ross. “At NYU, the ranks of student leaders have really been depleted by this strategy over the last year.”
“While some of the responses have been inconsistent and seemingly random,” he said, “I do think they have been aimed overall at targeting the leaders.”
Correction: May 3, 2025, 6:14 p.m. ET This story has been updated to correct an errant reference to which students recceived May 1 letters accusing them of “particularly egregious” conduct; it was not the three who received PNG notices.
About 1000 pro-Palestinian protesters marked World Press Freedom Day — May 3 — today by marching on the public broadcaster Television New Zealand in Auckland, accusing it of 18 months of “biased coverage” on the genocidal Israeli war against Gaza.
They delivered a letter to the management board of TVNZ from Palestine Solidarity Network (PSNA) co-chair John Minto declaring: “The damage [done] to human rights, justice and freedom in the Middle East by Western media such as TVNZ is incalculable.”
The protesters marched on the television headquarters near Sky Tower about 4pm after an hour-long rally in the heart of the city at a precinct dubbed “Palestine Square” in the Britomart transport hub’s Te Komititanga Square.
Several opposition politicians spoke at the rally, calling for a ceasefire in the brutal war on Gaza that has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians with no sign of a let-up.
Labour Party’s disarmament and arms control spokesperson Phil Twyford was among the speakers that included Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson and Ricardo Menéndez March.
All three spoke strongly in support of Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick’s Member’s Bill to sanction Israel for its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Davidson said the opposition parties were united behind the bill and all they needed were six MPs in the coalition government to “follow their conscience” to support it.
Appeals for pressure
They appealed to the protesters to put pressure on their local MPs to support the humanitarian initiative.
Protesters outside the Television New Zealand headquarters in Auckland today. Image: Asia Pacific Report
In The Hague this week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) heard evidence from more than 40 countries and global organisations condemning Israel over its actions in deliberately starving the more than 2 million Palestinians by blockading the besieged enclave for more than the past two months.
Only the United States and Hungary spoke in support of Israel.
Mutlaq al-Qahtani, Qatari Ambassador to The Netherlands, also said there were “new trails of tears in the West Bank mirroring Gaza’s fate”.
Israel executing ‘genocidal war’ against Gaza, Qatar tells ICJ. Video: Al Jazeera
Among the speakers in the Auckland rally, one of about 30 similar protests for Palestine across New Zealand this weekend, was coordinator Roger Fowler of the Auckland-based Kia Ora Gaza humanitarian aid organisation, who denounced the overnight drone attack on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla aid ship Conscience in international waters after leaving Malta.
The ship was crippled by the suspected Israel attack, endangering the lives of some 30 human rights activists on board. Fowler said: “That’s 2000 km away from Israel, that’s how desperate they are now to stop the Freedom Flotilla.”
A protester placard declaring “TVNZ, you’re biased reporting is shameful. Where is your integrity?” Image: Asia Pacific Report
He reminded protesters that Marama Davidson and retired trade unionist Mike Treen had been on previous aid protest voyages in past years trying to break the Israeli blockade, but there was no New Zealander on board in the current mission.
Media ‘credibility challenge’
Journalist and Pacific Media Watch convenor Dr David Robie spoke about World Media Freedom Day. He paid a tribute to the sacrifices of 211 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel — many of them targeted — saying Israel’s war on Gaza had become the “greatest credibility challenge for journalists and media of our times”.
Many protesters carried placards declaring slogans such as “TVNZ your biased reporting is shameful. Where is your integrity?”, “Journalists are not targets” and “Caring for the children of Palestine is what it’s about.”
After marching about 1km between Te Komititanga Square and the TVNZ headquarters, the protesters gathered outside the entrance chanting for fairness and balance in the reporting.
“TVNZ lies. For the past 18 months they have been nothing but complicit,” said one Palestinian speaker to a chorus of: “Shame!”
He said: “Every time TVNZ lies, a little boy in Gaza dies.”
Another Palestinian speaker, Nadine, said: “Every time the media lies, a little girl in Gaza dies.”
The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) letter to Television New Zealand’s board. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Deputation delivers TVNZ letter
A deputation from the protesters delivered the letter from PSNA’s John Minto addressed to the TVNZ board chair Alastair Carruthers but found the main foyer main entrance closed so the message was left.
Minto’s two-page letter calling for an independent review of TVNZ’s reporting on Palestine and Israel said in part:
“Over the past 18 months of industrial scale killing of Palestinians by the Israeli military in Gaza we have been regularly appalled at the blatantly-biased reporting on the Middle East by Television New Zealand.
“TVNZ’s reporting has been relentlessly and virulently pro-Israel. TVNZ has centred Israeli narratives, Israeli explanations, Israeli justifications and Israeli propaganda points on a daily basis while Palestinian viewpoints are all but absent.
“When they are presented they are given rudimentary coverage at best. More often than not Palestinians are presented as the incoherent victims of Israeli brutality rather than as an occupied people fighting for liberation in a situation described by the International Court of Justice as a “plausible genocide”.
“This pattern of systemic bias and unbalanced reporting is not revealed by TVNZ’s complaints system which focuses on individual stories rather than ingrained patterns of pro-Israel bias.
“Every complaint we have made to TVNZ has, with one minor exception, been rejected by your corporation with the typical refrain that it’s not possible to cover every aspect of an issue in a single story but that over time the balance is made up.
“Our issue is that the bias continues throughout TVNZ’s reporting on a story-by-story, day-by-day basis — the balance is never achieved. The reporting goes ahead just the way the pro-Israel lobby is happy with.”
The rest of the letter detailed many examples of the alleged systematic bias, such as failing to describe Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem and as “Occupied” territory as they are designated under international law, and failing to state the illegality of Israel’s military occupation.
Minto concluded by stating: “It is prolonging Israel’s illegal occupation, its apartheid policies, its ethnic cleansing and theft of Palestinian land. TVNZ is part of the problem – a key part of the problem.”
The letter called for an independent investigation.
Palestinian protesters at TVNZ headquarters while demonstrating against the public broadcaster’s coverage of the Israeli war against Gaza on World Press Freedom Day. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Donald Trump holds an executive order on policing at the White House in Washington on June 16, 2020.Photo: Stefani Reynolds/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Donald Trump says he wants to “unleash” the police.
This week, Trump signed an executive order “STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS” (all caps in the original), laying down a host of authoritarian diktats intended to make police officers more brutal, more loyal to him, and less accountable to anyone other than him.
The proclamation is more virtue signaling than policy — more an expression of Trump’s mood than a serious proposal. And, when it comes to conventional crime, Trump’s mood is right where it’s always been: fearful, demagogic, and perpetually stuck in 1988.
The proclamation is more an expression of Trump’s mood than a serious proposal.
The thing that ties it all together is a word Trump uses often — “unleash” — and it’s worth delving into. The literal definition is to remove from a restraint. In the context of law enforcement, it conjures images of cops siccing police dogs on suspects or protesters. Metaphorically, we tend to associate the word with starker imagery. We unleash fury, wrath, and retribution. Trump wants to project both.
As for the executive order itself, it is heavy on bluster and short on details, like most of Trump’s orders.
Some of the measures are nonsensical, like “indemnifying” police from damages. (They’re already indemnified by taxpayers in more than 99.9 percent of such cases.) For others, it isn’t clear if he’s referring to federal or state and local police. Trump provides no funding for his demands.
Some would violate the law, such as charging progressive prosecutors for failing to prosecute some crimes to Trump’s satisfaction. Others, like directing law firms to do pro bono work defending cops accused of wrongdoing, are unconstitutional on their own — not to mention that they build on other directives from Trump that courts are also likely to find unconstitutional. Still others would require approval from Congress.
How much of this agenda is actually feasible depends on whether Trump is willing to push through these barriers, and whether the federal courtsare willing to stop him. That, however, is true with or without an executive order.
He believes in projecting strength, and believes strong leaders demonstrate strength with violence. This is why he has often suggested that police officers will attack his enemies if called upon, and why the Capitol Police who defended Congress from his supporters received so much of his wrath.
Yet you can’t unleash something that has never been restrained in the first place. And in the U.S., the police have never been restrained.
Last month, an Oklahoma City news station reported that a federal team of law enforcement officers had battered down the door of a Latino woman and her three daughters. The family was subjected to a terrifying raid, in which agents held them at gunpoint, forced them to stand in the rain, then rifled through their home.
The agents were looking for undocumented immigrants. Everyone in the home was a U.S. citizen. The man they were looking for had moved out months earlier.
If it had all stopped there, that would have been bad enough. This was a violent, volatile raid over an alleged immigration violation — an extraordinarily disproportionate use of force. After learning of their mistake, however, the agents weren’t apologetic or contrite. Instead, they confiscated the family’s computers, cellphones, and an undisclosed amount of cash.
The agents didn’t identify themselves or which agency they were with, and they left no contact information so the women could file a complaint or, at the very least, retrieve their property.
According to the victim, one officer told her as they left, “I know it was a little rough this morning.” After several days, the Department of Homeland Security finally acknowledged a mistake.
This raid followed Trump’s executive order, but it’s part of a much longer pattern of hyper-aggressive law enforcement. These certainly weren’t the actions of law officers who felt restrained.
And why would they? Trump and his subordinates have made clear that one clear objective of his immigration policy is to inflict pain. It isn’t just about removing undocumented people, it’s about making people who do come suffer as much as possible to deter others.
When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents confronted 19-year-old Merwil Gutiérrez in New York City, they knew right away he wasn’t the man they were looking for. According to Gutiérrez’s cousin, one agent said, “No, he’s not the one.” Another replied, “Take him anyway.”
Gutiérrez has no criminal record. He was in the country legally. He doesn’t even have tattoos. Yet before his family could act, he had been sent to a facility in Texas. He was then among the first batch of people sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, prison, a slave labor detention facility. The ICE agents who arrested him haven’t even been identified, much less disciplined. Immigration “czar” Tom Homan later referred to such wrongful arrests of legal residents as “collateral.”
These are just two of a growing number of horrifying incidents in which federal agents, often concealing their identities with masks, have snatched innocent people from the streets, then whisked them off to to detention centers hundreds of miles away or, worse yet, all the way to CECOT. None of this suggests police officers feel all that restrained.
The courts haven’t restrained them either. In the 2022 case Egbert v. Boulet, the Supreme Court all but barred anyone from suing federal law enforcement officers for violating constitutional rights. In so doing, the court overturned a 50-year-old precedent, arguing that the old ruling created a cause of action that had never been approved by Congress.
The court, however, has also been chipping away at Congress’s attempts to hold bad cops accountable. Incredibly, constitutional lawyer Patrick Jaicomo first learned about the raid in Oklahoma City this week as he was leaving the Supreme Court. Jaicomo, who works for the libertarian nonprofit Institute for Justice, had just given oral arguments for a case in which federal law enforcement officers had waged a violent drug raid on the wrong home, holding an innocent family and 10-year-old child at gunpoint.
Because the court has already prevented victims like Jaicomo’s clients from suing under the Constitution, he was left to argue that they should be able to sue under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the one less-than-ideal remedy still available to hold abusive federal cops accountable. And in fact, after a series of botched drugs raids on innocent people in the 1970s, Congress created an addition to that law specifically allowing for lawsuits in cases of botched raids. Yet the lower courts have refused to allow the lawsuit to go forward, and judging from oral arguments, the Supreme Court doesn’t seem eager to allow it either.
Congress also passed a law to give people a way to sue when state and local police violate their rights: the KKK Act, passed during Reconstruction. The Supreme Court has been whittling that away too, through the doctrine of qualified immunity, a legal fiction the court invented from whole cloth.
Immune (From Most Lawsuits)
The world in which police officers are hamstrung by overly restrictive rules and woke prosecutors exists only in the minds of Donald Trump and his followers.
In truth, state and local police are protected by qualified immunity and in the tiny percentage of cases in which victims can actually get in front of a jury, then convince that jury to convict and award damages, the police are further shielded by indemnification. Federal police — and any state and local police who serve on federal drug, gang, or immigration task forces — are all but immune from lawsuits.
Well, from most lawsuits. There is at least one federal lawsuit that has a decent shot at a substantial settlement.
Last year Trump himself sued the FBI for $100 million over the search of his Mar-a-Lago home. Unlike the raids in Oklahoma City or Atlanta, the FBI agents intentionally conducted the search of Trump’s Florida estate while he was out of town to avoid embarrassing him. It not only was not a no-knock raid; they even gave Trump’s security detail a heads-up that they were coming.
Trump is suing anyway, despite declaring in his 2024 campaign that police should be immune from such lawsuits. Among the abuses Trump claims to have suffered: FBI agents didn’t remove their shoes before entering his bedroom.
The difference now is that Trump controls the Justice Department, and the Supreme Court has given him the green light to exploit the department’s power and resources in whatever corrupt manner he pleases.
It wouldn’t be at all surprising if Trump ordered the department to settle with him for $100 million for the indignity of shoed FBI feet traipsing through his bedroom, while simultaneously directing federal police to continue with warrantless raids on anyone who speaks with an accent.
In the end, Trump doesn’t really need to unleash the police. He just wants to make sure he’s the one holding the lead.
Tucked inside the Altgeld Gardens public housing project on Chicago’s far South Side, there’s a yellow brick wall filled with hundreds of names. It stands as a memorial to the friends and family members in this community who died, often due to disease or other health complications.
