The Trump administration rescinded Biden-era guidance that explicitly required emergency rooms to provide abortions to pregnant patients if such care would save their lives. Medical experts expect the policy shift to sow chaos in hospitals and endanger pregnant people throughout the U.S.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s move to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Biden administration issued guidance related to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, a federal law that requires health care providers that take Medicare to provide “stabilizing” medical treatment to all patients experiencing medical emergencies.
In a 2022 letter to health care providers, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Beccerra wrote that if a doctor believes a pregnant patient at an emergency room “is experiencing an emergency medical condition as defined by EMTALA, and that abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve that condition, the physician must provide that treatment.” The memo also clarified that EMTALA preempts state law in cases where abortion is illegal with exceptions narrower than those in EMTALA.
In a press release Tuesday, the Trump administration rescinded the older guidance,stating that the previous rules “do not reflect the policy of this Administration.”
The release noted that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “will work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions.”
“In places where doctors and hospitals are being threatened with both criminal and civil penalties for providing abortion care, it will cause a delay.”
Abortion providers and experts in reproductive health argue that the vagueness of the new guidance will create uncertainty in emergency rooms, denying pregnant people equal access to care and putting lives at risk in states that have restricted or banned abortion.
“The Trump Administration would rather women die in emergency rooms than receive life-saving abortions,” said Nancy Northup, President and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “In pulling back guidance, this administration is feeding the fear and confusion that already exists at hospitals in every state where abortion is banned. Hospitals need more guidance right now, not less.”
The Trump administration told The Intercept that the idea that the new guidance puts lives at risk is “false.”
“CMS will continue to enforce EMTALA, which protects all individuals who present to a hospital emergency department seeking examination or treatment, including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy,” Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon wrote in a statement to The Intercept.
A ProPublica report found that at least five women have died as a result of abortion bans since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Most reproductive health care experts believe the number is far higher than what’s been reported.
“We already know that women have died because physicians didn’t act because of fear surrounding what they or couldn’t do under certain state bans,” said Dana Sussman, senior vice president at Pregnancy Justice, a non-profit reproductive justice organization. “We know that women have died because they have been scared to get care, because they self managed abortions. We know that more women will die, and we and there are probably women who have died, and we will never know their names.”
Sussman said that the new guidance will only make it harder for hospitals to feel comfortable providing lifesaving care to pregnant people.
“I think inevitably it will create many more challenges when it comes to what hospitals are advising their physicians, what physicians feel comfortable doing in different states and and I do think that it’s putting more lives,” she said.
Last year, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case brought by the Biden Administration challenging Idaho’s abortion ban on the grounds that it violated EMTALA by prohibiting abortion care in too many circumstances. The court ultimately punted — refusing to add clarity — but allowing emergency abortions to go forward in the state.
The Trump Department of Justice declined to continue prosecuting the Idaho case, an early signal that it planned to rescind the Biden guidance.
Jamilla Perritt, an OB-GYN and abortion provider in Washington who is also president of the nonprofit Physicians for Reproductive Health, said it’s important to clarify that EMTALA still stands, even if the administration has tried to muddy the waters.
“This does not change [providers] legal obligation to provide life saving care for people when they report to emergency rooms,” Perritt said. “The other thing is that it does not change their moral and ethical obligation to do so.”
The confusion caused by this announcement, however, will carry risks, argued Perritt.
“In places where doctors and hospitals are being threatened with both criminal and civil penalties for providing abortion care,” she said. “It will cause a delay. It will give them pause.”
It’s striking, Perrit said, to see such policy come from an administration that has been masquerading as supportive of families.
“The federal government gets to decide who lives and who dies during pregnancy complications, during emergency events,” she said. “The hypocrisy is really glaring, because this is the exact same government that’s claiming to support children and families that want people to have more babies, but instead it is dismantling the system that protects the lives of pregnant people and their families.”
The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled in favor of a controversial Utah railway project that critics say erodes the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a bedrock of environmental law for the past half century.
The case centered on a proposed 88-mile railway that would connect the oil fields of northeastern Utah to a national rail network that runs along the Colorado River and on to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
The waxy crude oil is currently transported by truck over narrow mountain passes. Project proponents said shipping the fossil fuel by rail — on as many as 10 trains daily — would be quicker and revitalize the local economy by quadrupling the Uinta Basin’s oil production.
In 2020, the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition applied to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board for approval of the railroad’s construction. Under NEPA, the board was required to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, to evaluate possible harms from the project and consider how they could be mitigated.
Environmental groups and Eagle County, Colorado, opposed the railway project. They cited the potential for derailments and spills into the Colorado River, the drinking water supply for 40 million people. Opponents were also concerned about increased air pollution in the Uinta Basin, where oil fields emit high levels of methane, a potent planet-warming greenhouse gas, as well as volatile organic compounds, some of which have been linked to increased risks of cancer.
Gulf Coast communities would also be harmed by air pollution when the crude oil was refined, opponents argued. The increased oil production and associated emissions would also drive climate change and its disastrous global effects: hurricanes, floods, droughts, and extreme heat.
The Center for Biological Diversity, among the groups that had sued the Surface Transportation Board, said in a prepared statement that the ruling “relieves federal agencies of the obligation to review all foreseeable environmental harms and grants them more leeway to decide what potential environmental harms to analyze, despite what communities may think is important. It tells agencies that they can ignore certain foreseeable impacts just because they are too remote in time or space.”
In 2021, the board issued a 3,600-page EIS, which identified numerous “significant and adverse impacts that could occur as a result of the railroad line’s construction and operation — including disruptions to local wetlands, land use, and recreation,” according to court documents.
The board nonetheless approved the railroad construction, concluding that the project’s transportation and economic benefits outweighed its environmental impacts.
Opponents, including EarthJustice and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. They argued the board’s environmental review excluded impacts of the project on people living near the oil fields, as well as Gulf Coast residents.
The appellate court agreed. It ruled that the board’s EIS impermissibly limited the analysis of upstream and downstream projects.
“The appeals court had ruled that the federal agency that approved the railway failed in its obligations to consider the regional consequences of massively increased oil extraction on the Uinta Basin, the increased air pollution for the communities in Texas and Louisiana where the oil would be refined, and the global climate consequences,” said Dr. Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling will allow all these consequences to unfold without meaningful restraint,” Moench said. “This court has made a name for itself making rulings that mock science and common sense and fail to protect the common good. This unfortunate ruling fits that same pattern.”
NEPA has been federal law since 1970. It doesn’t prescribe specific environmental decisions, but it does establish a process to ensure federal agencies follow proper procedure in permitting. It can be a laborious, time-consuming process, but requires an agency to be thorough in assessing potential environmental impacts while giving the public adequate opportunity to comment.
NEPA doesn’t necessarily halt projects, but it can force project developers to pursue alternatives that protect environmentally sensitive areas and communities.
In his first term, President Donald Trump rolled back some aspects of NEPA, including weakening requirements to consider cumulative impacts of a project and the effects of climate change. Shortly after taking office this year, Trump signaled he plans to further streamline NEPA to expedite its approval process, especially for energy projects.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by President Trump in his first term, wrote the opinion on behalf of four other members of the court. “NEPA has transformed from a modest procedural requirement into a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents (who may not always be entirely motivated by concern for the environment) to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure and construction projects,” Kavanaugh wrote.
Courts should “afford substantial deference and should not micromanage those agency choices so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness,” Kavanaugh wrote. “NEPA does not allow courts, under the guise of judicial review of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects based on the environmental effects of other projects separate from the project at hand.”
Thursday’s 8-0 decision excluded Justice Neil Gorsuch, who recused himself because of his close connection to billionaire Philip F. Anschutz, who would economically benefit from the project.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor differed with Kavanaugh on his rationale for the ruling, but agreed on the outcome. She wrote that NEPA didn’t require the board to consider the effects of oil drilling and refining because those activities were outside its authority. “Even a foreseeable environmental effect is outside of NEPA’s scope if the agency could not lawfully decide to modify or reject the proposed action on account of it.”
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Sotomayor in the concurrence.
The coalition was represented by Jay Johnson of Venable LLP, who said the ruling “restores much-needed balance to the federal environmental review process.”
Keith Heaton, director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, the project’s public partner, said the decision affirms the years of work and collaboration that have gone into making the Uinta Basin Railway a reality. “It represents a turning point for rural Utah — bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options and opening new doors for investment and economic stability.”
Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said despite the court’s ruling, “we’ll keep fighting to make sure this railway is never built.”
The Intercept filed a public records lawsuit on Monday for documents about a financial surveillance program run by the Arizona attorney general’s office for more than a decade. For the past year, the attorney general’s office has denied multiple requests for records about its relationship with the Transaction Record Analysis Center, or TRAC, a nonprofit organization that runs a massive database containing details about millions of wire transfers sent through Western Union and other companies.
The database, which is fueled by administrative subpoenas issued by the Arizona attorney general’s office, offers an intimate glimpse into the financial lives of millions of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. Over the years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has played an outsized role in TRAC, not just as a top user of the wire transfer data but also as another data pipeline, via subpoenas that alarmed civil liberties watchdogs.
“The public has the right to know about mass government surveillance of its citizens,” said Heather E. Murray, associate director of Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic, which is representing The Intercept in the lawsuit, in an emailed statement. “Because TRAC is indisputably performing a core governmental function, the records that The Intercept seeks must be released by the AGO and TRAC to fulfill their transparency obligations under the Arizona Public Records Law.”
Ben Rundall, a partner at Zwillinger Wulkan in Phoenix, is also representing The Intercept in the case, which was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.
“This completely defies the spirit and purpose of the [Arizona public records law].”