The Gardens, as it’s commonly referred to, stands closer to the Indiana border than Chicago’s downtown and is wedged between toxic landfills, old steel mills, chemical factories, and an oil refinery. The housing development was built for Black veterans returning from World War II.
It’s unclear exactly how the memorial wall first began.
“People just started putting up names on the wall for the people who died of cancer and other respiratory problems,” said Cheryl Johnson, who runs the local nonprofit People for Community Recovery.
The Memorial Wall in the covered breezeway at Altgeld Gardens holds several hundred names of deceased loved ones.
Rich Cahan
Environmental justice was born here. Johnson’s mother, Hazel Johnson, originally from New Orleans, is celebrated as “the mother of the environmental justice movement.” Her lifelong fight to make city and federal officials confront how poor, Black and Latino communities face disproportionate exposure to pollution turned Altgeld Gardens into a launchpad for the national movement.
When President BIll Clinton signed the first executive order recognizing “environmental justice” in 1994, Johnson was standing right next to him. Now, 30 years later, Johnson’s legacy is under siege.
President Donald Trump struck down Clinton’s executive order on his first week in office. In the 100 days since, as part of a plan to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, from the federal government, the Trump administration has launched a campaign to dismantle environmental justice protections and programs across the United States.
According to Debbie Chizewer, an attorney with the nonprofit environmental legal group Earthjustice, the Trump administration’s message to environmental justice communities across the country is loud and clear: “We’re not going to do this work anymore.”
Chizewer added that the Trump administration isn’t just making it harder for the federal government to respond to environmental racism, but also for communities to advocate for themselves.
It’s targeting bedrock civil rights protections, Chizewer said, going after Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin under any programs that receive federal funding.
In the past, environmental justice groups fighting industrial pollution have used the provision to get the federal government to intervene in local issues. In Chicago for example, Cheryl Johnson was part of a civil rights complaint that resulted in a 2023 settlement agreement requiring the city of Chicago to fix zoning policies that concentrated heavy industry in poor and minority communities.
The national success of the legal tool may be fleeting.
A home sits near a coal-fired power plant in Cheshire, Ohio. The EPA has invited industrial polluters to seek exemptions from federal rules on air pollution. Joshua A. Bickel / AP Photo
Earlier this month, Trump’s Department of Justice terminated a 2023 settlement agreement that required Alabama’s officials to update a failing septic system which released raw sewage onto lawns in Lowndes County, Alabama. The Justice Department said it was ending the settlement as part of its mandate to end “illegal DEI and environmental justice policies.”
“The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release.
“I was not surprised,” said Catherine Colman Flowers, a Lowndes County environmental justice activist who helped file the civil rights complaint that secured the 2023 settlement, given the Trump administration’s track record. Alabama’s Department of Public Health agreed to continue funding the septic replacement program until funds run out.
In the long term, Colman Flowers said the decision to end the settlement means “a lot of families will not get sanitation and will still be living in America with sewage on the ground.”
President Joe Biden had appointed Colman Flowers to the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, or WHEJAC, whose mission was to provide poor and minority communities a direct line of communication with the White House and a mechanism for raising awareness of environmental justice issues in their local communities. Earlier this month, she received an email from the EPA notifying her that the Trump administration had disbanded the council.
The ongoing silencing is increasingly evident in the Great Lakes region, where Trump’s “national energy emergency” has fast-tracked federal review of the controversial Great Lakes Tunnel, a massive fossil fuel project that would replace a segment of the Line 5 pipeline that crosses the Straits of Mackinac separating Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
Nearby Indigenous communities have voiced concern for years that any potential leaks from the proposed pipeline tunnel, which is projected to traverse their land, could irrevocably impact their life on the Great Lakes.
“There is no national emergency,” said Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, noting that the United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. Critics of the project maintain that only about 10 percent of the natural gas products that run through Line 5 stays in Michigan, while the overwhelming majority continues on back to Canada.
“To see it steamrolled ahead effectively silences the tribes vocalizing their concerns or sharing any of that reasoning with the decision-makers,” said Gravelle.
Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin invited industrial polluters to seek exemptions from federal rules on air pollution, a move Ana Baptista, an environmental policy professor at The New School in New York, called “a cue to industries that they have free reign.”
President Trump will then decide whether heavy industry, oftentimes located near environmental justice communities, will be able to leapfrog standards for toxic pollutants like mercury, arsenic, and ethylene oxide.
“It feels like we’re going back to the era where people denied the existence of environmental injustice and communities were really on their own,” she said. The only difference this time around, Baptista added, there’s now more than 30 years of empirical evidence documenting how poor and minority communities are stuck with the brunt of pollution and its dangerous health effects.
On Earth Day 2025, Cheryl Johnson gives Mayor Brandon Johnson a tour of her far South Side neighborhood in Chicago which faces disproportionate pollution impacts.
Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
Back on the South Side of Chicago, where the environmental justice movement took its first steps, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson surveyed the Altgeld Gardens Memorial Wall on Earth Day, calling it a potent reminder that the ultimate goal of any good policy is “to create equal environmental protection for everyone.”
Mayor Johnson introduced an ordinance named after Hazel Johnson to the Chicago City Council earlier this month that would require the city to investigate the pollution impacts of new industrial projects before approving them.
“Even with the attacks coming from the federal government, we’re going to do everything in Chicago to protect working people.” Johnson said. “It also is an effort to double down in our work to ensure that environmental justice prevails.”
After a year and a half of war, nearly 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the Israeli army — including at least 43 slain on the job.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has brought multiple complaints before the International Criminal Court (ICC) and continues to tirelessly support Gazan journalists, working to halt the extraordinary bloodshed and the media blackout imposed on the strip.
“Journalists are being targeted and then slandered after their deaths,” RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin said during a recent RSF demonstration in Paris in solidarity with Gazan journalists.
“I have never before seen a war in which, when a journalist is killed, you are told they are really a ‘terrorist’.”
The journalists gathered together with the main organisations defending French media workers and press freedom on April 16 in front of the steps of the Opéra-Bastille to condemn the news blackout and the fate of Palestinian journalists.
The slaughter of journalists is one of the largest media massacres this century being carried out as part of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
RSF said there was “every reason to believe that the Israeli army is seeking to establish a total silence about what is happening in Gaza”.
This was being done by preventing the international press from entering the territory freely and by targeting those who, on the ground, continue to bear witness despite the risks.
Mobilisation of journalists in Paris, France, in solidarity with their Gazan colleagues. Video: RSF
Last year, Palestinian journalists covering Gaza were named as laureates of the 2024 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, following the recommendation of an International Jury of media professionals.
The advocacy group Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has condemned the New Zealand government fpr failing to make a humanitarian submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings at The Hague this week into Israel blocking vital supplies entering Gaza.
The ICJ’s ongoing investigation into Israeli genocide in the besieged enclave is now considering the illegality of Israel cutting off all food, water, fuel, medicine and other essential aid entering Gaza since early March.
Forty three countries and organisations have been submitting this week — including the small Pacific country Vanuatu (pop. 328,000) — but New Zealand is not on the list for making a submission.
Only Israel’s main backer, United States, and Hungary have argued in support of Tel Aviv while other nations have been highly critical.
“If even small countries, such as Vanuatu, can commit their meagre resources to go to make a case to the ICJ, then surely our government can at the very least do the same,” said PSNA national co-chair Maher Nazzal.
He said in a statement that the New Zealand government had gone “completely silent” on Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
“A year ago, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister were making statements about how Israel must comply with international law,” Nazzal said
NZ ‘avoided blaming Israel’
“They carefully avoided blaming Israel for doing anything wrong, but they issued strong warnings, such as telling Israel that it should not attack the city of Rafah.
“Israel then bombed Rafah flat. The New Zealand response was to go completely silent.
Nazzal said Israeli ministers were quite open about driving Palestinians out of Gaza, so Israel could build Israeli settlements there.
PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal . . . New Zealand response on Gaza is to “go completely silent”. Image: Asia Pacific Report
“And they are just as open about using starvation as a weapon,” he added.
“Our government says and does nothing. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had nothing to say about Gaza when he met British Prime Minister Keir Stamer in London earlier in the month.
“Yet Israel is perpetuating the holocaust of the 21st century under the noses of both Prime Ministers.”
Nazzal said that it was “deeply disappointing” that a nation which had so proudly invoked its history of standing against apartheid and of championing nuclear disarmament, yet chose to “not even appear on the sidelines” of the ICJ’s legal considerations.
ICJ examines Israel’s obligations in Occupied Palestine. Video: Middle East Eye
“New Zealand cannot claim to stand for a rules-based international order while selectively avoiding the rules when it comes to Palestine,” Nazzal said.
“We want the New Zealand government to urgently explain to the public its absence from the ICJ hearings.
“We need it to commit to participating in all future international legal processes to uphold Palestinian rights, and fulfil its ICJ obligations to impose sanctions on Israel to force its withdrawal from the Palestinian Occupied Territory.”
An auxiliary policeman in central China’s Henan province is seeking justice for his “stolen life” after he found out an impersonator had appropriated his college entrance examination results 35 years ago to study at a medical school.
Xi Nan, 54, sat for the country’s notoriously gruelling university entrance exams, known as gaokao, in 1990. He had assumed he had fared poorly in it, when he didn’t receive an admission notice. He then applied to join the local public security system where he has served as an auxiliary police officer for 35 years.
But a chance review of personnel files by the municipal health commission of Mengzhou county-level city in 2022 had revealed that Xi’s identity had been stolen by a man who was then the vice president of a hospital in the city.
While the imposter was dismissed from his position and had his educational credentials, including his medical college qualifications, revoked by the health commission in 2022, the case has not yet been referred to the judicial department for handling, Xi told Chinese state media Modern Express last week.
Those involved in the identity theft have, so far, not been investigated according to law, which makes it hard for him to let go, said Xi on Modern Express. He is now pursuing legal action against the impersonator for foiling his dreams of going to medical college.
On April 22, Qinyang county officials announced its municipal government and the Municipal Party Committee had set up a joint team comprising the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Commission, Public Security Bureau, and Education Bureau, among other departments, to investigate the case.
Numerous cases of identity theft from students from rural and low-income backgrounds have come to light in recent years, where gaokao results – hailed in China as the great equalizer – have been used by those from more affluent, well-connected backgrounds to attend colleges and universities.
Students take an examination on an open-air playground at a high school in Yichuan, Shaanxi province April 11, 2015. (Reuters)
In 2018, an investigation conducted by Shandong province in eastern China found at least 242 cases of imposters who had robbed the identities of other students and used their gaokao exam results to get into colleges. Their degrees, which they received in 2002 through 2009, were revoked.
Similarly, in 2020, a woman in Shandong province sought justice after she discovered an imposter had appropriated her college entrance exam scores in 2004 to gain admission into a university. That same year, another woman in Shandong said her gaokao results had been used by an importer to get into a college in 1997.
This latest case has sparked intense debate among Chinese netizens about corruption and bribery in institutions, with many noting that students from more disadvantaged backgrounds suffer from the lack of transparency and fairness in the system.
Guo Bin, a graduate of Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said “lower class” people who are smart and hardworking are being deprived of the opportunities they deserve.
“This deprivation is not done by one person, but by people with power, such as local officials, police station chiefs, deputy county heads, and political and legal committee secretaries,” Guo, who now lives in the United States, told RFA.
Already residents in the agricultural province of Henan attribute the low undergraduate admission rate for its students, just 47%, to unfair policies that rig the system against those from poorer, rural backgrounds. In comparison, 79% of students in Shanghai and 77% in Beijing can expect the gaokao to secure them a college admission.
Last year, around 1.36 million high school students took the gaokao in Henan, the largest number from any province, city or region, in the hopes of altering their future with a college degree.
As a student from the countryside, Xi Nan said he too had believed the college entrance exam was his only way to achieve his dreams. He had thought it was fate that he had failed the exam, but had never expected that someone had robbed him of his opportunity.
“It was like a bolt from the blue, and it is hard to describe in words,” said Xi.
His imposter, Li Xi Nan, claimed his father and uncle had handled his college admission procedures at the time.
A 2022 review of cadre files by the Mengzhou Municipal Health Commission revealed discrepancies in the details provided by the impersonator, Li Xi Nan. They found that the name, date of birth, parents’ names, and study experience listed in Li Xi Nan’s high school records did not match those in his college registration form.
Several netizens questioned why this latest case had not been censored by authorities, and if it was instead being hyped up as the people involved in it had fallen out of favor with or angered those in power.
Others asked who should be held responsible.
“This reflects that China’s totalitarian system is not subject to supervision or checks and balances, especially when it comes to power-for-money deals and official-business transactions,” Chen Pokong, a current affairs commentator living in the U.S., told RFA.
“The education system colludes with officials to steal the opportunities from children of ordinary families and give them to officials’ children. This is very common in China,” Chen added.
Edited by Tenzin Pema and Mat Pennington.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Xia Xiao Hua for RFA Mandarin.
Thousands of senior hospital doctors and specialists walked off the job today for an unprecedented 24-hour strike in protest over stalled contract negotiations and thousands of other health workers protested across Aotearoa New Zealand against the coalition government’s cutbacks to the public health service Te Whatu Ora.
In spite of the disruptive bad weather across the country, protesters were out in force expressing their concerns over a national health service in crisis.
Among speakers criticising the government’s management of public health at a rally at the entrance to The Domain, near Auckland Hospital, many warned that the cutbacks were a prelude to “creeping privatisation”.
“Health cuts hurt services, the patients who rely on them, and the workers who deliver them,” said health worker Jason Brooke.
“Under this coalition government we’ve seen departments restructured, roles disestablished, change proposals enacted, and hiring freezes implemented.
“Make no mistake. This is austerity. This is managed decline.
“The coalition can talk all they like about spending more on healthcare, the reality for ‘those-of-us-on-the-ground’ is that we know that money is not being spent where it’s needed.”
Placards said “Fight back together for the workers”, “Proud to be union”, “We’re fighting back for workers rights”, and one poster declared: “Don’t bite the hand that wipes your bum — safe staffing now”.
Palestine supporters also carried a May Day message of solidarity from Palestinian Confederation of Trade Unions.
One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle.
—James Otis, Revolutionary War activist, on the Writs of Assistance, 1761
What the Founders rebelled against—armed government agents invading homes without cause—we are now being told to accept in the so-called name of law and order.
Imagine it: it’s the middle of the night. Your neighborhood is asleep. Suddenly, your front door is splintered by battering rams. Shadowy figures flood your home, screaming orders, pointing guns, threatening violence. You and your children are dragged out into the night—barefoot, in your underwear, in the rain.
Your home is torn apart, your valuables seized, and your sense of safety demolished.
But this isn’t a robbery by lawless criminals.
This is what terror policing looks like in Trump’s America: raids by night, flashbangs at dawn, mistaken identities, and shattered lives.
On April 24, 2025, in Oklahoma City, 20 heavily armed federal agents from ICE, the FBI, and DHS kicked in the door of a home where a woman and her three daughters—all American citizens—were sleeping. They were forced out of bed at gunpoint and made to wait in the rain while agents ransacked the house, confiscating their belongings.
It was the wrong house and the wrong family.
There were no apologies. No compensation. No accountability.
This is the new face of American policing, and it’s about to get so much worse thanks to President Trump’s latest executive order, which aims to eliminate federal oversight and empower local law enforcement to act with impunity.
Trump’s supporters have long praised his efforts to deregulate business and government under the slogan of “no handcuffs.” But when that logic is applied to law enforcement, the result isn’t freedom—it’s unchecked power.
What it really means is no restraints on police power, while the rest of us are left with fewer rights, less recourse, and a constitution increasingly ignored behind the barrel of a gun.
This isn’t just a political shift. It’s a constitutional unraveling that hands law enforcement a blank check: more weapons, more power, and fewer consequences.
The result is not safety; it’s state-sanctioned violence.
It’s a future in which no home is safe, no knock is required, and no officer is ever held accountable.
That future is already here.
We’ve entered an era in which federal agents can destroy your home, traumatize your family, and violate the Fourth Amendment with impunity. And the courts have said: that’s just how it works.
These rulings reflect a growing doctrine of unaccountability enshrined by the courts and now supercharged by the Trump administration.
Trump wants to give police even more immunity, ushering in a new era of police brutality, lawlessness, and the reckless deployment of lethal force on unarmed civilians.
This is how the rights of ordinary Americans get trampled under the boots of unchecked power.
There was a time in America when a person’s home was a sanctuary, protected by the Fourth Amendment from unlawful searches and seizures.
That promise is dead.
We have returned to the era of the King’s Writ—blanket search powers once used by British soldiers to invade colonial homes without cause. As James Otis warned in 1761, such writs “annihilate the privilege” of privacy and due process, allowing agents of the state to enter homes “when they please.”
Trump’s new executive order revives this tyranny in modern form: armored vehicles, night raids, no-knock warrants, federal immunity. It empowers police to act without restraint, and it rewards those who brutalize with impunity.
Even more alarming, the order sets the stage for future legislation that could effectively codify qualified immunity into federal law, making it nearly impossible for victims of police violence to sue.
This is how constitutional protections are dismantled—not in one dramatic blow, but in a thousand raids, a thousand broken doors, a thousand courts that look the other way.
Let’s not pretend we’re safe. Who will protect us from the police when the police have become the law unto themselves?
The war on the American people is no longer metaphorical.
Government agents can now kick in your door without warning, shoot your dog, point a gun at your children, and suffer no legal consequences—so long as they claim it was a “reasonable” mistake. They are judge, jury, and executioner.
With Trump’s new order, the architecture of a police state is no longer theoretical. It is being built in real time. It is being normalized.
Nowhere is this threat more visible than in the unholy alliance between ICE and militarized police forces, a convergence of two of the most dangerous arms of the modern security state.
Together, they’ve created a government apparatus that acts first and justifies itself later, if at all. And it runs counter to everything the Bill of Rights was designed to prevent: punishment without trial, surveillance without suspicion, and power without accountability.
When ICE agents armed with military-grade equipment conduct predawn raids alongside SWAT teams, with little to no accountability, the result is not public safety. It is state terror. And it’s exactly the kind of unchecked power the Constitution was written to prevent.
The Constitution is intended to serve as a shield, particularly the Fourth Amendment, which safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures. But in this new reality, the government has nullified that shield.
All of America is fast becoming a Constitution-free zone.
The Founders were aware of the dangers of unchecked power. That’s why they gave us the Fourth Amendment. But rights are only as strong as the public’s willingness to defend them.
If we allow the government to turn our homes into war zones—if we continue to reward police for lawless raids, ignore the courts for rubber-stamping abuse, and cheer political leaders who promise “no more handcuffs”—we will lose the last refuge of freedom: the right to be left alone.
A sign posted outside the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass., on April 23, 2024.Photo: Mel Musto/Bloomberg via Getty Images
When it comes to how it treats different groups on campus, Harvard wants the world to know that it is balanced. It cares about all groups equally. So naturally, on Tuesday, when it issued a lengthy report about antisemitism at Harvard, the university also issued a lengthy report on Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias at Harvard.
The reports reveal a profound imbalance at Harvard. One group, overwhelmingly, feels unwelcome and unsafe. You’d never know which group that is, however, from reading the New York Times.
Before I say anything else — and there is much to say — it’s important to note that how the New York Times reports this news will loom large in the public imagination and has the potential to do much damage.
Consider these two paragraphs, which get buried two-thirds of the way into the New York Times piece on the two Harvard reports:
The two task forces worked together to create a campuswide survey that received nearly 2,300 responses from faculty, staff and students. It found that 6 percent of Christian respondents reported feeling physically unsafe on campus, while 15 percent of Jewish respondents and 47 percent of Muslim respondents reported the same. (The university does not track the total population of these groups on campus.)
In addition to the 92 percent of Muslim respondents who worried about expressing their views, 51 percent of Christian respondents and 61 percent of Jewish respondents said they felt the same way.
Got that?
For all the articles, claims, reports, think pieces, op-eds, statements, and speeches from elected politicians and other worthies about rampant antisemitism on campus, these two massive reports discover that the one group on campus — whether we are talking about faculty, students, or staff — that most consistently feels nervous about expressing its views and most consistently feels physically unsafe on campus are … Muslims.
We are often asked to take the feelings and perceptions of Jewish students, faculty, and staff as proxies for the objective safety and security and sense of welcome that Jewish people do or do not feel on campuses across the country. Yet, according to their self-reported experiences in the new Harvard studies, Jewish students, faculty, and staff at Harvard consistently feel more welcome, safer, and freer to be Jews, including being Zionist Jews, than do Muslims at Harvard.
One-sided “Ism”
With that in mind, let’s look at how the Times led off its piece:
A Harvard task force released a scathing account of the university on Tuesday, finding that antisemitism had infiltrated coursework, social life, the hiring of some faculty members and the worldview of certain academic programs.
A separate report on anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias on campus, also released on Tuesday, found widespread discomfort and alienation among those students as well, with 92 percent of Muslim survey respondents saying they believed they would face an academic or professional penalty for expressing their political opinions.
Notice a few things.
The Times leads with the report on antisemitism, giving second billing to the report on anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian sentiment. Given the statistics the Times itself reports deep into the piece, it seems like an odd choice of order.
Also notice the terminology. On the one hand, we have “antisemitism.” Antisemitism is an “ism,” in the family of racism, so it instantly calls to mind the worst social evil. There’s nothing comparable when it comes to the triptych of “anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias.”
According to the syntax of the paragraphs, the “ism” of antisemitism is the actor and the agent. It can do grave harm, infiltrating and influencing the entire campus. It is an objective thing — what Émile Durkheim called a social fact. When it comes to anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias, the objective reality of the thing of racism dissolves into the feelings of students. It becomes a subjective perception or opinion of the alleged victims, who may or may not be victims at all.
Along the same lines, antisemitism conjoins a range of issues, including the multiple shades of criticism of Israel, into a single form: hatred of the Jews. On the other side, there’s no such unity of terms. Instead, we get an uncertain and floating array of different “biases”: against a religion, against an ethnicity, against a group that many of Israel’s supporters don’t even acknowledge are a people, much less a nation.
Scary Words for One Side
I bring this issue up not to contest the reality of antisemitism; that would be absurd. Nor am I making the by now familiar — though increasingly obscured — point that people conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, a central feature of the battles unfolding on campuses. (In six months to a year, I suspect almost everyone who is not a hardcore advocate of the Palestinian cause will no longer even notice the conflation and just assume that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.)
Instead, I want to point out that, when it comes to the Jews, society has a unifying term for a variety of distinct phenomena — ranging from criticism of the policies of a state, criticism of the way that state has organized and defined itself, to animus against a religion, an ethnicity, a people, and so on.
Yet we have no such term for what may be as unified an animus as antisemitism is supposed to be, even if that animus is directed at different groups — Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims — and expressed in different ways. “Orientalism” might be a good candidate, but after more than 40 years, it remains an academic term of art. The absence of such a term immediately gives the advantage in the conversation and the debate over Israel to one side.
In the opening paragraph on the report on antisemitism, the Times uses words like “scathing,” “infiltrated,” “social life,” and “worldview” to describe the state of the Jews on campus. Not only are the words alarming and scary, but they indict all levels of the institution, from its hiring practices to its curricular decisions to the everyday life of students, faculty, and staff.
When it comes to the report on Islamophobia and anti-Arabism, the issue is reduced to the “discomfort and alienation” of “students” only. That is drastically at odds with the fallout from campus debates for pro-Palestine scholarship and scholars. Entire Middle East studies departments are under review for purported pro-Palestine views; law review articles are being suppressed; staffers are being let go after airing pro-Palestine views; distinguished professors are being pushed out and retiring in the face of attacks.
Again, I want to remind us of this critical fact, buried in the mess of words that is this piece: The one group on campus, whether among the faculty, students, or staff, that most consistently feels nervous about expressing its views and most consistently feels physically unsafe on campus are … Muslims. Not Jews.
One would think that should give our larger conversation about antisemitism on campus some pause. Judging by this article, it won’t. Readers and writers and politicians and editors and campus leaders and cultural elites will just fly by the fact of the matter.
A sign posted outside the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass., on April 23, 2024.Photo: Mel Musto/Bloomberg via Getty Images
When it comes to how it treats different groups on campus, Harvard wants the world to know that it is balanced. It cares about all groups equally. So naturally, on Tuesday, when it issued a lengthy report about antisemitism at Harvard, the university also issued a lengthy report on Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias at Harvard.
The reports reveal a profound imbalance at Harvard. One group, overwhelmingly, feels unwelcome and unsafe. You’d never know which group that is, however, from reading the New York Times.
Before I say anything else — and there is much to say — it’s important to note that how the New York Times reports this news will loom large in the public imagination and has the potential to do much damage.
Consider these two paragraphs, which get buried two-thirds of the way into the New York Times piece on the two Harvard reports:
The two task forces worked together to create a campuswide survey that received nearly 2,300 responses from faculty, staff and students. It found that 6 percent of Christian respondents reported feeling physically unsafe on campus, while 15 percent of Jewish respondents and 47 percent of Muslim respondents reported the same. (The university does not track the total population of these groups on campus.)
In addition to the 92 percent of Muslim respondents who worried about expressing their views, 51 percent of Christian respondents and 61 percent of Jewish respondents said they felt the same way.
Got that?
For all the articles, claims, reports, think pieces, op-eds, statements, and speeches from elected politicians and other worthies about rampant antisemitism on campus, these two massive reports discover that the one group on campus — whether we are talking about faculty, students, or staff — that most consistently feels nervous about expressing its views and most consistently feels physically unsafe on campus are … Muslims.
We are often asked to take the feelings and perceptions of Jewish students, faculty, and staff as proxies for the objective safety and security and sense of welcome that Jewish people do or do not feel on campuses across the country. Yet, according to their self-reported experiences in the new Harvard studies, Jewish students, faculty, and staff at Harvard consistently feel more welcome, safer, and freer to be Jews, including being Zionist Jews, than do Muslims at Harvard.
One-sided “Ism”
With that in mind, let’s look at how the Times led off its piece:
A Harvard task force released a scathing account of the university on Tuesday, finding that antisemitism had infiltrated coursework, social life, the hiring of some faculty members and the worldview of certain academic programs.
A separate report on anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias on campus, also released on Tuesday, found widespread discomfort and alienation among those students as well, with 92 percent of Muslim survey respondents saying they believed they would face an academic or professional penalty for expressing their political opinions.
Notice a few things.