In response to The Intercept’s records request last year, TRAC claimed it is not subject to public records disclosure requirements because of its nonprofit structure.
But TRAC was established by the attorney general’s office in 2014, and records show close coordination over the years between agency officials and TRAC staff — who sometimes used official government email addresses. For years, one TRAC staff member even helped draft the administrative subpoenas, which she sent to the attorney general’s office for official signature before they were served on Western Union and the other money transfer businesses.
The attorney general’s office previously released hundreds of documents about TRAC’s structure and operations to the American Civil Liberties Union. But under Attorney General Kris Mayes, the office now claims it has no obligation to release similar materials because they are in TRAC’s possession.
“Stated directly, the AGO and TRAC are engaging in gamesmanship to avoid providing records about their public functions,” reads The Intercept’s court filing. “When a request is made to the AGO, it claims TRAC has the record. When a request is made to TRAC, it claims the AGO has the record. This completely defies the spirit and purpose of the [Arizona public records law].”
The attorney general’s office also previously disclosed to the ACLU more than 100 copies of subpoenas the agency has sent under the state’s racketeering law to more than two dozen companies since 2014. But in response to The Intercept’s request, the agency said releasing any more subpoenas would violate the racketeering law itself.
“We are correcting the previous administration’s error and following the law,” wrote Richie Taylor, communications director for Mayes’s office, in an email last year.
An ACLU attorney, Nate Freed Wessler, previously called the agency’s argument about disclosing the subpoenas “wrong and borderline frivolous.”
The racketeering law “has nothing to do with the AGO’s responsibility to disclose records,” The Intercept argues in its filing. “Withholding these records does not comport with any exception to public access provided in Arizona law.”
The Houston office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is one of the most reliable engines of America’s deportation machine.
Even before Donald Trump took office a second time, with the goal of 1 million immigrant expulsions in a year, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston Field Office was deporting 12,000 to 15,000 people annually, according to its director, Bret Bradford.
Bradford — a darling of right-wing deportation coverage, from the New York Post to Fox News — touts his determination to “restore law and order in our communities.” He recently lauded “the brave men and women at ICE Houston” for their “unwavering dedication,” and for working “tirelessly every day to enhance public safety.”
Scores of internal documents reviewed by The Intercept paint a different picture and suggest a commitment to safety and law and order may stop at the entrance to ICE’s Houston Field Office.
The files lay out a series of allegations against Bradford and other top Houston ICE officials, including retaliation against a whistleblower who reported being intimidated with an “8-inch tactical knife” by a fellow ICE officer in a facility that does not allow weapons. The whistleblower also alleges another supervisor knowingly lied on an official document.
An email from the whistleblower sent to the Congressional DOGE Caucus earlier this year reported “corruption” among top Houston ICE officials. Bradford “turned a blind eye to the criminal activity and has taken no action against the officials,” wrote the whistleblower. The allegations of retaliation are further detailed in public documents from the Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews cases of government employees who are contesting demotions or terminations.
After he blew the whistle on a weapons violation, the ICE officer was effectively demoted.
Documents show that almost immediately after he blew the whistle on a weapons violation, the ICE officer was effectively demoted. While that demotion was overturned in 2024, he remains locked in a yearslong struggle with ICE over alleged whistleblower retaliation and has a hearing before the Merit Systems Protection Board scheduled for June 3 and 4.
Bradford has been aware of these allegations of wrongdoing and whistleblower retaliation since at least August 2023, according to emails and memorandums reviewed by The Intercept.
Repeated requests by The Intercept for an interview with Bradford were denied by Tim Oberle, an ICE spokesperson in Houston. A whistleblower complaint against Bradford was recently closed.
“We don’t comment on employment matters for privacy reasons,” Oberle told The Intercept. “[Office of Professional Responsibility] investigations inherently involve ‘employment matters’ and U.S. privacy laws prohibit federal agencies from releasing details of those investigations to the media.”
Complaints about operations at ICE’s Houston Field Office are just the latest in a long line of allegations of waste, mismanagement, abuse, cover-ups, and other wrongdoing across the agency and among its contractors. ICE failed to provide The Intercept with a count of whistleblower complaints thus far in 2025, but allegations of wrongdoing at ICE surface regularly. The Intercept found, in fact, that ICE’s own Office of Professional Responsibility — which oversees the agency’s professional standards — reviewed more than 16,000 allegations of potential misconduct last year. This February, for example, multiple whistleblowers informed Congress of “chronic and dangerous understaffing” and a “discriminatory and hostile work environment” that reportedly occurred with the knowledge of ICE leadership at a contractor-operated detention facility in New Mexico.
The story laid out in the documents centers on Carlo Jimenez, a Navy veteran who served in the Iraq War before beginning his federal law enforcement career as an immigration enforcement agent with ICE in 2007.
In 2022, he was serving as a supervisory detention and deportation officer, or SDDO, at the Montgomery Processing Center, an ICE detention facility in Conroe, Texas, just north of Houston.
His immediate supervisors were Euna Fuchs, the assistant field office director, and Paul McBride, the deputy field office director. Jimenez himself oversaw a team of ICE officers — including a deportation officer named Rolando Ferrufino.
Fuchs refused to speak about the case. “I can’t answer any questions,” she said by phone. “No comment.” McBride also did not respond to multiple phone messages.
Oberle did not make available any of the seven ICE personnel that The Intercept requested to interview, including Jimenez and Ferrufino.
Documents reviewed by The Intercept detail a tense relationship between Jimenez and Ferrufino. “Obviously, there is some kind of a bad blood between them,” Fuchs later recalled in sworn testimony to a government investigator from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, or OSC.
In December 2022, things came to a head after Jimenez sought to reprimand Ferrufino for a “major mistake,” as Fuchs characterized it in her testimony, while on duty.
Ferrufino came into Jimenez’s office “uninvited opening and closing a folding knife” on December 15, 2022, Jimenez told a senior officer who was later brought in to investigate the incident, Assistant Field Office Director Anthony Bennett. During a tense conversation, Ferrufino leaned in, bringing the knife, Jimenez said, close to his face. Ferrufino then pressed his knife to Jimenez’s computer screen “making the screen distort,” according to the inquiry report.
Ferrufino told Bennett that he had the knife in hand because he was “cleaning it after cutting fruit,” Bennett wrote in a document summarizing his findings on the incident. Jimenez saw it differently and said that he feared for his safety. “I thought this was irrational behavior,” he told Bennett. “I felt threatened and that is why I reported it.”
Jimenez reported the knife incident to his supervisor, Fuchs, during a scheduled meeting on December 19, and repeated it at another meeting two days later, according to testimony from both Fuchs and Jimenez. Fuchs indicated, in her sworn statement, that Jimenez mentioned the knife incident almost in passing.
Being in possession of a knife is against ICE’s rules as McBride later wrote in a reprimand letter to Ferrufino, let alone holding it while talking over a workplace dispute, as Jimenez alleged. No weapons or ammunition are allowed inside the building, including firearms, electroshock devices, chemical agents, or “knives of any kind,” a rule that’s made clear in a sign bolted to the wall at the Montgomery Processing Center.
Fuchs, in her sworn statement, acknowledged that weapons were banned but that she did nothing in response. “We both agreed that Rolando’s actions were inappropriate but I didn’t feel the need to counsel Rolando or take any further actions,” she wrote in a December 27, 2022, email to top Houston ICE officials including McBride.
Jimenez had made complaints about various incidents of alleged discrimination or retaliation in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2018, and in a lawsuit filed in 2021, he alleged he was denied a previous promotion as a result. In 2023, a district court ruled against Jimenez, finding he hadn’t shown sufficient evidence of retaliation.
When Fuchs took no action on his weapons charges, Jimenez reported the violation via an online whistleblower portal to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General.
In an email to Fuchs on January 2, 2023, Jimenez wrote that he believed Ferrufino was a “threat to me and ICE staff at the Montgomery Processing Center.”
A formal investigation into Jimenez’s allegations began on January 5, when Bennett was assigned to conduct his management inquiry.
The following Monday, January 9, Fuchs switched Jimenez’s schedule from 4 p.m. to midnight to the less desirable 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift. Jimenez interpreted this as retribution for his whistleblowing.
On February 7, Bennett sent his findings to top officials at the Houston Field Office, offering several conclusions.
Bennett determined that Ferrufino “did display inappropriate behavior by having a knife in his hand in the office during a discussion with SDDO Jimenez.” He also found that Jimenez “did feel threatened by DO Ferrufino’s actions.” Ferrufino admitted to Bennett that he “touched the screen with the blade causing distortion on the screen” according to Bennett’s report and said that after Jimenez asked him to stop, he “removed his knife from the screen.”
When asked about Jimenez’s allegations, Bennett told The Intercept, “I’m familiar with the name but I’m not sure about a case,” before referring further questions to ICE Houston public affairs.
Ferrufino also “admitted to having the knife” in Jimenez’s office, according to a letter of reprimand issued to him by McBride in March 2023, which noted that this was a “direct violation” of the facility’s no weapons stricture. “There is an inherent obligation to ensure you follow these rules and policies as it relates to the safety of personnel,” wrote McBride in the letter, also reviewed by The Intercept, adding “you failed in fulfilling this obligation.” Fuchs also admitted to Bennett that Jimenez had reported the knife incident.
Despite this apparent vindication, the pattern of retaliation against Jimenez continued, he alleges. Two days after Bennett filed his report, Fuchs wrote to McBride recommending that Jimenez not “pass supervisory probation.” This would effectively demote him, and the agency did so in a way that violated Jimenez’s right to contest it, the Merit Systems Protection Board later found. The MSPB panel also found Jimenez’s claim of whistleblower retaliation required a full hearing.