The Times leads with the report on antisemitism, giving second billing to the report on anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian sentiment. Given the statistics the Times itself reports deep into the piece, it seems like an odd choice of order.
Also notice the terminology. On the one hand, we have “antisemitism.” Antisemitism is an “ism,” in the family of racism, so it instantly calls to mind the worst social evil. There’s nothing comparable when it comes to the triptych of “anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias.”
According to the syntax of the paragraphs, the “ism” of antisemitism is the actor and the agent. It can do grave harm, infiltrating and influencing the entire campus. It is an objective thing — what Émile Durkheim called a social fact. When it comes to anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias, the objective reality of the thing of racism dissolves into the feelings of students. It becomes a subjective perception or opinion of the alleged victims, who may or may not be victims at all.
Along the same lines, antisemitism conjoins a range of issues, including the multiple shades of criticism of Israel, into a single form: hatred of the Jews. On the other side, there’s no such unity of terms. Instead, we get an uncertain and floating array of different “biases”: against a religion, against an ethnicity, against a group that many of Israel’s supporters don’t even acknowledge are a people, much less a nation.
Scary Words for One Side
I bring this issue up not to contest the reality of antisemitism; that would be absurd. Nor am I making the by now familiar — though increasingly obscured — point that people conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, a central feature of the battles unfolding on campuses. (In six months to a year, I suspect almost everyone who is not a hardcore advocate of the Palestinian cause will no longer even notice the conflation and just assume that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.)
Instead, I want to point out that, when it comes to the Jews, society has a unifying term for a variety of distinct phenomena — ranging from criticism of the policies of a state, criticism of the way that state has organized and defined itself, to animus against a religion, an ethnicity, a people, and so on.
Yet we have no such term for what may be as unified an animus as antisemitism is supposed to be, even if that animus is directed at different groups — Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims — and expressed in different ways. “Orientalism” might be a good candidate, but after more than 40 years, it remains an academic term of art. The absence of such a term immediately gives the advantage in the conversation and the debate over Israel to one side.
In the opening paragraph on the report on antisemitism, the Times uses words like “scathing,” “infiltrated,” “social life,” and “worldview” to describe the state of the Jews on campus. Not only are the words alarming and scary, but they indict all levels of the institution, from its hiring practices to its curricular decisions to the everyday life of students, faculty, and staff.
When it comes to the report on Islamophobia and anti-Arabism, the issue is reduced to the “discomfort and alienation” of “students” only. That is drastically at odds with the fallout from campus debates for pro-Palestine scholarship and scholars. Entire Middle East studies departments are under review for purported pro-Palestine views; law review articles are being suppressed; staffers are being let go after airing pro-Palestine views; distinguished professors are being pushed out and retiring in the face of attacks.
Again, I want to remind us of this critical fact, buried in the mess of words that is this piece: The one group on campus, whether among the faculty, students, or staff, that most consistently feels nervous about expressing its views and most consistently feels physically unsafe on campus are … Muslims. Not Jews.
One would think that should give our larger conversation about antisemitism on campus some pause. Judging by this article, it won’t. Readers and writers and politicians and editors and campus leaders and cultural elites will just fly by the fact of the matter.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student arrested by the Trump administration during his citizenship interview, was released on bail on Wednesday in a notable victory for students fighting the government’s use of immigration enforcement as a means to silence dissent.
After Mahdawi’s 14 days in immigration detention, Vermont District Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered the immediate release of the pro-Palestine activist, arguing in part that his continued detention would “likely have a chilling effect on protected speech.”
The judge also noted that Mahdawi, 34, is not a “flight risk” or a “danger to the community.”
Mahdawi’s legal fight is far from over. The U.S. permanent resident, who was born in the West Bank, will have to return to court to argue his habeas petition to block the government from detaining and deporting him.
But on Wednesday, Mahdawi struck a defiant tone. “I am saying it clear and loud. To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” said Mahdawi from the outside Vermont courthouse.
“What we are witnessing now and what we’re understanding is exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King has said before: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“What we are witnessing now and what we’re understanding is exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King has said before: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he said.
On April 14, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested Mahdawi at his scheduled naturalization interview. Mahdawi had previously been in hiding after ICE arrested his friend and fellow Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, fearing similar retaliation. His attorneys argued that the interview was effectively a “trap.” The government is now trying to deport him back to the West Bank, where he fears repression.
“It’s kind of a death sentence,” Mahdawi previously told The Intercept. “Because my people are being killed unjustly in an indiscriminate way.”
While his legal battle is ongoing, the decision marks a clear victory for the international students at the center of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian organizers. “We are hopeful that it will build momentum for the release of Mahmoud [Khalil], Rumeysa [Öztürk], Dr. Bader Khan Suri, and other students and scholars detained for their speech in support of Palestinian rights,” Noor Zafar, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project and a member of Khalil’s legal team, wrote to The Intercept.
On Tuesday, a judge issued a key ruling in favor of Khalil, a Syrian-born U.S. permanent resident. The court ordered that Khalil’s attorneys can argue in federal court that he was detained and targeted for expressing his political views.
Despite these victories, both Khalil and Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student who had her visa revoked and was kidnapped off the street by ICE agents for writing an op-ed critical of Israel, remain detained in Louisiana. On Monday, an appeals court paused an earlier court order transferring Öztürk to Vermont. Her lawyers argued that could mean she remains in the Louisiana detention facility, notably without access to proper medical care, for months.
And I certainly did not expect Peter Dutton — amid an election campaign, one with citizens heading to the polls on World Press Freedom Day — to come out swinging at the ABC and Guardian Australia, telling his followers to ignore “the hate media”.
I’m not saying Labor is likely to be the great saviour of the free press either.
The ALP has been slow to act on a range of important press freedom issues, including continuing to charge journalism students upwards of $50,000 for the privilege of learning at university how to be a decent watchdog for society.
Labor has increased, slightly, funding for the ABC, and has tried to continue with the Coalition’s plans to force the big tech platforms to pay for news. But that is not enough.
The World Press Freedom Index has been telling us for some time that Australia’s press is in a perilous state. Last year, Australia dropped to 39th out of 190 countries because of what Reporters Without Borders said was a “hyperconcentration of the media combined with growing pressure from the authorities”.
We should know on election day if we’ve fallen even further.
What is happening in America is having a profound impact on journalism (and by extension journalism education) in Australia.
‘Friendly’ influencers
We’ve seen both parties subtly start to sideline the mainstream media by going to “friendly” influencers and podcasters, and avoid the harder questions that come from journalists whose job it is to read and understand the policies being presented.
What Australia really needs — on top of stable and guaranteed funding for independent and reliable public interest journalism, including the ABC and SBS — is a Media Freedom Act.
My colleague Professor Peter Greste has spent years working on the details of such an act, one that would give media in Australia the protection lacking from not having a Bill of Rights safeguarding media and free speech. So far, neither side of government has signed up to publicly support it.
Australia also needs an accompanying Journalism Australia organisation, where ethical and trained journalists committed to the job of watchdog journalism can distinguish themselves from individuals on YouTube and TikTok who may be pushing their own agendas and who aren’t held to the same journalistic code of ethics and standards.
I’m not going to argue that all parts of the Australian news media are working impartially in the best interests of ordinary people. But the good journalists who are need help.
The continuing underfunding of our national broadcasters needs to be resolved. University fees for journalism degrees need to be cut, in recognition of the value of the profession to the fabric of Australian society. We need regulations to force news organisations to disclose when they are using AI to do the job of journalists and broadcasters without human oversight.
And we need more funding for critical news literacy education, not just for school kids but also for adults.
Critical need for public interest journalism
There has never been a more critical need to support public interest journalism. We have all watched in horror as Donald Trump has denied wire services access for minor issues, such as failing to comply with an ungazetted decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
And mere days ago, 60 Minutes chief Bill Owens resigned citing encroachments on his journalistic independence due to pressure from the president.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is so concerned about what’s occurring in America that it has issued a travel advisory for journalists travelling to the US, citing risks under Trump administration policies.
Those of us who cover politically sensitive issues that the US administration may view as critical or hostile may be stopped and questioned by border agents. That can extend to cardigan-wearing academics attending conferences.
While we don’t have the latest Australian figures from the annual Reuters survey, a new Pew Research Centre study shows a growing gap between how much Americans say they value press freedom and how free they think the press actually is. Two-thirds of Americans believe press freedom is critical. But only a third believe the media is truly free to do its job.
If the press isn’t free in the US (where it is guaranteed in their constitution), how are we in Australia expected to be able to keep the powerful honest?
Every single day, journalists put their lives on the line for journalism. It’s not always as dramatic as those who are covering the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, but those in the media in Australia still front up and do the job across a range of news organisations in some fairly poor conditions.
If you care about democracy at all this election, then please consider wisely who you vote for, and perhaps ask their views on supporting press freedom — which is your right to know.
Alexandra Wake is an associate professor in journalism at RMIT University. She came to the academy after a long career as a journalist and broadcaster. She has worked in Australia, Ireland, the Middle East and across the Asia Pacific. Her research, teaching and practice sits at the nexus of journalism practice, journalism education, equality, diversity and mental health.
New Zealand’s Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has upheld complaints about two 1News reports relating to violence around a football match in Amsterdam between local team Ajax and Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv.
The authority found an item on “antisemitic violence” surrounding the match, and another on heightened security in Paris the following week, breached the accuracy standard.
In a majority decision, the BSA upheld a complaint from John Minto on behalf of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) about reporting on TVNZ’s 6pm 1News bulletin on 9 November 2024.
This comprised a trailer reporting “antisemitic violence”, an introduction by the presenter with “disturbing” footage of violence against Israeli fans described by Amsterdam’s mayor as “an explosion of antisemitism”, and a pre-recorded BBC item.
TVNZ upheld one aspect of this complaint over mischaracterised footage in the trailer and introduction. This was originally reported as showing Israeli fans being attacked, but later corrected by Reuters and other outlets as showing Israeli fans chasing and attacking a Dutch man.
“The footage contributed to a materially misleading impression created by TVNZ’s framing of the events, with an emphasis on antisemitic violence against Israeli fans without acknowledging the role of the Maccabi fans in the violence – despite that being previously reported elsewhere,” the BSA found.
A majority of the authority found TVNZ did not make reasonable efforts to ensure accuracy.
It considered the background to the events was highly sensitive and more care should have been taken to not overstate or adopt, without question, the antisemitic angle.
The minority considered it was reasonable for TVNZ to rely on Reuters, the BBC and Dutch officials’ description of the violence as “antisemitic”, in a story developing overseas in which not all facts were clear at the time of broadcast.
The authority considered TVNZ should have issued a correction when it became aware of the error with the footage. It therefore found the action taken was insufficient, but considered publication of the BSA’s decision to be an adequate remedy in the circumstances.
Western media’s embarrassing failures on Amsterdam violence. Video: AJ’s The Listening Post
In a separate decision, the authority upheld two complaints about a brief 1News item on 15 November 2024 reporting on heightened security in Paris in the week following the violence.
The item reported: “Thousands of police are on the streets of Paris over fears of antisemitic attacks . . . That’s after 60 people were arrested in Amsterdam last week when supporters of a Tel Aviv football team were pursued and beaten by pro-Palestinian protesters.”
TVNZ upheld both complaints under the accuracy standard on the basis the item “lacked the nuance” of earlier reporting on Amsterdam, by omitting to mention the role of the Maccabi fans in the lead-up to the violence.
The authority agreed with this finding but determined TVNZ took insufficient action to remedy the breach.
“The broadcaster accepted more care should have been taken, but did not appear to have taken any action in response, or made any public acknowledgement of the inaccuracy,” the BSA said.
The authority found the framing and focus careless, noting “the role of both sides in the violence had been extensively reported” by the time of the 15 November broadcast. TVNZ had also aired the mischaracterised footage again, not realising Reuters had issued a correction several days earlier.
As TVNZ was not monitoring the Reuters fact-check site, the correction only came to light when the complaints were being investigated.
Other standards raised in the three complaints were not breached or did not apply, the authority found.
The BSA did not consider an order was warranted over the item on November 15 – deciding publication of the decision was sufficient to publicly acknowledge and correct the breach, censure the broadcaster and give guidance to TVNZ and other broadcasters.
Palestinians do not have the luxury to allow Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small, but important, step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed, writes Dr Ilan Pappé
ANALYSIS:By Ilan Pappé
Responses in the Western world to the genocide in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank raise a troubling question: why is the official West, and official Western Europe in particular, so indifferent to Palestinian suffering?
Why is the Democratic Party in the US complicit, directly and indirectly, in sustaining the daily inhumanity in Palestine — a complicity so visible that it probably was one reason they lost the election, as the Arab American and progressive vote in key states could, and justifiably so, not forgive the Biden administration for its part in the genocide in the Gaza Strip?
This is a pertinent question, given that we are dealing with a televised genocide that has now been renewed on the ground. It is different from previous periods in which Western indifference and complicity were displayed, either during the Nakba or the long years of occupation since 1967.
During the Nakba and up to 1967, it was not easy to get hold of information, and the oppression after 1967 was mostly incremental, and, as such, was ignored by the Western media and politics, which refused to acknowledge its cumulative effect on the Palestinians.
But these last 18 months are very different. Ignoring the genocide in the Gaza Strip and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank can only be described as intentional and not due to ignorance.