Just months earlier, in October, Fuchs had praised Jimenez in an official evaluation. “Jimenez has great technical skills and knowledge which he imparts to the employees,” reads an appraisal by Fuchs. “Jimenez conducts himself in a professional manner and continues to collaborate with this colleagues, staff, and all stakeholders.” Jimenez received high marks on his job evaluation from Fuchs and McBride — a 4.7 out of 5.0 rating — and received a cash award and time off for his performance on the job.
Less than a week before the knife incident, Fuchs even approved Jimenez to attend advanced leadership training, following a standard probationary period, according to a text chain shared with The Intercept.
“He is and will continue to be a liability to the Agency unless we remove him from a supervisory position.”
Now Fuchs cast the same officer as a pariah. “Jimenez’ supervisory tactics are toxic to the Command Center’s culture. Jimenez brings employees’ morale down and fails to keep good order and discipline of the unit,” Fuchs wrote in a February 9, 2023 email. “While Jimenez has many positive qualities as an officer, he is not fit to be a supervisor. He is and will continue to be a liability to the Agency unless we remove him from a supervisory position.”
An ICE lawyer drafted a demotion letter containing Fuchs’s allegations of Jimenez’s failings in his job. “Your performance as a SDDO has not been satisfactory in the core competency (critical element) of communication,” reads the February 22 letter, signed by McBride, which relieved Jimenez of his SDDO responsibilities, returning him to deportation officer status.
Fuchs later admitted in her sworn testimony that the letter contained factual errors. The letter confused details, including an incorrect date, regarding instances when Jimenez sought to discipline other ICE employees.
Fuchs said she brought this to McBride’s attention later, but that she “didn’t have time to point out the mistake and correct it” beforehand because she only saw the letter the day it was scheduled to be served.
Fuchs and McBride nonetheless served Jimenez the demotion letter with the errors, according to Fuchs’s sworn statement. In later correspondence with Bradford and the Office of Personnel Management, Jimenez claimed this was a potential violation of not only internal ICE regulations but also federal law.
The demotion wasn’t the end of it. ERO Houston officials continued to take actions that Jimenez saw as a clear attempt to kneecap his career.
In March 2023, Fuchs and McBride issued Jimenez a poison-pen performance evaluation — an “unacceptable” rating — but, unlike the demotion letter, they never served the document to him. Records indicate that it took more than a year for Jimenez to find, through discovery for his Merit Systems Protection Board case, that this negative assessment had been slipped into his file.
Earlier this year, Jimenez filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint, through the Office of Special Counsel, against Houston Field Office Director Bradford for “abusing his authority by colluding to keep a reduced performance evaluation based on lies in my personnel file.”
Repeated emails sent to Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem requesting interviews to discuss allegations of corruption and whistleblower retaliation at ICE’s ERO Houston office received no responses.
An ICE officer watches as immigrants are deported on a flight in Houston to El Salvador on Nov. 16, 2018.Photo: David J. Phillip/AP Photo
Bennett’s inquiry also determined that another ICE officer brought multiple weapons into an ERO Houston facility. In an interview, an SDDO confirmed that “he issued pocketknives to the staff in the command center to include DO Ferrufino.” Ferrufino verified that the knife was “issued to him at work.”
ICE regulations regarding inappropriate “display or brandishment” of a weapon carries penalties of suspension or firing, but The Intercept found only Ferrufino’s letter of reprimand. “No disciplinary action was taken against the management official who gifted illegal weapons,” Jimenez wrote in a OSC whistleblower retaliation complaint against Bradford. In another memorandum, he noted that “officers who did not disclose the misconduct were promoted.”
Oberle said that ICE Houston doesn’t maintain statistics relating to weapons violations that have resulted in disciplinary actions. He recommended filing a Freedom of Information Act request, which often take months or years to, if ever, produce records.
Jimenez has, however, continued to press his whistleblower retaliation claims for more than two years while continuing to work in the Houston office.
In 2024, the Merit Systems Protection Board ruled that after ICE issued the demotion notice, Jimenez was not provided an opportunity to respond. This procedure “did not comport with a tenured employee’s constitutional right to minimum due process of law,” reads the order. As a result, his demotion was reversed.
In February, Jimenez wrote an email to the Congressional DOGE Caucus in an attempt to finally achieve some measure of justice.
“I wanted to bring a government corruption problem to your attention about upper management officials at the ICE Houston Field Office,” Jimenez wrote, calling out McBride and Fuchs and stating he provided material evidence of their “corruption to ICE Houston Field Office Director (SES) Bret Bradford” through a series of memos, one of which he attached to the email.
In April, ICE agreed to expunge Jimenez’s 2023 negative performance appraisal “both physically and digitally, from your local files in ERO HOU,” according to an email from the ICE lawyer. “Therefore, to the best of the Agency’s knowledge, this [performance work plan] has been expunged from your records maintained by the Agency.” As a result, OSC closed Jimenez’s whistleblower retaliation complaint against Bradford, deeming it “resolved.”
In late May, the lawyer presented Jimenez with a proposed settlement — the same amount of money ICE offered earlier this year, which Jimenez did not accept — according to an email reviewed by The Intercept. “The Agency is not increasing its offer, nor will it,” the lawyer wrote.
This week, Jimenez will, again, appear before the Merit Systems Protection Board for “adjudication of [his] claim of whistleblower reprisal.”
“We need to see the public and private sectors recognize the value of blowing the whistle on wrongdoing as something that inherently works in their favor, too,” said Margaux Ewen, the whistleblower protection program director of the Signals Network, an independent nonprofit organization which supports whistleblowers and journalists’ sources. “Otherwise individuals who wish to speak out will continue to face significant hurdles, and information that is in the public interest will continue to be suppressed.”
Jimenez concluded his email to the DOGE Caucus by invoking Trump’s vow to end corruption within the government and pursue accountability. “Under President Trump’s administration,” Jimenez wrote, “he does not tolerate federal government corruption. Sadly, the unlawful demotion occurred 2 years ago this month, February, and both officials who knowingly used lies in a decision letter still work at ICE.”
As COVID raged across northern California in March 2020, a pair of farm industry groups were worried about a different threat: animal rights activists.
Citing an FBI memo warning that activists trespassing on factory farms could spread a viral bird disease, the groups wrote a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom to argue that their longtime antagonists were more than a nuisance. They were potentially terrorists threatening the entire food chain.
“The safety of our food supply has never been more critical, and we must work together to prevent these clear threats of domestic terrorism from being realized,” the groups wrote.
A coalition of transparency and animal rights groups on Monday released that letter, along with a cache of government documents, to highlight the tight links between law enforcement and agriculture industry groups.
Activists say those documents show an unseemly relationship between the FBI and Big Ag. The government–industry fearmongering has accelerated with the spread of bird flu enabled by the industry’s own practices, they say.
The executive director of Property of the People, the nonprofit that obtained the documents via public records requests, said in a statement that the documents paint a damning picture.
“Transparency is not terrorism, and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.”
“Factory farms are a nightmare for animals and public health. Yet, big ag lobbyists and their FBI allies are colluding to conceal this cruelty and rampant disease by shifting blame to the very activists working to alert the public,” Ryan Shapiro said. “Transparency is not terrorism, and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.”
Industry groups did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, the FBI defended its relationship with “members of the private sector.”
“Our goal is to protect our communities from unlawful activity while at the same time upholding the Constitution,” the agency said in an unsigned statement. “The FBI focuses on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
A Federal Focus
The dozens of documents trace the industry’s relationship with law enforcement agencies over a period stretching from 2015, during James Comey’s tenure as FBI director, to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the more recent outbreak of bird flu, also known as avian influenza.
Animal rights activists have long said that federal law enforcement seems determined to put them in the same category as Al Qaeda. In the 2000s, a wave of arrests of environmental and animal rights activists — who sometimes took aggressive actions such as burning down slaughterhouses and timber mills — was dubbed “the Green Scare.”
The law enforcement focus on animal rights groups continued well after Osama bin Laden’s death, news clippings and documents obtained by Property of the People show.
In 2015, a veterinarian with the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate told a trade publication, Dairy Herd Management, that eco-terrorists were a looming threat.
“The domestic threat in some ways is more critical than international,” Stephen Goldsmith said. “Animal rights and environmental groups have committed more acts of terrorism than Al Qaeda.”
Four years later, emails obtained by Property of the People show, Goldsmith met with representatives of a leading farm trade group, the Animal Agriculture Alliance, at a government–industry conference.
The meeting happened in April 2019, and within weeks the AAA’s president was warning Goldsmith in an email about planned protests by “by the extremist group Direct Action Everywhere,” a Berkeley-based group that conducts “open rescues” of animals.
Within months, the FBI was touting the threat from animal rights groups in stark terms in an official communication: the intelligence note partially produced by Goldsmith’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.
The August 2019 note written with the FBI Sacramento field office said activists were accelerating the spread of Virulent Newcastle disease, a contagious viral disease afflicting poultry and other birds.
The note claimed that activists were failing to follow proper biosafety protocols as they targeted different farms, and could spread the disease between farms on their clothes or other inanimate objects. While the note did not point to genetic testing or formal scientific analysis to back up this assertation, it said the FBI offices had “high confidence” in their assessment.
Activists have rejected the idea that they are not following safety protocols, pointing to protests where they have donned full-body disposable suits.
The most withering criticism of the FBI note may have come from another law enforcement agency, however. Four months after the FBI document came out, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center rebutted the idea that activists were spreading disease.
Those activists, the Bay Area-based fusion center said in the note to local law enforcement, were nonviolent and posed a “diminishing threat to law enforcement.”