Both the Israelis’ actions and the discourse that accompanies them are too visible to be ignored, unless politicians, academics, and journalists choose to do so.
This kind of ignorance is, first and foremost, the result of successful Israeli lobbying that thrived on the fertile ground of an European guilt complex, racism and Islamophobia. In the case of the US, it is also the outcome of many years of an effective and ruthless lobbying machine that very few in academia, media, and, in particular, politics, dare to disobey.
The moral panic phenomenon
This phenomenon is known in recent scholarship as moral panic, very characteristic of the more conscientious sections of Western societies: intellectuals, journalists, and artists.
Moral panic is a situation in which a person is afraid of adhering to his or her own moral convictions because this would demand some courage that might have consequences. We are not always tested in situations that require courage, or at least integrity. When it does happen, it is in situations where morality is not an abstract idea, but a call for action.
This is why so many Germans were silent when Jews were sent to extermination camps, and this is why white Americans stood by when African Americans were lynched or, earlier on, enslaved and abused.
What is the price that leading Western journalists, veteran politicians, tenured professors, or chief executives of well-known companies would have to pay if they were to blame Israel for committing a genocide in the Gaza Strip?
It seems they are worried about two possible outcomes. The first is being condemned as antisemites or Holocaust deniers. Secondly, they fear an honest response would trigger a discussion that would include the complicity of their country, or Europe, or the West in general, in enabling the genocide and all the criminal policies against the Palestinians that preceded it.
This moral panic leads to some astonishing phenomena. In general, it transforms educated, highly articulate and knowledgeable people into total imbeciles when they talk about Palestine.
It disallows the more perceptive and thoughtful members of the security services from examining Israeli demands to include all Palestinian resistance on a terrorist list, and it dehumanises Palestinian victims in the mainstream media.
On ‘Moral Panic’ and the Courage to Speak – Professor Ilan Pappé examines how fear of professional consequences silences Western voices in the face of genocide in Gaza — and what this reveals about power, complicity, and moral responsibility.
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) April 18, 2025
Lack of compassion
The lack of compassion and basic solidarity with the victims of genocide was exposed by the double standards shown by mainstream media in the West, and, in particular, by the more established newspapers in the US, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
When the editor of The Palestine Chronicle, Dr Ramzy Baroud, lost 56 members of his family — killed by the Israeli genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip — not one of his colleagues in American journalism bothered to talk to him or show any interest in hearing about this atrocity.
On the other hand, a fabricated Israeli allegation of a connection between the Chronicle and a family, in whose block of flats hostages were held, triggered huge interest by these outlets.
This imbalance in humanity and solidarity is just one example of the distortions that accompanies moral panic. I have little doubt that the actions against Palestinian or pro-Palestinian students in the US, or against known activists in Britain and France, as well as the arrest of the editor of the Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, in Switzerland, are all manifestations of this distorted moral behaviour.
A similar case unfolded just recently in Australia. Mary Kostakidis, a famous Australian journalist and former prime-time weeknight SBS World News Australia presenter, has been taken to the federal court over her — one should say quite tame — reporting on the situation in the Gaza Strip.
The very fact that the court has not dismissed this allegation upon its arrival shows you how deeply rooted moral panic is in the Global North.
But there is another side to it. Thankfully, there is a much larger group of people who are not afraid of taking the risks involved in clearly stating their support for the Palestinians, and who do show this solidarity while knowing it may lead to suspension, deportation, or even jail time. They are not easily found among the mainstream academia, media, or politics, but they are the authentic voice of their societies in many parts of the Western world.
The Palestinians do not have the luxury of allowing Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small but important step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed — firstly, to stop the destruction of Palestine and its people, and second, to create the conditions for a decolonised and liberated Palestine in the future.
Dr Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. This article is republished from The Palestine Chronicle, 19 April 2025.
Attorney General Pam Bondi distributed plans inside the Justice Department last week to scrap rules protecting journalists and their sources from surveillance and subpoenas over unflattering coverage and leaks. Bondi’s memo leaked to the press immediately.
“This Justice Department will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people,” reads the memo, citing recent leaks to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Reuters as examples of the kind of reporting that would no longer be tolerated. “I have concluded that it is necessary to rescind [former attorney general] Merrick Garland’s policies precluding the Department of Justice from seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks.”
Eliminating these rules is the latest signal of a looming threat to reporters, who could face subpoenas and search warrants for daring to publish information that President Donald Trump would prefer kept secret. Journalists who resist legal demands to disclose their sources could face fines or even jail time.
Long before Trump was reelected on promises to punish disfavored reporters and outlets, free press advocates warned that the rescinded Justice Department rules were an inadequate shield. The Biden DOJ last revised the rules in 2022 in light of revelations about the first Trump administration’s spying on journalists to smoke out leakers. Along the way, even as it offered its own leaks to friendly outlets, the first Trump DOJ routinely ignored prior versions of the rules, which are not enforceable in court.
Last year, Senate Democrats had a clear opportunity to make basic protections for journalists a matter of binding federal law, rather than mere policy that could be undone with a vendetta-laced memo. Following years of debate over the proper scope of a federal shield law for reporters, the PRESS Act unanimously passed the House of Representatives and had a bipartisan roster of Senate sponsors, including Republican Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.
Then Democratic leaders blew it.
For months, they let the PRESS Act sit in the Senate Judiciary committee without a hearing, even though that committee’s chair, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., was the bill’s co-sponsor.
After the election, Trump demanded that Republicans kill the bill. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., swore the PRESS Act was a top priority for his last weeks as Senate majority leader. But neither he nor Durbin put any apparent effort into moving the bill forward, either on its own or as part of must-pass legislation like the defense budget. They offered statements of reassurance and support for the press, but no action.
In mid-December, with time running out, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the PRESS Act’s lead sponsor, tried to advance it himself, bringing the bill to the Senate floor on a motion to enact it by unanimous consent. A single Republican, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, blocked it with a grandstanding speech about the evils of leaks and “America-hating and fame-hungry journalists,” as he’d done with prior versions of the PRESS Act.
“Everyone predicted this would happen in a second Trump administration, yet politicians in a position to prevent it prioritized empty rhetoric over putting up a meaningful fight.”
Despite the predictable opposition, Senate Democrats had no strategic plan to counter it — other than a speech by Schumer — and the PRESS Act died at the end of the session. Durbin’s office blamed the PRESS Act’s failure on Cotton’s obstruction but did not answer why Durbin allowed the bill to stall in his committee. Durbin recently announced that he is retiring after more than four decades in Congress. Schumer’s office did not respond to The Intercept’s questions.
“Every Democrat who put the PRESS Act on the back burner when they had the opportunity to pass a bipartisan bill codifying journalist-source confidentiality should be ashamed,” said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, in a statement after Bondi’s memo came out.
“Everyone predicted this would happen in a second Trump administration, yet politicians in a position to prevent it prioritized empty rhetoric over putting up a meaningful fight.”
Barely three months in, the second Trump DOJ has already launched multiple investigations into reporters’ sources for embarrassing stories.
In March, Bondi’s deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, announced a criminal inquiry over the leak of classified information to the Times about Tren de Aragua that contradicted many of the White House’s basic claims about the Venezuelan gang.
Last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that she had referred two leaks of classified information to DOJ for criminal investigation, including a “recent illegal leak to the Washington Post.” Earlier that day, the Post reported new details about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal app. Gabbard said a third leak referral was “on its way.”
Multiple agencies are forcing federal employees under suspicion of leaking to take polygraph tests, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Hegseth, who is obsessed with finding out who’s leaking details of his own terrible security practices, has also threatened to use lie detectors.
What procedural protections will remain for journalists as Bondi and her deputies prosecute these investigations is still unknown. Her memo was clear that the Biden-era rules were rescinded but light on details as to what might take their place. The memo referred to recent updates in the DOJ’s manual and federal regulations, but updated language has not yet been published and the DOJ did not respond to The Intercept’s request for copies.
Where the prior rules barred subpoenas against reporters except under narrow circumstances, Bondi’s memo emphasized the lack of clear legal protection for journalists against such subpoenas under Supreme Court precedent.
Trump “can and almost certainly will abuse the legal system to investigate and prosecute his critics and the journalists they talk to,” Stern said in his statement.
Such abuses can take many forms, including using subpoenas to obtain a reporter’s phone and email records, which the first Trump DOJ did for at least eight reporters at three national outlets: the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times. The Obama administration tried to force former New York Times reporter James Risen, who later joined The Intercept, to testify about his sources, but eventually dropped the effort.
According to Bondi’s memo, a subpoena for a reporter’s testimony, notes, or correspondence should be “an extraordinary measure to be deployed as a last resort,” narrowly drawn, and subject to “enhanced approval and advance-notice procedures,” which Bondi did not spell out. Any arrests of reporters would be subject to her personal go-ahead, as would requests to interrogate journalists.
“Trump is laying the groundwork to lock up reporters who don’t rat out their sources who expose crimes by his administration,” Wyden, the PRESS Act’s lead Senate sponsor, wrote on Bluesky after the Bondi memo came out. “I have a bipartisan bill that would make these protections ironclad. It passed the House unanimously (twice) and it was never taken up in the Senate.”
New documents have further exposed the UK government’s collusion with the Israeli embassy in the arrest and imprisonment of the ‘Filton 18‘ Palestine Action activists.
Filton 18: government collusion with the Israeli embassy
The UK government shared contact details of counter-terrorism police and prosecutors with the Israeli embassy during an investigation into protests at an arms factory, official documents suggest, raising concerns about foreign interference.
The documents suggest political interference in the ongoing case and policing operations. Throughout, state authorities have repeatedly used counter-terror powers to repress activists taking direct action against the Israeli weapons industry in Britain.
Specifically, a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOI) disclosures show the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) directly facilitating Israeli interference in ongoing cases against activists. In the weeks following the first arrests of Filton 18 activists, the AGO shared contact details for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), and the ‘SO15’ Counter-Terrorism Command overseeing the investigation, with the Israeli embassy.
In August 2024, the first ten activists of the ‘Filton 18’ were imprisoned after a raid on an Elbit Systems weapons plant in Filton, Bristol. There, they had destroyed Israeli quadcopter drones. Police arrested, imprisoned, and detained them under ‘Counter Terror’ powers. During their pre-charge and pre-trial detention, the courts used this to deny their basic rights. Four UN special rapporteurs have condemned the use of counter-terrorism powers in this case.
Attorney General’s Office: emails to deputy Israeli ambassador to the UK
In the weeks after their arrest, correspondence demonstrates the extent of communications the AGO held with the Israeli embassy. Although the contents is almost entirely redacted, the subject heading of one email shows the AGO’s head of international law and national security Nicola Smith sharing information “to Israelis re CPS/SO15 contact details” on 9 September 2024.
The AGO sent the email to Daniela Ekstein, the deputy Israeli ambassador to the UK. It appears to be a follow-up to a meeting that Smith, Ekstein, the embassy’s counsellor of political affairs Yosef Zilberman, and AGO director Douglas Wilson held on 28 August.
Previously, Palestine Action obtained documents showing that Wilson, who the AGO copied into the email, had discussed ongoing cases of Palestine Action activists with the Israeli embassy. He had shared details relating to SO15, the Counter Terrorism Command. In an unprecedented move, the CPS, as the body prosecuting the case, has submitted to the court that the Filton18’s alleged offences have a ‘terrorism-connection’.
Logically, after the AGO facilitated contact, subsequent correspondence would have presumably taken place between the embassy, CPS, and SO15. Just over two months after the email, terrorism police raided an additional ten activists’ homes. They and arrested them under those same powers. Following this, they charged eight of the activists and remanded them to prison.
Filton 18 charges must be dropped amid political interference
Any improper influence by the Israeli embassy would result in a violation of the Crown Prosecution Service’s General Principle 2.1 that:
The independence of the prosecutor is central to the criminal justice system of a democratic society. Prosecutors are independent from persons or agencies that are not part of the prosecution decision-making process. CPS prosecutors are also independent from the police and other investigators. Prosecutors must be free to carry out their professional duties without political interference and must not be affected by improper or undue pressure or influence from any source.
With the possibility of diplomatic involvement in the Crown’s case, Palestine Action has called for the CPS to drop the charges. This evidence is the latest in a series ofdocumentsdetailing apparent interference in Palestine Action cases. These have shown deep collusion between the CPS, Home Office, AGO, senior police officials, and representatives of Elbit Systems and the Israeli embassy.
The correspondence raises questions of embassy interference in all manner of policing operations relating to Palestine in Britain. This is particularly pertinent in the context of the state liberally deploying counter-terror powers against activists, journalists, and academics supportive of Palestinian liberation.
A Palestine Action spokesperson stated:
The Israeli Embassy has attempted to interfere in our cases for years. For the first time, our activists are detained for direct action under counter terror powers, the CPS pursuing ‘terrorism-connected’ charges. As this unprecedented escalation of state repression happens, the Israeli Embassy has secured direct communication with the CPS and the ‘counter-terror’ police responsible. Political interference is forbidden in our legal system, and in the Filton 18 case its resulted in the most draconian laws being wielded against them. In light of the information uncovered, continuing the prosecution against them is a serious miscarriage of justice. They must be released and all compromised prosecutions of activists and journalists must be stopped.