Citing the activists’ use of safety precautions and U.S. Department of Agriculture research, the fusion center said that “animal rights activists are probably not responsible” for any of the Virulent Newcastle disease outbreaks.
Links to Industry
Emails obtained by Property of the People suggest that the FBI regularly shared information with the Animal Agriculture Alliance, as both sought to spotlight the threat of animal rights activists. As new animal disease outbreaks occurred, the activists were regularly cast as potential vectors.
The nonprofit trade group, based in Washington, D.C., describes itself as an organization that defends farmers, ranchers, processors, and other businesses along the food supply chain from animal rights activists, on whom it regularly distributes monitoring reports to its members.
The industry’s concerns grew in 2020, as activists created a nationwide map of farms, dubbed Project Counterglow, that served as reference for locating protest sites.
The AAA’s president, Hannah Thompson-Weeman, sent out an email to industry leaders hours after the map was published.
“This is obviously extremely troubling for a lot of reasons. We are contacting our FBI and DHS contacts to raise our concerns but we welcome any additional input on anything that can be done,” she said.
In multiple emails, Goldsmith, the FBI veterinarian, distributed to other FBI employees emails from the AAA warning about upcoming protests by the activist outfits, including Direct Action Everywhere.
Another email from a local government agency in California showed that the AAA sent out a “confidential” message to members in June 2023 asking them to track and report “animal rights activity.”
The trade group provided members with a direct FBI email address for reporting what it called ARVE: “animal rights violent extremists.”
The AAA was not the only industry group using the FBI as a resource. The March 2020 letter to Newsom casting activists as potential terrorists was penned by the leaders of the California Farm Bureau Federation and Milk Producers Council. Those groups did not respond to requests for comment.
As the bird flu outbreak ramped up in 2022 and beyond, the industry’s claims that animal rights activists could spread disease were echoed by government officials, emails obtained by Property of the People show.
The Fallout
Animal rights activists say the claims by law enforcement and industry groups that activists are spreading disease have had real-world consequences.
In California, college student Zoe Rosenberg faces up to 5-and-a-half years in prison for taking part in what movement members describe as an “open rescue” of four chickens from a Sonoma County farm.
“It’s always a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists.”
Rosenberg, a member of Direct Action Everywhere, has been identified by name in monitoring reports from the Animal Agriculture Alliance. For the past year and a half, she has been on an ankle monitor and intense supervision after prosecutors alleged in a December 2023 court hearing that she was a “biosecurity risk” because of ongoing bird flu outbreaks.
Rosenberg said last week she was taken aback by the similar allegations contained in previously private emails between law enforcement and industry.
“Instead of taking responsibility for what they are doing, they are trying to blame us. Of course, it’s always a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists or framed as terrorists,” she said. “It just all feels backwards.”
As COVID raged across northern California in March 2020, a pair of farm industry groups were worried about a different threat: animal rights activists.
Citing an FBI memo warning that activists trespassing on factory farms could spread a viral bird disease, the groups wrote a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom to argue that their longtime antagonists were more than a nuisance. They were potentially terrorists threatening the entire food chain.
“The safety of our food supply has never been more critical, and we must work together to prevent these clear threats of domestic terrorism from being realized,” the groups wrote.
A coalition of transparency and animal rights groups on Monday released that letter, along with a cache of government documents, to highlight the tight links between law enforcement and agriculture industry groups.
Activists say those documents show an unseemly relationship between the FBI and Big Ag. The government–industry fearmongering has accelerated with the spread of bird flu enabled by the industry’s own practices, they say.
The executive director of Property of the People, the nonprofit that obtained the documents via public records requests, said in a statement that the documents paint a damning picture.
“Transparency is not terrorism, and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.”
“Factory farms are a nightmare for animals and public health. Yet, big ag lobbyists and their FBI allies are colluding to conceal this cruelty and rampant disease by shifting blame to the very activists working to alert the public,” Ryan Shapiro said. “Transparency is not terrorism, and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.”
Industry groups did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, the FBI defended its relationship with “members of the private sector.”
“Our goal is to protect our communities from unlawful activity while at the same time upholding the Constitution,” the agency said in an unsigned statement. “The FBI focuses on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
A Federal Focus
The dozens of documents trace the industry’s relationship with law enforcement agencies over a period stretching from 2015, during James Comey’s tenure as FBI director, to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the more recent outbreak of bird flu, also known as avian influenza.
Animal rights activists have long said that federal law enforcement seems determined to put them in the same category as Al Qaeda. In the 2000s, a wave of arrests of environmental and animal rights activists — who sometimes took aggressive actions such as burning down slaughterhouses and timber mills — was dubbed “the Green Scare.”
The law enforcement focus on animal rights groups continued well after Osama bin Laden’s death, news clippings and documents obtained by Property of the People show.
In 2015, a veterinarian with the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate told a trade publication, Dairy Herd Management, that eco-terrorists were a looming threat.
“The domestic threat in some ways is more critical than international,” Stephen Goldsmith said. “Animal rights and environmental groups have committed more acts of terrorism than Al Qaeda.”
Four years later, emails obtained by Property of the People show, Goldsmith met with representatives of a leading farm trade group, the Animal Agriculture Alliance, at a government–industry conference.
The meeting happened in April 2019, and within weeks the AAA’s president was warning Goldsmith in an email about planned protests by “by the extremist group Direct Action Everywhere,” a Berkeley-based group that conducts “open rescues” of animals.
Within months, the FBI was touting the threat from animal rights groups in stark terms in an official communication: the intelligence note partially produced by Goldsmith’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.
The August 2019 note written with the FBI Sacramento field office said activists were accelerating the spread of Virulent Newcastle disease, a contagious viral disease afflicting poultry and other birds.
The note claimed that activists were failing to follow proper biosafety protocols as they targeted different farms, and could spread the disease between farms on their clothes or other inanimate objects. While the note did not point to genetic testing or formal scientific analysis to back up this assertation, it said the FBI offices had “high confidence” in their assessment.
Activists have rejected the idea that they are not following safety protocols, pointing to protests where they have donned full-body disposable suits.
The most withering criticism of the FBI note may have come from another law enforcement agency, however. Four months after the FBI document came out, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center rebutted the idea that activists were spreading disease.
Those activists, the Bay Area-based fusion center said in the note to local law enforcement, were nonviolent and posed a “diminishing threat to law enforcement.”
Citing the activists’ use of safety precautions and U.S. Department of Agriculture research, the fusion center said that “animal rights activists are probably not responsible” for any of the Virulent Newcastle disease outbreaks.
Links to Industry
Emails obtained by Property of the People suggest that the FBI regularly shared information with the Animal Agriculture Alliance, as both sought to spotlight the threat of animal rights activists. As new animal disease outbreaks occurred, the activists were regularly cast as potential vectors.
The nonprofit trade group, based in Washington, D.C., describes itself as an organization that defends farmers, ranchers, processors, and other businesses along the food supply chain from animal rights activists, on whom it regularly distributes monitoring reports to its members.
The industry’s concerns grew in 2020, as activists created a nationwide map of farms, dubbed Project Counterglow, that served as reference for locating protest sites.
The AAA’s president, Hannah Thompson-Weeman, sent out an email to industry leaders hours after the map was published.
“This is obviously extremely troubling for a lot of reasons. We are contacting our FBI and DHS contacts to raise our concerns but we welcome any additional input on anything that can be done,” she said.
In multiple emails, Goldsmith, the FBI veterinarian, distributed to other FBI employees emails from the AAA warning about upcoming protests by the activist outfits, including Direct Action Everywhere.
Another email from a local government agency in California showed that the AAA sent out a “confidential” message to members in June 2023 asking them to track and report “animal rights activity.”
The trade group provided members with a direct FBI email address for reporting what it called ARVE: “animal rights violent extremists.”
The AAA was not the only industry group using the FBI as a resource. The March 2020 letter to Newsom casting activists as potential terrorists was penned by the leaders of the California Farm Bureau Federation and Milk Producers Council. Those groups did not respond to requests for comment.
As the bird flu outbreak ramped up in 2022 and beyond, the industry’s claims that animal rights activists could spread disease were echoed by government officials, emails obtained by Property of the People show.
The Fallout
Animal rights activists say the claims by law enforcement and industry groups that activists are spreading disease have had real-world consequences.
In California, college student Zoe Rosenberg faces up to 5-and-a-half years in prison for taking part in what movement members describe as an “open rescue” of four chickens from a Sonoma County farm.
“It’s always a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists.”
Rosenberg, a member of Direct Action Everywhere, has been identified by name in monitoring reports from the Animal Agriculture Alliance. For the past year and a half, she has been on an ankle monitor and intense supervision after prosecutors alleged in a December 2023 court hearing that she was a “biosecurity risk” because of ongoing bird flu outbreaks.
Rosenberg said last week she was taken aback by the similar allegations contained in previously private emails between law enforcement and industry.
“Instead of taking responsibility for what they are doing, they are trying to blame us. Of course, it’s always a shocking thing when nonviolent activists are called terrorists or framed as terrorists,” she said. “It just all feels backwards.”
Papua New Guinea has five months remaining to fix its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) systems or face the severe repercussions of being placed on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “grey list”.
The FATF has imposed an October 2025 deadline, and the government is scrambling to prove its commitment to global partners.
Speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister James Marape said Treasury Minister, Ian Ling-Stuckey had been given the responsibility to lead a taskforce to fix PNG’s issues associated with money laundering and terrorist financing.
“I summoned all agency heads to a critical meeting last week giving them clear direction, in no uncertain terms, that they work day and night to avert the possibility of us getting grey listed,” Marape said.
“This review comes around every five years.
“We have only three or four areas that are outstanding that we must dispatch forthwith.”
PNG is no stranger to the FATF grey list, having been placed under increased monitoring in 2014 before successfully being removed in 2016.
Deficiencies highlighted
However, a recent assessment by the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) highlighted ongoing deficiencies, particularly in the effectiveness of PNG’s AML/CTF regime.
While the country has made strides in establishing the necessary laws and regulations (technical compliance), the real challenge lies in PNG’s implementation and enforcement.
The core of the problem, according to analysts, is a lack of effective prosecution and punishment for money laundering and terrorism financing.
High-risk sectors such as corruption, fraud against government programmes, illegal logging, illicit fishing, and tax evasion, remain largely unchecked by successful legal actions.
Capacity gaps within key agencies like the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary and the Office of the Public Prosecutor have been cited as significant hurdles.
Recent drug hauls have also highlighted existing flaws in detection in the country’s financial systems.
The implications of greylisting are far-reaching and potentially devastating for a developing nation like PNG, which is heavily reliant on foreign investment and international financial flows.
Impact on economy
Deputy Opposition leader James Nomane warned in Parliament that greylisting “will severely affect the economy, investor confidence, and make things worse for Papua New Guinea with respect to inflationary pressures, the cost of imports, and a whole host of issues”.
If PNG is greylisted, the immediate economic fallout could be substantial. It would signal to global financial institutions that PNG carries a heightened risk for financial crimes, potentially leading to a sharp decline in foreign direct investment.
Critical resource projects, including Papua LNG, P’nyang LNG, Wafi-Golpu, and Frieda River Mines, could face delays or even be halted as investors become wary of the increased financial and reputational risks.
Beyond investment, the cost of doing business in PNG could also rise. International correspondent banks, vital conduits for cross-border transactions, may de-risk by cutting ties or scaling back operations with PNG financial institutions.
This “de-risking” could make it more expensive and complex for businesses and individuals alike to conduct international transactions, leading to higher fees and increased scrutiny.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Papua New Guinea has five months remaining to fix its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) systems or face the severe repercussions of being placed on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “grey list”.
The FATF has imposed an October 2025 deadline, and the government is scrambling to prove its commitment to global partners.
Speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister James Marape said Treasury Minister, Ian Ling-Stuckey had been given the responsibility to lead a taskforce to fix PNG’s issues associated with money laundering and terrorist financing.
“I summoned all agency heads to a critical meeting last week giving them clear direction, in no uncertain terms, that they work day and night to avert the possibility of us getting grey listed,” Marape said.
“This review comes around every five years.
“We have only three or four areas that are outstanding that we must dispatch forthwith.”
PNG is no stranger to the FATF grey list, having been placed under increased monitoring in 2014 before successfully being removed in 2016.
Deficiencies highlighted
However, a recent assessment by the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) highlighted ongoing deficiencies, particularly in the effectiveness of PNG’s AML/CTF regime.
While the country has made strides in establishing the necessary laws and regulations (technical compliance), the real challenge lies in PNG’s implementation and enforcement.
The core of the problem, according to analysts, is a lack of effective prosecution and punishment for money laundering and terrorism financing.
High-risk sectors such as corruption, fraud against government programmes, illegal logging, illicit fishing, and tax evasion, remain largely unchecked by successful legal actions.
Capacity gaps within key agencies like the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary and the Office of the Public Prosecutor have been cited as significant hurdles.
Recent drug hauls have also highlighted existing flaws in detection in the country’s financial systems.
The implications of greylisting are far-reaching and potentially devastating for a developing nation like PNG, which is heavily reliant on foreign investment and international financial flows.
Impact on economy
Deputy Opposition leader James Nomane warned in Parliament that greylisting “will severely affect the economy, investor confidence, and make things worse for Papua New Guinea with respect to inflationary pressures, the cost of imports, and a whole host of issues”.
If PNG is greylisted, the immediate economic fallout could be substantial. It would signal to global financial institutions that PNG carries a heightened risk for financial crimes, potentially leading to a sharp decline in foreign direct investment.
Critical resource projects, including Papua LNG, P’nyang LNG, Wafi-Golpu, and Frieda River Mines, could face delays or even be halted as investors become wary of the increased financial and reputational risks.
Beyond investment, the cost of doing business in PNG could also rise. International correspondent banks, vital conduits for cross-border transactions, may de-risk by cutting ties or scaling back operations with PNG financial institutions.
This “de-risking” could make it more expensive and complex for businesses and individuals alike to conduct international transactions, leading to higher fees and increased scrutiny.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Since the onset of its genocide, Israel has persistently pushed a narrative that the famine devastating Gaza is not of its own making, but the result of “Hamas looting aid”.
This claim, repeated across mainstream media and parroted by officials, has been used to deflect responsibility for what many human rights experts have called a deliberate starvation campaign.
But that narrative has now been discredited by Israel’s internal reporting. Last week, the Israeli military admitted internally that out of 110 looting incidents they documented, none were carried out by Hamas.
Instead, the looting was done by “armed gangs, organised clans” and, to a lesser extent, starved civilians.
Those very gangs and clans are backed by Israel; they enjoy full Israeli army protection and operate in areas Israel deems “extermination zones”, where any Palestinian trying to enter would be killed or kidnapped on the spot.
The gangs had vanished during the two-month ceasefire but conveniently re-emerged as soon as Israel was pressured into allowing a limited trickle of aid to enter. The timing is no coincidence; Israeli policy has deliberately weaponised anarchy to preserve the conditions for starvation.
This pushed even the UAE to strongly condemn Israel after the army forced an Emirati aid convoy to drive through a “red zone” where Israel-backed gangs looted 23 out of 24 trucks.
So why does Israel continue to cling to a demonstrably false narrative while openly engineering a looting crisis through its proxies? Because the myth of “Hamas looting” serves a critical strategic purpose: to whitewash and legitimise a new plan that institutionalises starvation for blackmail, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and mass internment through a shell Israeli organisation.
This is coupled with another alarming tactic of recruiting warlords, drug dealers, and criminals to create a puppet “anti-terror” force.
Israel’s looting myth The “looting” talking point is devoid of any logic, as Hamas would be able to do very little with thousands of tons of looted aid.
Israel and US Ambassador Mike Huckabee both claim Hamas uses the looted aid to buy new weaponry. But where would they buy such weapons from when Gaza is fully sealed off by Israel, and Rafah — the city of smuggling tunnels — is under full Israeli control?
Israel claims Hamas sells looted aid on the black market. But, again, what would they do with the money? Virtually nothing is allowed into Gaza except a trickle of food.
Israel also claims Hamas uses looted aid to recruit new militants, but Hamas doesn’t operate this way. The group depends on utmost secrecy and discipline in its operations.
Each new member passes through a long process of vetting, training, and tests to minimise the risk of infiltration. It would compromise Hamas to recruit people openly, whose only attachment to the group is bread rather than ideological commitment.
Perhaps most damning is that Israel has never captured a single instance of Hamas looting aid, despite subjecting Gaza to the most meticulous surveillance on earth. Israeli predator drones cover every inch of the enclave every minute of the day, yet there is nothing to show for Israel’s claims.
Hamas is also aware that hijacking and looting aid trucks could lead to Israel bombing the vehicles and diverting them from their predetermined route.
The Israeli army has done this on countless occasions when it fired at or bombed humanitarian convoys under the pretext that Hamas policemen came near the trucks. Ironically, those law enforcement officials were actually trying to prevent looting when they were targeted.
Israel’s allies reject the narrative Israel’s strongest supporters have refuted the “Hamas looting” claim. President Joe Biden’s humanitarian envoy, David Satterfield, admitted in February of last year that “no Israeli official has . . . come to the administration with specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance delivered by the UN”.
Satterfield reiterated last Tuesday that Israel has never privately alleged or offered evidence of Hamas stealing aid from the UN and INGO channels. Israel’s ambassador to the EU, Haim Regev, said in mid-October 2023 that “there’s no evidence EU aid went to Hamas”.
Cindy McCain, World Food Programme’s chief and widow of one of the most pro-Israeli GOP senators, forcefully rejected Israel’s narrative on Sunday, saying that looting “doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas . . . it has simply to do with the fact these people are starving to death”.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported last week that “Israel has never presented evidence publicly or privately to humanitarian organisations or Western government officials to back up claims that Hamas had systematically stolen aid brought into Gaza”.
An internal memo jointly drafted by UN agencies and 20 INGOs in April, and viewed by The New Arab, stated that “there is no evidence of large-scale aid diversion”.
Gangs and scarcity are responsible for looting While Israel failed to show any evidence of Hamas stealing aid, the only documented organised systematic looting happening in Gaza right now is by Israeli-backed criminal gangs who enjoy full protection from the Israeli army, according to the Washington Post, Financial Times, Ha’aretz, and the UN.
A UN memo said these gangs established a “military complex” in the heart of Rafah after Israel fully depopulated the city. Humanitarian officials say the looting often happens right in front of Israeli troops and tanks, less than 100m away, who take no action until the local police arrive, with Israeli troops then opening fire at them.
Israel not only provides protection and backing to these criminal gangs but has created the perfect conditions for looting to thrive through scarcity and a collapsing state of law and order.
Currently, a single bag of wheat flour sells for about 1,500 NIS ($425), which makes it profitable for gangs to loot and sell on the market. These astronomical prices are driven by scarcity after Israel banned all food from entering Gaza for nearly 80 days, then allowed less than 20 percent of what Gaza needs on a normal day for basic survival after intense international pressure.
During the ceasefire, however, when Israel was allowing 600 trucks to enter per day, prices went back to normal and looting disappeared because it was no longer profitable due to the abundance of food, and because the police were able to resume their work.