Clare Rogers, mother of Filton 18 Political Prisoner Zoe Rogers, said:
My 21-year-old daughter Zoe has been in prison for 8 months without trial and counting. She took action against Elbit because she couldn’t sit on her hands and do nothing while her government committed war crimes by supplying arms to Israel. It’s sickening to learn that the brutal repression she & the Filton18 are experiencing may have been planned in secret conversations between our government and the Israeli embassy. In a just nation, the Filton18 case would be thrown out as soon as this political interference came to light.
French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls, who is visiting New Caledonia this week for the third time in two months, has once again called on all parties to live up to their responsibilities in order to make a new political agreement possible.
Failing that, he said a potential civil war was looming.
“We’ll take our responsibilities, on our part, and we will put on the table a project that touches New Caledonia’s society, economic recovery, including nickel, and the future of the younger generation,” he told a panel of French journalists on Sunday.
He said that he hoped a revised version on a draft document — resulting from his previous visits in the French Pacific territory and new proposals from the French government — there existed a “difficult path” to possibly reconcile radically opposing views expressed so far from the pro-independence parties in New Caledonia and those who want the territory to remain part of France.
The target remains an agreement that would accommodate both “the right and aspiration to self-determination” and “the link with France”.
“If there is no agreement, then economic and political uncertainty can lead to a new disaster, to confrontation and to civil war,” he told reporters.
“That is why I have appealed several times to all political stakeholders, those for and against independence,” he warned.
“Everyone must take a step towards each other. An agreement is indispensable.”
Valls said this week he hoped everyone would “enter a real negotiations phase”.
He said one of the ways to achieve this will be to find “innovative” solutions and “a new way of looking at the future”.
This also included relevant amendments to the French Constitution.
Local parties will not sign any agreement ‘at all costs’ Local parties are not so enthusiastic.
In fact, each camp remains on their guard, in an atmosphere of defiance.
And on both sides, they agree at least on one thing — they will not sign any agreement “at all costs”.
Just like has been the case since talks between Valls and local parties began earlier this year, the two main opposing camps remain adamant on their respective pre-conditions and sometimes demands.
The pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), largely dominated by the Union Calédonienne, held a convention at the weekend to decide on whether they would attend this week’s new round of talks with Valls.
They eventually resolved that they would attend, but have not yet decided to call this “negotiations”, only “discussions”.
They said another decision would be made this Thursday, May 1, after they had examined Valls’s new proposals and documents which the French minister is expected to circulate as soon as he hosts the first meeting tomorrow.
FLNKS reaffirms ‘Kanaky Agreement’ demand
During their weekend convention, the FLNKS reaffirmed their demands for a “Kanaky Agreement” to be signed not later than 24 September 2025, to be followed by a five-year transition period.
The official line was to “maintain the trajectory” to full sovereignty, including in terms of schedule.
On the pro-France side, the main pillar of their stance is the fact that three self-determination referendums have been held between 2018 and 2021, even though the third and last consultation was largely boycotted by the pro-independence camp.
All three referendums resulted in votes rejecting full sovereignty.
One of their most outspoken leaders, Les Loyalistes party and Southern Province President Sonia Backès, told a public rally last week that they had refused another date for yet another referendum.
“A new referendum would mean civil war. And we don’t want to fix the date for civil war. So we don’t want to fix the date for a new referendum,” she said.
However, Backès said they “still want to believe in an agreement”.
“We’re part of all discussions on seeking solutions in a constructive and creative spirit.”
Granting more provincial powers
One of their other proposals was to grant more powers to each of the three provinces of New Caledonia, including on tax collection matters.
“We don’t want differences along ethnic lines. We want the provinces to have more powers so that each of them is responsible for their respective society models.”
Under a draft text leaked last week, any new referendum could only be called by at least three-fifths of the Congress and would no longer pose a “binary” question on yes or no to independence, but would consider endorsing a “project” for New Caledonia’s future society.
Another prominent pro-France leader, MP Nicolas Metzdorf, repeated this weekend he and his supporters “remain mobilised to defend New Caledonia within France”.
“We will not budge,” Metzdorf said.
Despite Valls’s warnings, another scenario could be that New Caledonia’s political stakeholders find it more appealing or convenient to agree on no agreement at all, especially as New Caledonia’s crucial provincial elections are in the pipeline and scheduled for no later than November 30.
Concerns about security But during the same interview, Valls repeated that he remained concerned that the situation on the ground remained “serious”.
“We are walking on a tightrope above embers”.
He said top of his concerns were New Caledonia’s economic and financial situation, the tense atmosphere, a resurgence in “racism, hatred” as well as a fast-deteriorating public health services situation or the rise in poverty caused by an increasing number of jobless.
“So yes, all these risks are there, and that is why it is everyone’s responsibility to find an agreement. And I will stay as long as needed and I will put all my energy so that an agreement takes place.
“Not for me, for them.”
Valls also recalled that since the riots broke out in May 2024, almost one year ago, French security and law enforcement agencies are still maintaining about 20 squads of French gendarmes (1500 personnel) in the territory.
This is on top of the normal deployment of 550 gendarmes and 680 police officers.
Valls said this was necessary because “any time, it could flare up again”.
Outgoing French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc said in an interview recently that in case of a “new May 13” situation, the pre-positioned forces could ensure law enforcement “for three or four days . . . until reinforcements arrive”.
If fresh violence erupts again, reinforcements could be sent again from mainland France and bring the total number to up to 6000 law enforcement personnel, a number similar to the level deployed in 2024 in the weeks following the riots that killed 14 and caused some 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4.2 billion) in damage.
Carefully chosen words Valls said earlier in April the main pillars of future negotiations were articulated around the themes of:
“democracy and the rule of law”;
a “decolonisation process”;
the right to self-determination;
a “fundamental law” that would seal New Caledonia’s future status;
the powers of New Caledonia’s three provinces; and a future New Caledonia citizenship with the associated definition of who meets the requirements to vote at local elections.
Valls has already travelled to Nouméa twice this year — in February and March.
Since his last visit that ended on April 1, discussions have been maintained in conference mode between local political stakeholders and Valls, and his cabinet, as well as French Prime Minister François Bayrou’s special advisor on New Caledonia, constitutionalist Eric Thiers.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
I was one of these people who thought the British justice system was brilliant, that you could only be found guilty if you’ve committed a crime, and if you’re telling the truth and are innocent then they’ll protect you- how wrong I was!
– Brian Buckle
Brian Buckle: sentenced 33 years for crimes he did not commit
Brian Buckle, 52, from Pembrokeshire, says his life was good. Then one day, out of the blue, he was accused of rape and sexual assault of a child, dating back to the mid 1990s. He spent two years on bail and then, in 2017, a jury at Swansea Crown Court found him guilty of all 16 counts, by a majority of 11 to 1. Buckle was given a 33-year sentence, and told he would serve a minimum of 15. But, he was innocent.
Buckle said:
My life’s really bad now. Getting up in the morning is the worst for me. I dream about prison all the time. I just can’t get it out of my head. But as the day goes on, I get better and better, then I have to start another day. It’s still really hard work. I do struggle with life, and I’m not the same anymore.
Buckle was locked up for more than five years before his name was eventually cleared. He says life behind bars was traumatic, especially in the sex offender’s prison in which he spent most of his sentence. Buckle expressed that:
It turned me into a horrible person. I just hated everybody, and I was so angry. 80% of the time I was in my cell, because I couldn’t deal with people, and didn’t want to speak to them. I just sat there thinking Where’s all this come from? For five and a half years I cried more or less every time I spoke to my wife. I couldn’t see an end to it.
Devastated Buckle’s life financially and emotionally
Luckily for Brian Buckle, his family never doubted his innocence, and devoted all their time, energy, and money into clearing his name. Although there were no legal grounds to challenge the conviction immediately after his trial, the determination and resilience of Elaine, Buckle’s wife of 33 years, changed this.
Elaine found Stephen Vullo KC to represent her husband, and with the help of a private investigator and new forensic evidence, Buckle said that:
the truth kept bubbling to the surface.
By the time of his appeal, in September 2022, there was witness evidence that the real abuser – who had set Buckle up to take the blame for what he had done – was a violent, intimidating man. He was also a sexual offender and paedophile.
Buckle’s conviction was eventually overturned, and a retrial ordered, which took place in May 2023. This time, the jury returned unanimous not guilty verdicts, in less than an hour. Buckle was a free man.
But five and a half years in prison, for a crime he did not commit, has devastated Buckle, financially and emotionally. His well-paid job meant he was ineligible for legal aid, so it was left to his family to find the money to fight his conviction. They spent all their savings and inheritance, took out loans, and Buckle’s father-in-law even sold his house to raise money for the cause, which cost them a total of £500,000.
Since leaving prison, Buckle has also been diagnosed with PTSD, as a direct result of his false accusation and imprisonment and has been unable to work since his release.
Government failing victims of a miscarriage of justice
Brian Buckle said how:
The company where I previously worked has been really good to me and said I could go back there, but my mental health is a problem. There’s no way I could go back to work. I’m all over the place, and I’ve had no support really, since I’ve been out, from the government or anything.
Buckle has sought compensation for his wrongful conviction, but his application has been refused by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).
Until 2014, an individual who was wrongfully convicted, had gone to prison, then had their conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal, and been acquitted on all charges at a retrial, would be paid compensation. But changes to the law now mean victims of a miscarriage of justice must not only be cleared of their charges but also prove their innocence ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ before they can receive a payout. This test is impossible to meet for most people and contradicts the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’.
In reality, because there’s no oral hearing, and it’s just done on paper and dealt with by someone at the Ministry of Justice, unless you get DNA evidence saying someone else did the crime, they just work on the assumption that you didn’t prove your innocence, even though the jury found you not guilty, or the Court of Appeal quashed your conviction. Watching Brian’s case, I knew the jury would find him not guilty. We didn’t win the trial by a little bit, but by a long, long way. Brian has, in my opinion, more than met the test, in reality, but on a piece of paper sent to the MOJ it’s a different story.
According to Appeal, a charity dedicated to challenging wrongful convictions and promoting a fairer justice system, the MOJ refused 93% – more than 550 – of the compensation applications from wrongfully convicted people, in the eight years between 2016 and 2024.
Vullo said that:
The change, in 2014, was obviously done to save money, although the highest payout in any one year for the old compensation scheme was about £20 million which, for the government, is loose change at the back of a sofa. What the government did not want to happen was for somebody who was clearly guilty, and had got off on a technicality, to then be able to get compensation, and therefore embarrass the government. But I’ve been doing this for 30 years and never seen anyone get off in the Court of Appeal on a technicality.
A petition to demand justice and compensation for Buckle and others
Brian Buckle and Mr Vullo, are asking us to support their petition, demanding justice and compensation for Buckle, which will not only give him a chance to rebuild his life but, once it reaches 100,000 signatures, will also be debated in the House of Commons.
They are also calling for the new law regarding compensation to be reversed back to how it used to be, to not only try and help Buckle, but also others who may find themselves in a similar situation. Vullo, claims the previous compensation scheme was fair and just, and still a matter of discretion. Compensation was not automatic but, although the MOJ could still refuse it, about 86% of people received payment. This law is still used in most of Europe, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Vullo argued therefore argued that:
Yes, there’s going to potentially be the odd person in that group that may be guilty, that has got an appeal quashed and the jury found them not guilty. But our system is set up to protect the innocent. That protection is now gone. To make sure the government doesn’t embarrass itself by giving money to someone who’s guilty, it’s not giving money to anyone.
But if the government is not going to reverse this law, then it must be for the jury to make the decision as to whether someone has proven themselves to be innocent.
Buckle explained that:
When you’re found not guilty, this doesn’t mean the jury finds you innocent, but only that they can’t be sure you’re guilty. As the law stands now, you can’t prove you are innocent. That’s why the challenge we gave the government when we went up to Westminster was to get my jury back and ask them if they found me just not guilty or came to the conclusion that I was innocent. I know my jury found me innocent, because all the evidence proves it wasn’t me, including the complainant saying it wasn’t even me. Otherwise, there’s no way of proving beyond reasonable doubt.
Echoing this, Vullo said that:
Juries need to make this decision, because if there is this impossibly high test, that you have to prove you are innocent beyond reasonable doubt, it is inarguable that the best body to decide whether you are actually innocent has to be the jury. They’ve heard everything to do with the case and seen the demeanour of the people who gave evidence. If they’re going to keep this unfair system, to give it any chance of fairness, you have to make the jury decide, not someone from the MOJ dealing with it on paper. The person that made Brian’s decision hadn’t understood the case and made two or three really serious practical errors in their determination. And yet, there’s no appeal. Their decision is final.
‘Justice must go beyond acquittal’
The Law Commission recently published its consultation on the way criminal appeals are handled in England and Wales, including proposals to make it easier to overturn wrongful convictions. According to its initial findings, the new law regarding compensation is unfair, so the Law Commission has proposed lowering the standard, so although claimants would still need to prove their innocence, the evidence level would be much lower and wouldn’t require it to be ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.
This would be an improvement: an acknowledgement that the situation is unfair. However, according to Vullo, who will be having further discussions with the Law Commission in the coming weeks, it does not yet go far enough.
Last month, Brian Buckle’s local MP, Ben Lake, also gave his support to the campaign. He led a debate in Parliament on ensuring compensation for victims of miscarriages of justice, and described Buckle’s situation as “a moral and legal failure”.