Manufactured crisis to advance genocide The engineered looting crisis has long served as a convenient excuse to cover up the deliberate weaponisation of starvation against Gaza’s entire population, allowing Israel to distract from its restrictions on the entry of aid and the spread of famine by saying Hamas is to blame for stealing aid.
But now, this manufactured crisis is serving a second objective: to justify a dystopian ‘aid plan’ Israel is implementing in Gaza that has been condemned and boycotted by every UN agency and humanitarian organisation working in the enclave, as well as donor countries.
A joint UN-INGO memo warned that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation would facilitate the use of aid for forcible expulsion, by telling Gazans the only way they can receive food is by moving south to Rafah on Egypt’s border.
GHF, which Israeli opposition leaders said was an Israeli shell funded by Mossad, began its operations last Tuesday after being rocked by two scandals in one day.
GHF’s CEO had resigned on Sunday in protest of the organisation violating the principles of humanitarianism, while the organisation shut down its registered headquarters in Switzerland as soon as Swiss authorities launched an investigation.
Images coming out of the GHF’s militarised aid distribution site were immediately likened to concentration camps, where hundreds of emaciated Gazans were crowded into metal cages like cattle under the boiling sun, surrounded by armed US mercenaries, Israeli troops, and sand dunes.
Alarmingly, people who received aid noted the presence of Arabic speakers in addition to American mercenaries. Last week, the Israel-backed Islamic State-linked gang leader Yasser Abu Shabab emerged in Rafah again after a long disappearance.
Abu Shabab, a drug dealer and wanted criminal previously arrested multiple times by the local police, was the primary suspect in the systematic looting of aid under Israeli protection. This time, however, he emerged in a brand new uniform and military gear and started a Facebook page promoting himself in English and Arabic to mark a new “anti-terror” force operating in Israel-controlled Rafah.
Additional pictures viewed by The New Arab showed multiple armed men dressed in the same uniform as Abu Shabab armed with M-16s standing in front of a humanitarian convoy.
The unravelling of Israel’s “Hamas looting” narrative lays bare a chilling truth: starvation in Gaza is not collateral damage — it is a calculated weapon in a broader campaign of collective punishment and displacement.
By cultivating chaos, empowering criminal gangs, and then manipulating the humanitarian crisis they manufactured, Israel seeks to maintain extreme restrictions on aid, while externalising blame and avoiding accountability.
It is the machinery of genocide disguised in bureaucratic language and carried out under the watchful eyes of the world.
Muhammad Shehada is a Palestinian writer and analyst from Gaza and the European Union affairs manager at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The article was first published by The New Arab. On X at: @muhammadshehad2
Robert Jenrick, Shadow Lord Chancellor and wannabe vigilante, has caused a stir on social media. He is releasing a video showing him on a weird caped crusader warpath about ‘fare-dodgers’ on the London underground. All he’s missing is a cape:
Interesting Fact of the Day: If Robert Jenrick were to catch 50 fare dodgers a day, recouping £2.90 each time for the taxpayer, it would take him well over 1,000 years to recoup the amount the taxpayer lost when he helped a major Tory donor avoid a £45m tax bill back in 2020. pic.twitter.com/76WFQJlSjZ
‘I’m both Robert and Jenrick. Not because I have to be, now because I choose to be’
Robert Jenrick is claiming the reaction to his video shows the Left are “out of touch with the public on crime”. Which, by the way, he filmed without permission from TfL.
EXCL
Shadow Justice Secretary breaks TfL rules..
LBC has had it confirmed Robert Jenrick did NOT have permission to film on Transport for London property https://t.co/zj99RKaR0k
He claimed the scheme would not be viable if the developer had to pay the tax. Importantly, authorities would have used the money to fund public services in Tower Hamlets, one of the country’s most deprived areas.
Well how about the law abiding people who have to make up the difference for his past illegality. Don’t remember you complaining about that too much. https://t.co/MutdYOj477
This is the same man who, in 2020, claimed over £100,000 in expenses for a third home in his constituency of Newark.
In the same year, the Public Accounts Committee claimed that Robert Jenrick had awarded his constituency funding as part of an “opaque” and “not impartial” process.
He also ignored government lockdown restrictions during the pandemic by travelling 150 miles to his second home in Hertfordshire.
He’s worrying too much about people not paying train fares. Especially for a man with so many homes, and at least one car (which cameras caught him speeding in).
As Robert Jenrick has suddenly found his moral compass by confronting ‘fare dodgers’, perhaps he could have a word with these bastions of monetary responsibility.
Rishi Sunak
Dido Harding
Michelle Mone#GMB#BBCBreakfast#Hypocritepic.twitter.com/FqAjewwFaS
Jenrick’s constituency, Newark, has a higher crime rate than London. Which begs the question, why is he not focusing his apparent excess of time and energy on solving problems for the people who (stupidly) elected him?
The rules only apply when there is a political point to make. Otherwise? Do what you want. As long as Robert Jenrick and his rich pals get away with millions in tax avoidance, while poor people get locked up for petty crimes.
President Donald Trump has signed a wave of pardons for people convicted of fraud, including a Virginia sheriff who took tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and a reality TV couple who evaded millions in taxes after defrauding banks. Last month, Trump pardoned a Florida healthcare executive convicted of tax evasion for stealing nearly $11 million in payroll taxes from the paychecks of doctors and nurses. Many of Trump’s pardons have gone to supporters of his or those who made political donations to the president.
“These pardons are not indiscriminate,” says constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein. “They’re targeted to help people who are politically his supporters, raise money for him or otherwise.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
French national politicians have been in New Caledonia as the territory’s future remains undecided.
Leaders from both right-wing Les Républicains (LR) and Rassemblement National (RN), — vice-president François-Xavier Bellamy and Marine Le Pen respectively — have been in the French Pacific territory this week.
They expressed their views about New Caledonia’s political, economic and social status one year after riots broke out in May 2024.
Since then, latest attempts to hold political talks between all stakeholders and France have been met with fluctuating responses, but the latest round of discussions earlier this month ended in a stalemate.
This was because hardline pro-France parties regarded the project of “sovereignty with France” offered by French Overseas Minister Manuel Valls was not acceptable. They consider that three self-determination referendums held in 2018, 2020 and 2021 rejected independence.
However, the last referendum, in December 2021, was largely boycotted by the pro-independence movement and its followers due to indigenous Kanak cultural concerns around the covid-19 pandemic.
The pro-France camp is accusing Valls of siding with the pro-independence FLNKS bloc and other more moderate parties such as PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie), who want independence from France.
Transferring key powers
Valls is considering transferring key French powers to New Caledonia, introducing a double French/New Caledonian citizenship, and an international standing.
The pro-France camp is adamant that this ignores the three no referendum votes.
Speaking to a crowd of several hundred supporters in Nouméa on Tuesday evening, Bellamy said he now favoured going ahead with modifying conditions of eligibility for voters at local provincial elections.
The same attempts to change the locked local electoral roll — which is restricted to people residing in New Caledonia from before November 1998 — was widely perceived as the main cause for the May 2024 riots, which left 14 dead.
Bellamy said giving in to violence that erupted last year was out of the question because it was “an attempt to topple a democratic process”.
Les Républicains, to which the Rassemblement-LR local party is affiliated, is one of the major parties in the French Parliament.
Its newly-elected president Bruno Retailleau is the Minister for Home Affairs in French President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition government.
Nouméa Accord ‘now over’
Bellamy told a crowd of supporters in Nouméa that in his view the decolonisation process prescribed by the 1998 Nouméa Accord “is now over”.
“New Caledonians have democratically decided, three times, that they belong to France. And this should be respected,” he told a crowd during a political rally.
In Nouméa, Bellamy said if the three referendum results were ignored as part of a future political agreement, then LR could go as far as pulling out of the French government.
Marine Le Pen, this week also expressed her views on New Caledonia’s situation, saying instead of focusing on the territory’s institutional future, the priority should be placed on its economy, which is still reeling from the devastation caused during the 2024 riots.
The high-profile visits to New Caledonia from mainland French leaders come within two years of France’s scheduled presidential elections.
And it looks like New Caledonia could become a significant issue in the pre-poll debates and campaign.
LFI (La France Insoumise), a major party in the French Parliament, and its caucus leader Mathilde Panot also visited New Caledonia from May 9-17, this time mainly focusing on supporting the pro-independence camp’s views.
Macron invites all parties for fresh talks in Paris On Tuesday, May 27, the French President’s office issued a brief statement indicating that it had decided to convene “all stakeholders” for fresh talks in Paris in mid-June.
The talks would aim at “clarifying” New Caledonia’s economic, political and institutional situation with a view to reaching “a shared agreement”.
Depending on New Caledonia’s often opposing political camps, Macron’s announcement is perceived either as a dismissal of Valls’ approach or a mere continuation of the overseas minister’s efforts, but at a higher level.
New Caledonia’s pro-France parties are adamant that Macron’s proposal is entirely new and that it signifies Valls’ approach has been disavowed at the highest level.
Valls himself wrote to New Caledonia’s political stakeholders last weekend, insisting on the need to pursue talks through a so-called “follow-up committee”.
It is not clear whether the “follow-up committee” format is what Macron has in mind.
But at the weekend, Valls made statements on several French national media outlets, stressing that he was still the one in charge of New Caledonia’s case.
“The one who is taking care of New Caledonia’s case, at the request of French Prime Minister François Bayrou, that’s me and no one else,” Valls told French national news channel LCI on May 25.
“I’m not being disavowed by anyone.”
Local parties still willing to talk Most parties have since reacted swiftly to Macron’s call, saying they were ready to take part in further discussions.
Rassemblement-LR leader Virginie Ruffenach said this was “necessary to clarify the French state’s position”.
She said the clarification was needed, since Valls, during his last visit, “offered an independence solution that goes way beyond what the pro-independence camp was even asking”.
Local pro-France figure and New Caledonia’s elected MP at the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf, met Macron in Paris last Friday.
He said at the time that an “initiative” from the French president was to be expected.
Pro-independence bloc FLNKS said Valls’ proposal was now “the foundation stone”.
Spokesman Dominique Fochi said the invitation was scheduled to be discussed at a special FLNKS convention this weekend.
Valls’ ‘independence-association’ solution worries other French territories Because of the signals it sends, New Caledonia’s proposed political future plans are also causing concern in other French overseas territories, including their elected MPs in Paris.
In the French Senate on Wednesday, French Polynesia’s MP Lana Tetuanui, who is pro-France, asked during question time for French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noël Barrot to explain what France was doing in the Pacific region in the face of growing influence from major powers such as China.
She told the minister she still had doubts, “unless of course France is considering sinking its own aircraft carrier ships named New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna”.
French president Emmanuel Macron has been on a southeast Asian tour this week to Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore, where he will be the keynote speaker of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue.
He delivers his speech today to mark the opening of the 22nd edition of the Dialogue, Asia’s premier defence summit.
The event brings together defence ministers, military leaders and senior defence officials, as well as business leaders and security experts, from across the Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America and beyond to discuss critical security and geopolitical challenges.
More specifically on the Pacific region, Macron also said one of France’s future challenges included speeding up efforts to “build a new strategy in New Caledonia and French Polynesia”.
As part of Macron’s Indo-Pacific doctrine, developed since 2017, France earlier this year deployed significant forces in the region, including its naval and air strike group and its only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle.
The multinational exercise, called Clémenceau 25, involved joint exercises with allied forces from Australia, Japan and the United States.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Months after the collision between a U.S. Army helicopter and a passenger jet that killed 67 people in Washington, D.C., Congress and federal aviation safety regulators are still investigating what happened.
In the immediate aftermath, as the Trump administration scrambled to blame the tragedy on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, authorities took swift action against two men they accused of leaking dramatic footage of the crash to CNN, which aired videos that appeared to come from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport’s security cameras.
The charges, filed by local authorities in Virginia, came as President Donald Trump and his allies vowed to crack down on journalists and their sources.
But on Wednesday, local prosecutors in Virginia dropped charges entirely against one of the men, Jonathan Savoy, who worked at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. The second MWAA employee, Mohamed Mbengue, indicated he would not contest the charges, according to court records, reportedly as part of a pretrial diversion agreement with prosecutors.
In early February, the MWAA announced that Mbengue and Savoy had been charged with “computer trespass,” a misdemeanor under a Virginia law, for making an “unauthorized copy” of airport records. An MWAA press statement issued on February 4 specified that Savoy was charged “following further police investigation” of the leak.
Weeks after both men were arraigned in Arlington County court, prosecutors dropped the charge against Savoy through a filing called a “nolle prosequi,” according to the court docket.
“Mr. Savoy is grateful for the complete dismissal of the criminal charge filed against him,” his attorney, Robert L. Jenkins Jr., wrote in an emailed statement to The Intercept. “It was clear from the facts that he never violated the law.”
The Arlington County Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment about why charges were dropped against Savoy.
Also on Wednesday, Mbengue entered a plea of no contest, which local media reported was part of a pretrial diversion agreement that will expunge the charge after a year of good behavior.
Mbengue’s attorney did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.
Since February, The Intercept has been trying to get arrest reports for both Savoy and Mbengue. The MWAA denied a public records request on the grounds that the records might interfere with the ongoing court proceedings against them.
On Thursday, the MWAA notified The Intercept that, since charges were dropped against Savoy, its “basis for withholding the records in full is no longer applicable,” and withheld records about Savoy would be processed.
“It appears that the case against Mr. Mbengue may also be concluded early next week, which would similarly affect the basis for withholding them in full,” an attorney for the MWAA wrote by email.
When I despairingly contemplate the horrors and cruelty that Palestinians in Gaza are being subjected to, I sometimes try to put this in the context of where I live.
I live on the Kāpiti Coast in the lower North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Geographically it is around the same size as Gaza. Both have coastlines running their full lengths. But, whereas the population of Gaza is a cramped two million, Kāpiti’s is a mere 56,000.
The Gaza Strip . . . 2 million people living in a cramped outdoor prison about the same size as Kāpiti. Map: politicalbytes.blog
I find it incomprehensible to visualise what it would be like if what is presently happening in Gaza occurred here.
The only similarities between them are coastlines and land mass. One is an outdoor prison while the other’s outdoors is peaceful.
New Zealand and Palestine state recognition Currently Palestine has observer status at the United Nations General Assembly. In May last year, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of Palestine being granted full membership of the United Nations.
To its credit, New Zealand was among 143 countries that supported the resolution. Nine, including the United States as the strongest backer of Israeli genocide outside Israel, voted against.
However, despite this massive majority, such is the undemocratic structure of the UN that it only requires US opposition in the Security Council to veto the democratic vote.
Notwithstanding New Zealand’s support for Palestine broadening its role in the General Assembly and its support for the two-state solution, the government does not officially recognise Palestine.
While its position on recognition is consistent with that of the genocide-supporting United States, it is inconsistent with the over 75 percent of UN member states who, in March 2025, recognised Palestine as a sovereign state (by 147 of the 193 member states).
NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon . . . his government should “correct this obscenity” of not recognising Palestinians’ right to have a sovereign nation. Image: RNZ/politicalbytes.blog/
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s government does have the opportunity to correct this obscenity as Palestine recognition will soon be voted on again by the General Assembly.
In this context it is helpful to put the Hamas-led attack on Israel in its full historical perspective and to consider the reasons justifying the Israeli genocide that followed.
7 October 2023 and genocide justification The origin of the horrific genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the associated increased persecution, including killings, of Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank (of the River Jordan) was not the attack by Hamas and several other militant Palestinian groups on 7 October 2023.
This attack was on a small Israeli town less than 2 km north of the border. An estimated 1,195 Israelis and visitors were killed.
The genocidal response of the Israeli government that followed this attack can only be justified by three factors:
The Judaism or ancient Jewishness of Palestine in Biblical times overrides the much larger Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine prior to formation of Israel in 1948;
The right of Israelis to self-determination overrides the right of Palestinians to self-determination; and
The value of Israeli lives overrides the value Palestinian lives.
The first factor is the key. The second and third factors are consequential. In order to better appreciate their context, it is first necessary to understand the Nakba.
Understanding the Nakba Rather than the October 2023 attack, the origin of the subsequent genocide goes back more than 70 years to the collective trauma of Palestinians caused by what they call the Nakba (the Disaster).
The foundation year of the Nakba was in 1948, but this was a central feature of the ethnic cleansing that was kicked off between 1947 and 1949.
During this period Zionist military forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed some 530 villages. About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres.
The Nakba – the Palestinian collective trauma in 1948 that started ethnic cleansing by Zionist paramilitary forces. Image: David Robie/APR
During the Nakba in 1948, approximately half of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population, or around 750,000 people, were expelled from their homes or forced to flee. Initially this was through Zionist paramilitaries.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in May this repression was picked up by its military. Massacres, biological warfare (by poisoning village wells) and either complete destruction or depopulation of Palestinian-majority towns, villages, and urban neighbourhoods (which were then given Hebrew names) followed
By the end of the Nakba, 78 percent of the total land area of the former Mandatory Palestine was controlled by Israel.
Genocide to speed up ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing was unsuccessfully pursued, with the support of the United Kingdom and France, in the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. More successful was the Six Day War of 1967, which included the military and political occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Throughout this period ethnic cleansing was not characterised by genocide. That is, it was not the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying them.
Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians began in May 1948 and has accelerated to genocide in 2023. Image: politicalbytes.blog
In fact, the acceptance of a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine) under the ill-fated Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995 put a temporary constraint on the expansion of ethnic cleansing.
Since its creation in 1948, Israel, along with South Africa the same year (until 1994), has been an apartheid state. I discussed this in an earlier Political Bytes post (15 March 2025), When apartheid met Zionism.
However, while sharing the racism, discrimination, brutal violence, repression and massacres inherent in apartheid, it was not characterised by genocide in South Africa; nor was it in Israel for most of its existence until the current escalation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Following 7 October 2023, genocide has become the dominant tool in the ethnic cleansing tool kit. More recently this has included accelerating starvation and the bombing of tents of Gaza Palestinians.
The magnitude of this genocide is discussed further below.
The Biblical claim Zionism is a movement that sought to establish a Jewish nation in Palestine. It was established as a political organisation as late as 1897. It was only some time after this that Zionism became the most influential ideology among Jews generally.
Despite its prevalence, however, there are many Jews who oppose Zionism and play leading roles in the international protests against the genocide in Gaza.
Zionist ideology is based on a view of Palestine in the time of Jesus Christ. Image: politicalbytes.blog
Based on Zionist ideology, the justification for replacing Mandate Palestine with the state of Israel rests on a Biblical argument for the right of Jews to retake their “homeland”. This justification goes back to the time of that charismatic carpenter and prophet Jesus Christ.
The population of Palestine in Jesus’ day was about 500,000 to 600,000 (a little bigger than both greater Wellington and similar to that of Jerusalem today). About 18,000 of these residents were clergy, priests and Levites (a distinct male group within Jewish communities).