Lake told the Canary that:
It cannot be fair for our justice system to deny support to those who are forced to endure the trauma of wrongful conviction and imprisonment, and who often suffer irreparable harm to their mental health and reputation.
Most people will understandably – and quite reasonably – assume that victims of miscarriages of justice are compensated, particularly if they have spent time in custody before being pardoned or having their convictions quashed. Unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule for victims of miscarriages of justice across England and Wales. That is why the UK Government must act to ensure that those wrongfully convicted are compensated. Justice must go beyond acquittal – the innocent must be compensated so that they can rebuild their lives.
Buckle is now expecting to attend a meeting with the justice minister in the next few weeks.
Brian Buckle should be entitled to compensation for his wrongful conviction and the five years he spent in prison. Help his petition reach 100,000 signatures, so this issue can be debated in parliament, and the law can be changed. Sign here.
Organisations working in children’s rights and youth justice have joined together to condemn the Labour Party government’s decision to introduce PAVA spray – an incapacitant similar to pepper spray – for use against children.
PAVA spray: Labour Party permitting pepper spray use against children
On Thursday 24 April, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood authorised it for use against children across three Young Offender Institutions (YOIs).
In response, the Alliance for Youth Justice (AYJ) has led a joint statement to call this out. It included signees from 37 organisations and individuals working to represent the views of, or deliver services to children. Together, they set out the significant risks this measure poses to children’s safety and wellbeing.
The government’s decision represents a serious escalation in the use of force that is permitted against children. Far from keeping children and staff safe, normalising the use of violence in this way risks making conditions even worse for those living and working in YOIs. The move is also inconsistent with the government’s ‘Child First’ approach. This commits to seeing children as children first and foremost, and to prioritising their best interests.
When adult male prisons first piloted PAVA spray, the Ministry of Justice’s evaluation showed that violence continued to rise. The use of PAVA undermined trust between prisoners and staff, further affecting safety.
Despite repeated warnings that the introduction of PAVA spray was highly likely to mirror the existing disproportionate use of force against those from racially minoritised backgrounds, the previous government nonetheless proceeded to roll it out across the adult male estate.
Through the Ministry of Justice’s own monitoring and evaluation, we now know that these predictions were correct.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has also highlighted that disabled people are likely to be disproportionately impacted by the use of PAVA spray due to pre-existing conditions and vulnerabilities.
‘Locking institutions into cycles of violence’
Despite this evidence from the adult estate, the current government now risks repeating the same mistakes in the children’s estate.
This decision reflects a broader failure to address the longstanding challenges within the children’s custodial estate. Staffing shortfalls, deteriorating conditions, and inadequate support structures have contributed to an unsafe environment for both children and staff. Rather than arming staff with chemical sprays, the government must prioritise safer, trauma-informed environments that meet children’s needs.
Chief Executive of the Alliance for Youth Justice Jess Mullen said:
Years of failure and a lack of direction has led the children’s secure estate to a deeply concerning point.
Young Offender Institutions (YOIs), which the previous government had committed to closing, are the largest and most prison-like establishments that can hold children in custody, with the lowest staff-to-child ratios. They suffer from staffing shortages, and staff who are in place are not always sufficiently trauma-informed or child-centred. Children spend most of their time locked in cells with limited access to education and support.
In such a context, it is no wonder that tensions run high. But the solution to volatile establishments is not to propagate further harm, and the introduction of PAVA spray will only further lock institutions into cycles of violence.
Instead, children need more support, education, and interventions from well-trained, child-centred staff able to de-escalate tension and meet complex needs. The government must outline a clear plan for achieving this, including closing YOIs and the last Secure Training Centre, increasing capacity in more appropriate provision, and ensuring custody is only ever used for children as a last resort. Every day that goes by without doing so places the wellbeing of these children at risk.
The International Court of Justice began hearings today into Israel’s obligations towards the presence and activities of the UN, other international organisations and third states in occupied Palestine.
The case was prompted by Israeli bills outlawing the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) in October 2024, an event that sparked global outrage and calls for unseating Israel from the UN due to accusations that it violated the founding UN charter, particularly the privileges and immunities enjoyed by UN agencies.
The ICJ hearings coincide with Israel’s continued ban on humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip since March 2 — more than 50 days — and the intensification of military attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians since the collapse of ceasefire on March 18.
It will be the third advisory opinion case since 2004 to be heard before the World Court in relation to Israel’s violations of international law.
About 40 states, including Palestine, are presenting evidence before the court between April 28 and May 2. Israel’s main ally, the United States, is due to speak at the Peace Palace on Wednesday, April 30.
The hearings follow the resolution of the UN General Assembly on 29 December 2024 (A/RES/79/232), mainly lobbied for by Norway, requesting the court to give an advisory opinion on the following questions:
“What are the obligations of Israel, as an occupying Power and as a member of the United Nations, in relation to the presence and activities of the United Nations, including its agencies and bodies, other international organisations and third States, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including to ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population as well as of basic services and humanitarian and development assistance, for the benefit of the Palestinian civilian population, and in support of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination?”
Middle East Eye’s live coverage of the ICJ hearings.
The UNGA’s request invited the court to rule on the above question in relation to a number of legal sources, including: the UN Charter, international humanitarian law, international human rights law, privileges and immunities of international organisations and states under international law, relevant resolutions of the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, as well as the previous advisory opinions of the court:
the opinion of 9 July 2004 which declared Israel’s separation wall in occupied Palestine illegal; and
the 19 July 2024 advisory opinion, which confirmed the illegality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and Israel’s obligation as an occupying power to uphold the rights of Palestinians.
‘Nowhere and no one is safe’ Swedish lawyer and diplomat Elinor Hammarskjold, who has served as the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and its Legal Counsel since 2025, opened the proceedings.
“Under international law, states are prohibited from acquiring territory by force,” Hammarskjold said in her opening comments.
She explained that Israel was not entitled to sovereignty over the occupied territories, and that the Knesset rules and judgments against UNRWA “constitute an extension of sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories”.
“Measures taken on basis of these laws, and other applicable Israeli law in occupied territories is inconsistent with Israel’s obligations under international law,” she concluded.
She further outlined Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law as an occupying power and obligations under the UN Charter, emphasising that it has a duty to ensure the safety of both the Palestinian people and UN personnel.
Palestine’s ambassador to the UN, Ammar Hijaz accused Israel of using humanitarian aid as “weapons of war”.
He told the court that Israel’s efforts to starve, kill and displace Palestinians and its targeting of the organisations trying to save their lives “are aimed at the forcible transfer and destruction of Palestinian people in the immediate term”.
‘Children will suffer irreparable damage’
In the long term, he said, “they will also ensure that our children will suffer irreparable damage and harm, placing an entire generation at great risk”.
Irish lawyer, Blinne Ni Ghralaigh, who is representing Palestine, outlined Israel’s obligations as a UN member, including its obligations to cooperate with the UN and to protect its staff and property, as well as to ensure the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, and to abide by UN resolutions and court orders.
“Israel’s violations of these obligations are egregious and ongoing,” Ghralaigh told the court.
The hearings are ongoing until Friday.
Sondos Asem reports for the Middle East Eye. Republished under Creative Commons.
I have drafted a Preamble I believe our Founding Fathers should have adopted as the opening statement of the Australian Constitution in 1901. We should vote on it (or a better version) at a Referendum to be held on the same day as Federal Election 2028 so that future Parliaments are required to uphold the …
“The day-to-day chaos of the American political news cycle can make it hard to fully take stock of the seismic shifts that are happening,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF North America.
“But when you step back and look at the whole picture, the pattern of blows to press freedom is quite clear.
“RSF refuses to accept this massive attack on press freedom as the new normal. We will continue to call out these assaults against the press and use every means at our disposal to fight back against them.
“We urge every American who values press freedom to do the same.”
Here is the Trump administration’s war on the press by the numbers: *
427 million – Weekly worldwide audience of the USAGM news outlets silenced by Trump
In an effort to eliminate the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) by cutting grants to outlets funded by the federal agency and placing their reporters on leave, the government has left millions around the world without vital sources of reliable information.
This leaves room for authoritarian regimes, like Russia and China, to spread their propaganda unchecked.
However, RSF recently secured an interim injunction against the administration’s dismantling of the USAGM-funded broadcaster Voice of America,which also reinstates funding to the outlets Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN).
8,000+ – US government web pages taken down
Webpages from more than a dozen government sites were removed almost immediately after President Trump took office, leaving journalists and the public without critical information on health, crime, and more.
3,500+ – Journalists and media workers at risk of losing their jobs thanks to Trump’s shutdown of the USAGM
Journalists from VOA, the MBN, RFA, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are at risk of losing their jobs as the Trump administration works to shut down the USAGM. Furthermore, at least 84 USAGM journalists based in the US on work visas now face deportation to countries where they risk prosecution and severe harassment.
At least 15 journalists from RFA and eight from VOA originate from repressive states and are at serious risk of being arrested and potentially imprisoned if deported.
180 – Public radio stations at risk of closing if public media funding is eliminated
The Trump administration reportedly plans to ask Congress to cut $1.1 billion in allocated funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). These cuts will hit rural communities and stations in smaller media markets the hardest, where federal funding is most impactful.
74 –Days the Associated Press (AP) has been banned from the White House
On February 11, the White House began barring the Associated Press (AP) news agency from its events because of the news agency’s continued use of the term “Gulf of Mexico,” which President Trump prefers to call the “Gulf of America” — a blatant example of retaliation against the media.
Despite a federal judge ruling the administration must reinstate the news agency’s access on April 9, the White House has continued to limit AP’s access.
64 – Disparaging comments made by Trump against the media on Truth Social since inauguration
In addition to regular, personal attacks against the media in press conferences and public speeches, Trump takes to his social media site nearly every day to insult, threaten, or intimidate journalists and media workers who report about him or his administration critically.
13 –Individuals pardoned by President Trump after being convicted or charged for attacking journalists on January 6, 2021
Trump pardoned over a dozen individuals charged with or convicted of violent crimes against journalists at the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection.
6 –Federal Communications Commission (FCC) inquiries into media companies
Brendan Carr, co-author of the Project 2025 playbook and chair of the FCC, has wasted no time launching politically motivated investigations, explicit threats against media organisations, and implicit threats against their parent companies. These include inquiries into CBS, ABC parent company Disney, NBC parent company Comcast, public broadcasters NPR and PBS, and California television station KCBS.
4 – Trump’s personal lawsuits against media organisations
While Trump settled a lawsuit with ABC’s parent company Disney, he continues to sue CBS, The Des Moines Register, Gannett, and the Pulitzer Center over coverage he deemed biased.
$1.60 – Average annual amount each American pays for public media
Donald Trump has threatened to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting, framing the move as a cost-cutting measure.
However, public media only costs each American about $1.60 each year, representing a tremendous bargain as it gives Americans access to a wealth of local, national, and lifesaving emergency programming.
The United States was 55th out of 180 nations listed by the RSF World Press Freedom Index in 2024. The new index rankings will be released this week.
* Figures as of the date of publication, 24 April 2025. Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Activists for Palestine paid homage to Pope Francis in Aotearoa New Zealand today for his humility, care for marginalised in the world, and his courageous solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza at a street theatre rally just hours before his funeral in Rome.
He was remembered and thanked for his daily calls of concern to Gaza and his final public blessing last Sunday — the day before he died — calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian enclave.
Several speakers thanked the late Pope for his humanitarian concerns and spiritual leadership at the vigil in Auckland’s “Palestinian Corner” in Te Komititanga Square, beside the Britomart transport hub, as other rallies were held across New Zealand over the weekend.
“Last November, Pope Francis said that what is happening in Gaza was not a war. It was cruelty,” said Catholic deacon Chris Sullivan. “Because Israel is always claiming it is a war. But it isn’t a war, it’s just cruelty.”
During the last 18 months of his life, Pope Francis had a daily ritual — he called Gaza’s only Catholic church to see how people were coping with the “cruel” onslaught.
Deacon Sullivan said the people of the church in Gaza “have been attacked by Israeli rockets, Israeli shells, and Israeli snipers, and a number of people have been killed as a result of that.”
In his Easter message before dying, Pope Francis said: “I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace.”
‘We lost the best man’
Also speaking at today’s rally, Dr Abdallah Gouda said: “We lost the best man. He was talking about Palestine and he was working to stop this genocide.
“Pope Francis, as a Palestinian, as a Palestinians from Gaza, and as a Moslem, thank you Pope Francis. Thank you. And we will never, never forget you.
“As we will always talk about you, the man who called every night to talk to the Palestinians, and he asked, ‘what do you eat’. And he talked to leaders around the world to stop this genocide.”
Pope Francis called Gaza’s Catholic parish every night. Video: AJ+
In Rome, the coffin of Pope Francis made its way through the city from the Vatican after the funeral to reach Santa Maria Maggiore basilica for a private burial ceremony.
It arrived at the basilica after an imposing funeral ceremony at St Peter’s Square.
The Vatican said that more than 250,000 people attended the open-air service that was held under clear blue skies
Dozens of foreign dignitaries, including heads of state, were also in attendance.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re eulogised Pope Francis as a pontiff who knew how to communicate to the “least among us” and urged people to build bridges and not walls.
In Auckland at the “guerrilla theatre” event, several highly publicised examples of recent human rights violations and war crimes in Gaza were recreated in several skits with “actors” taking part from the crowd.
Palestinian Dr Faiez Idais role played the kidnapping of courageous Kamal Adwan Hospital medical director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya by the Israeli military last December and his detention and torture in captivity since.
Palestinian Dr Faiez Idais (hooded) during his role played for courageous Kamal Adwan Hospital medical director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya held prisoner by Israeli forces. Image: APR
Khalil was seized by ICE agents from his university apartment without a warrant and abducted to a remote immigration prison in Louisiana but the courts have blocked his deportation in a high profile case.
He is one of at least 300 students who have been captured ICE agents for criticising Israel and its genocide.
A two-year-old child holds a “peace for all children” in Gaza placard at today’s rally. Image: APR
The skits included a condemnation of the US corporation Starbucks, the world’s leading coffee roaster and retailer, with mock blood being kicked over fake bodies on the plaza.
The backlash against the brand has caused heavy losses and 100 outlets in Malaysia have been forced to shut down.
Singers and musicians Hone Fowler, who was also MC, Brenda Liddiard and Mark Laurent — including their dedicated “Make Peace Today” inspired by Jesus’ “Blessed are the peacemakers” — also lifted the spirits of the crowd.
Protesters call for an end to the genocide in Palestine, both in Gaza and the West Bank. Image: APR
When the US Embassy knocked on my door in late 2024, I was both pleased and more than a little suspicious.
I’d worked with them before, but the organisation where I did that work, Tohatoha, had closed its doors. My new project, Dark Times Academy, was specifically an attempt to pull myself out of the grant cycle, to explore ways of funding the work of counter-disinformation education without dependence on unreliable governments and philanthropic funders more concerned with their own objectives than the work I believed then — and still believe — is crucial to the future of human freedom.
But despite my efforts to turn them away, they kept knocking, and Dark Times Academy certainly needed the money. I’m warning you all now: There is a sense in which everything I have to say about counter-disinformation comes down to conversations about how to fund the work.
There is nothing I would like more than to talk about literally anything other than funding this work. I don’t love money, but I do like eating, having a home, and being able to give my kids cash.
I have also repeatedly found myself in roles where other people look to me for their livelihoods; a responsibility that I carry heavily and with more than a little clumsiness and reluctance.
But if we are to talk about President Donald Trump and disinformation, we have to talk about money. As it is said, the love of money is the root of all evil. And the lack of it is the manifestation of that evil.
Trump and his attack on all of us — on truth, on peace, on human freedom and dignity — is, at its core, an attack that uses money as a weapon. It is an attack rooted in greed and in avarice.
In his world, money is power
But in that greed lies his weakness. In his world, money is power. He and those who serve him and his fascist agenda cannot see beyond the world that money built. Their power comes in the form of control over that world and the people forced to live in it.
Of course, money is just paper. It is digital bits in a database sitting on a server in a data centre relying on electricity and water taken from our earth. The ephemeral nature of their money speaks volumes about their lack of strength and their vulnerability to more powerful forces.
They know this. Trump and all men like him know their weaknesses — and that’s why they use their money to gather power and control. When you have more money than you and your whānau can spend in several generations, you suddenly have a different kind of relationship to money.
It’s one where money itself — and the structures that allow money to be used for control of people and the material world — becomes your biggest vulnerability. If your power and identity are built entirely on the power of money, your commitment to preserving the power of money in the world becomes an all-consuming drive.
Capitalism rests on many “logics” — commodification, individualism, eternal growth, the alienation of labour. Marx and others have tried this ground well already.
In a sense, we are past the time when more analysis is useful to us. Rather, we have reached a point where action is becoming a practical necessity. After all, Trump isn’t going to stop with the media or with counter-disinformation organisations. He is ultimately coming for us all.
What form that action must take is a complicated matter. But, first we must think about money and about how money works, because only through lessening the power of money can we hope to lessen the power of those who wield it as their primary weapon.
Beliefs about poor people
If you have been so unfortunate to be subject to engagement with anti-poverty programmes during the neoliberal era either as a client or a worker, you will know that one of the motivations used for denying direct cash aid to those in need of money is a belief on the part of government and policy experts that poor people will use their money in unwise ways, be it drugs or alcohol, or status purchases like sneakers or manicures.
But over and over again, there’s another concern raised: cash benefits will be spent on others in the community, but outside of those targeted with the cash aid.
You see this less now that ideas like a universal basic income (UBI) and direct cash transfers have taken hold of the policy and donor classes, but it is one of those rightwing concerns that turned out to be empirically accurate.
Poor people are more generous with their money and all of their other resources as well. The stereotype of the stingy Scrooge is one based on a pretty solid mountain of evidence.
The poor turn out to understand far better than the rich how to defeat the power that money gives those who hoard it — and that is community. The logic of money and capital can most effectively be defeated through the creation and strengthening of our community ties.
Donald Trump and those who follow him revel in creating a world of atomised individuals focused on themselves; the kind of world where, rather than relying on each other, people depend on the market and the dollar to meet their material needs — dollars. of course, being the source of control and power for their class.
Our ability to fund our work, feed our families, and keep a roof over our heads has not always been subject to the whims of capitalists and those with money to pay us. Around the world, the grand multicentury project known as colonialism has impoverished us all and created our dependency.
Colonial projects and ‘enclosures’
I cannot speak as a direct victim of the colonial project. Those are not my stories to tell. There are so many of you in this room who can speak to that with far more eloquence and direct experience than I. But the colonial project wasn’t only an overseas project for my ancestors.
Enclosure is one of the core colonial logics. Enclosure takes resources (land in particular) that were held in common and managed collectively using traditional customs and hands them over to private control to be used for private rather than communal benefit. This process, repeated over and over around the globe, created the world we live in today — the world built on money.
As we lose control over our access to what we need to live as the land that holds our communities together, that binds us to one another, is co-opted or stolen from us, we lose our power of self-determination. Self-governance, freedom, liberty — these are what colonisation and enclosure take from us when they steal our livelihoods.
As part of my work, I keep a close eye on the approaches to counter-disinformation that those whose relationship to power is smoother than my own take. Also, in this the year of our Lord 2025, it is mandatory to devote at least some portion of each public talk to AI.
I am also profoundly sorry to have to report that as far as I can tell, the only work on counter-disinformation still getting funding is work that claims to be able to use AI to detect and counter disinformation. It will not surprise you that I am extremely dubious about these claims.
AI has been created through what has been called “data colonialism”, in that it relies on stolen data, just as traditional forms of colonialism rely on stolen land.
Risks and dangers of AI
AI itself — and I am speaking here specifically of generative AI — is being used as a tool of oppression. Other forms of AI have their own risks and dangers, but in this context, generative AI is quite simply a tool of power consolidation, of hollowing out of human skill and care, and of profanity, in the sense of being the opposite of sacred.
Words, art, conversation, companionship — these are fiercely human things. For a machine to mimic these things is to transgress against all of our communities — all the more so when the machine is being wielded by people who speak openly of genocide and white supremacy.
However, just as capitalism can be fought through community, colonialism can and has been fought through our own commitment to living our lives in freedom. It is fought by refusing their demands and denying their power, whether through the traditional tools of street protest and nonviolent resistance, or through simply walking away from the structures of violence and control that they have implemented.
In the current moment, that particularly includes the technological tools that are being used to destroy our communities and create the data being used to enact their oppression. Each of us is free to deny them access to our lives, our hopes, and dreams.
This version of colonisation has a unique weakness, in that the cyber dystopia they have created can be unplugged and turned off. And yet, we can still retain the parts of it that serve us well by building our own technological infrastructure and helping people use that instead of the kind owned and controlled by oligarchs.
By living our lives with the freedom we all possess as human beings, we can deny these systems the symbolic power they rely on to continue.
That said, this has limitations. This process of theft that underlies both traditional colonialism and contemporary data colonialism, rather than that of land or data, destroys our material base of support — ie. places to grow food, the education of our children, control over our intellectual property.
Power consolidated upwards
The outcome is to create ever more dependence on systems outside of our control that serve to consolidate power upwards and create classes of disposable people through the logic of dehumanisation.
Disposable people have been a feature across many human societies. We see it in slaves, in cultures that use banishment and exile, and in places where imprisonment is used to enforce laws.
Right now we see it in the United States being directed at scale towards those from Central and Latin America and around the world. The men being sent to the El Salvadorian gulag, the toddlers sent to immigration court without a lawyer, the federal workers tossed from their jobs — these are disposable people to Trump.
The logic of colonialism relies on the process of dehumanisation; of denying the moral relevance of people’s identity and position within their communities and families. When they take a father from his family, they are dehumanising him and his family. They are denying the moral relevance of his role as a father and of his children and wife.
When they require a child to appear alone before an immigration judge, they are dehumanising her by denying her the right to be recognised as a child with moral claims on the adults around her. When they say they want to transition federal workers from unproductive government jobs to the private sector, they are denying those workers their life’s work and identity as labourers whose work supports the common good.
There was a time when I would point out that we all know where this leads, but we are there now. It has led there, although given the US incarceration rate for Black men, it isn’t unreasonable to argue that in fact for some people, the US has always been there. Fascism is not an aberration, it is a continuation. But the quickening is here. The expansion of dehumanisation and hate have escalated under Trump.
Dehumanisaton always starts with words and language. And Trump is genuinely — and terribly — gifted with language. His speeches are compelling, glittering, and persuasive to his audiences. With his words and gestures, he creates an alternate reality. When Trump says, “They’re eating the cats! They’re eating the dogs!”, he is using language to dehumanise Haitian immigrants.
An alternate reality for migrants
When he calls immigrants “aliens” he is creating an alternate reality where migrants are no longer human, no longer part of our communities, but rather outside of them, not fully human.
When he tells lies and spews bullshit into our shared information system, those lies are virtually always aimed at creating a permission structure to deny some group of people their full humanity. Outrageous lie after outrageous lie told over and over again crumbles society in ways that we have seen over and over again throughout history.
In Europe, the claims that women were consorting with the devil led to the witch trials and the burning of thousands of women across central and northern Europe. In Myanmar, claims that Rohinga Muslims were commiting rape, led to mass slaughter.
Just as we fight the logics of capitalism with community and colonialism with a fierce commitment to our freedom, the power to resist dehumanisation is also ours. Through empathy and care — which is simply the material manifestation of empathy — we can defeat attempts to dehumanise.
Empathy and care are inherent to all functioning societies — and they are tools we all have available to us. By refusing to be drawn into their hateful premises, by putting morality and compassion first, we can draw attention to the ridiculousness of their ideas and help support those targeted.
Disinformation is the tool used to dehumanise. It always has been. During the COVID-19 pandemic when disinformation as a concept gained popularity over the rather older concept of propaganda, there was a real moment where there was a drive to focus on misinformation, or people who were genuinely wrong about usually public health facts. This is a way to talk about misinformation that elides the truth about it.
There is an empirical reality underlying the tsunami of COVID disinformation and it is that the information was spread intentionally by bad actors with the goal of destroying the social bonds that hold us all together. State actors, including the United States under the first Trump administration, spread lies about COVID intentionally for their own benefit and at the cost of thousands if not millions of lives.
Lies and disinformation at scale
This tactic was not new then. Those seeking political power or to destroy communities for their own financial gain have always used lies and disinformation. But what is different this time, what has created unique risks, is the scale.
Networked disinformation — the power to spread bullshit and lies across the globe within seconds and within a context where traditional media and sources of both moral and factual authority have been systematically weakened over decades of neoliberal attack — has created a situation where disinformation has more power and those who wield it can do so with precision.
But just as we have the means to fight capitalism, colonialism, and dehumanisation, so too do we — you and I — have the tools to fight disinformation: truth, and accurate and timely reporting from trustworthy sources of information shared with the communities impacted in their own language and from their own people.
If words and images are the chosen tools of dehumanisation and disinformation, then we are lucky because they are fighting with swords that we forged and that we know how to wield. You, the media, are the front lines right now. Trump will take all of our money and all of our resources, but our work must continue.
Times like this call for fearlessness and courage. But more than that, they call on us to use all of the tools in our toolboxes — community, self-determination, care, and truth. Fighting disinformation isn’t something we can do in a vacuum. It isn’t something that we can depersonalise and mechanise. It requires us to work together to build a very human movement.
I can’t deny that Trump’s attacks have exhausted me and left me depressed. I’m a librarian by training. I love sharing stories with people, not telling them myself. I love building communities of learning and of sharing, not taking to the streets in protest.
More than anything else, I just want a nice cup of tea and a novel. But we are here in what I’ve seen others call “a coyote moment”. Like Wile E. Coyote, we are over the cliff with our legs spinning in the air.
We can use this time to focus on what really matters and figure out how we will keep going and keep working. We can look at the blue sky above us and revel in what beauty and joy we can.
Building community, exercising our self-determination, caring for each other, and telling the truth fearlessly and as though our very lives depend on it will leave us all the stronger and ready to fight Trump and his tidal wave of disinformation.
Mandy Henk, co-founder of Dark Times Academy, has been teaching and learning on the margins of the academy for her whole career. As an academic librarian, she has worked closely with academics, students, and university administrations for decades. She taught her own courses, led her own research work, and fought for a vision of the liberal arts that supports learning and teaching as the things that actually matter. This article was originally presented as an invited address at the annual general meeting of the Asia Pacific Media Network on 24 April 2025.