Jerusalem itself in biblical times, with a population of 55,000, was a diverse city and pilgrimage centre. It was also home to numerous Diaspora Jewish communities.
In fact, during the 7th century BC at least eight nations were settled within Palestine. In addition to Judaeans, they included Arameans, Samaritans, Phoenicians and Philistines.
A breakdown based on religious faiths (Jews, Christians and Muslims) provides a useful insight into how Palestine has evolved since the time of Jesus. Jews were the majority until the 4th century AD.
By the fifth century they had been supplanted by Christians and then from the 12th century to 1947 Muslims were the largest group. As earlier as the 12th century Arabic had become the dominant language. It should be noted that many Christians were Arabs.
Adding to this evolving diversity of ethnicity is the fact that during this time Palestine had been ruled by four empires — Roman, Persian, Ottoman and British.
Prior to 1948 the population of the region known as Mandate Palestine approximately corresponded to the combined Israel and Palestine today. Throughout its history it has varied in both size and ethnic composition.
The Ottoman census of 1878 provides an indicative demographic profile of its three districts that approximated what became Mandatory Palestine after the end of World War 1.
Group
Population
Percentage
Muslim citizens
403,795
86–87%
Christian citizens
43,659
9%
Jewish citizens
15,011
3%
Jewish (foreign-born)
Est. 5–10,000
1–2%
Total
Up to 472,465
100.0%
In 1882, the Ottoman Empire revealed that the estimated 24,000 Jews in Palestine represented just 0.3 percent of the world’s Jewish population.
The self-determination claim Based on religion the estimated population of Palestine in 1922 was 78 percent Muslim, 11 percent Jewish, and 10 percent Christian.
By 1945 this composition had changed to 58 percent Muslim, 33 percent Jewish and 8 percent Christian. The reason for this shift was the success of the Zionist campaigning for Jews to migrate to Palestine which was accelerated by the Jewish holocaust.
By 15 May 1948, the total population of the state of Israel was 805,900, of which 649,600 (80.6 percent) were Jews with Palestinians being 156,000 (19.4 percent). This turnaround was primarily due to the devastating impact of the Nakba.
Today Israel’s population is over 9.5 million of which over 77 percent are Jewish and more than 20 percent are Palestinian. The latter’s absolute growth is attributable to Israel’s subsequent geographic expansion, particularly in 1967, and a higher birth rate.
Palestine today (parts of West Bank under Israeli occupation). Map: politicalbytes.blog
The current population of the Palestinian Territories, including Gaza, is more than 5.5 million. Compare this with the following brief sample of much smaller self-determination countries — Slovenia (2.2 million), Timor-Leste (1.4 million), and Tonga (104,000).
The population size of the Palestinian Territories is more than half that of Israel. Closer to home it is a little higher than New Zealand.
The only reason why Palestinians continue to be denied the right to self-determination is the Zionist ideological claim linked to the biblical time of Jesus Christ and its consequential strategy of ethnic cleansing.
If it was not for the opposition of the United States, then this right would not have been denied. It has been this opposition that has enabled Israel’s strategy.
Comparative value of Palestinian lives The use of genocide as the latest means of achieving ethnic cleansing highlights how Palestinian lives are valued compared with Israeli lives.
While not of the same magnitude appropriated comparisons have been made with the horrific ethnic cleansing of Jews through the means of the holocaust by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Per capita the scale of the magnitude gap is reduced considerably.
Since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (and confirmed by the World Health Organisation) more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed. Of those killed over 16,500 were children. Compare this with less than 2000 Israelis killed.
Further, at least 310 UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) team members have been killed along with over 200 journalists and media workers. Add to this around 1400 healthcare workers including doctors and nurses.
What also can’t be forgotten is the increasing Israeli ethnic cleansing on the occupied West Bank. Around 950 Palestinians, including around 200 children, have also been killed during this same period.
Time for New Zealand to recognise Palestine The above discussion is in the context of the three justifications for supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians strategy that goes back to 1948 and which, since October 2023, is being accelerated by genocide.
First, it requires the conviction that the theology of Judaism in Palestine in the biblical times following the birth of Jesus Christ trumps both the significantly changing demography from the 5th century at least to the mid-20th century and the numerical predominance of Arabs in Mandate Palestine;
Second, and consequentially, it requires the conviction that while Israelis are entitled to self-determination, Palestinians are not; and
Finally, it requires that Israeli lives are much more valuable than Palestinian lives. In fact, the latter have no value at all.
Unless the government, including Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, shares these convictions (especially the “here and now” second and third) then it should do the right thing first by unequivocally saying so, and then by recognising the right of Palestine to be an independent state.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
After a two-week trial, a jury at Bradford Crown Court has acquitted members of the Bradford 4 Palestine Action activists of trumped-up burglary charges. However, due to the judge ruling out all legal defences, activists have still left the court with convictions for ‘criminal damage’.
Palestine Action Bradford 4: Teledyne weapons factory shut down on Nakba Day 2024
Activists had occupied the roof of the Teledyne weapons factory at Shipley near Bradford, on 15 May 2024 for several hours. They timed to action to commemorate Nakba Day. The group successfully scaled the roof of the weapons plant, and painted it with anti-Genocide slogans, breaking windows, and causing damage to the structure, including making a hole in the roof. The cost of damage to the factory, which they successfully shut down for the day, was put at £60,000.
The court began the trial a year after the action.
Activists have repeatedly targeted Teledyne because the company manufactures components that the Israeli military have used to genocidal effect against the Palestinian population of Gaza. Teledyne is known to have made shipments to Israel in November and December 2023. The company has received 28 weapons export licenses to Israel since 2021.
Products that Teledyne has manufactured include filters for Israeli-user missiles AGM-Harpoon, AIM 120 AMRAAM, and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles. They also produce components for Israel’s killer drone fleet, and for F35 jets. A Teledyne manager testified that it was “probable” the Israeli military were using Teledyne components in Gaza. However, he caveated this, saying that exports to Israel represented only 5% of Teledyne’s total.
Activists acquitted for burglary, but convicted for criminal damage
The jury acquitted three of the Palestine Action Bradford 4 activists of burglary, but convicted them of criminal damage. They convicted a fourth activist named Ricky on both counts.
Describing herself as a “Proud Bradfordian”, Serena Fenton was the first of the activists to give evidence. She told the Jury:
It’s terrifying to think that export licenses are being granted to export these missiles right here in Bradford.
Next to give evidence was Francesca Nadin, who refused to accept that they had broken the law by stopping production at Teledyne. She told the court:
Innocent people are being murdered every day, and that is thanks, in part, to the components made by Teledyne.
The final Defendant was Amareen, who stated in court that:
When the state fails to uphold international law, when the regulatory bodies look away, what are ordinary people supposed to do?
After the jury had heard all the evidence however, Judge Smith ruled out all defences in the case. These included defences like Necessity, Prevention of Intentional Cruelty, Preventing Crime Abroad, and Consent. Because of this, the defendants took a collective decision to discharge three of the four barristers.
Instead, they decided to address the jury themselves. By the time the court reached a verdict on Thursday, Israel had already killed 51 Palestinians in Gaza on that day
alone.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action stated:
The Bradford Four risked their liberties to attempt to prevent the flow of arms and the facilitation of genocide. Despite being stripped of these defences by the judge, they know that those aiding and abetting the massacres in Gaza should have been the ones in the dock. As the government continues to make record arms sales to Israel, direct action remains a necessary tool to resist this complicity.
A United Nations committee is being urged to act over human rights violations committed by illegal loggers in Papua New Guinea.
Watchdog groups Act Now! and Jubilee Australia have filed a formal request to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to consider action at its next meeting in August.
“We have stressed with the UN that there is pervasive, ongoing and irreparable harm to customary resource owners whose forests are being stolen by logging companies,” Act Now! campaign manager Eddie Tanago said.
He said these abuses were systematic, institutionalised, and sanctioned by the PNG government through two specific tools: Special Agriculture and Business Leases (SABLs) and Forest Clearing Authorities (FCAs) — a type of logging licence.
“For over a decade since the Commission of Inquiry into SABLs, successive PNG governments have rubber stamped the large-scale theft of customary resource owners’ forests by upholding the morally bankrupt SABL scheme and expanding the use of FCAs,” Tanago said.
He said the government had failed to revoke SABLs that were acquired fraudulently, with disregard to the law or without landowner consent.
“Meanwhile, logging companies have made hundreds of millions, if not billions, in ill-gotten gains by effectively stealing forests from customary resource owners using FCAs.”
Abuses hard to challenge
The complaint also highlights that the abuses are hard to challenge because PNG lacks even a basic registry of SABLs or FCAs, and customary resource owners are denied access to information to the information they need, such as:
The existence of an SABL or FCA over their forest;
A map of the boundaries of any lease or logging licence;
Information about proposed agricultural projects used to justify the SABL or FCA;
The monetary value of logs taken from forests; and
The beneficial ownership of logging companies — to identify who ultimately profits from illegal logging.
“The only reason why foreign companies engage in illegal logging in PNG is to make money,” he said, adding that “it’s profitable because importing companies and countries are willing to accept illegally logged timber into their markets and supply chains.”
ACT NOW campaigner Eddie Tanago . . . “demand a public audit of the logging permits – the money would dry up.” Image: Facebook/ACT NOW!/RNZ Pacific
“If they refused to take any more timber from SABL and FCA areas and demanded a public audit of the logging permits — the money would dry up.”
Act Now! and Jubilee Australia are hoping that this UN attention will urge the international community to see this is not an issue of “less-than-perfect forest law enforcement”.
“This is a system, honed over decades, that is perpetrating irreparable harm on indigenous peoples across PNG through the wholesale violation of their rights and destroying their forests.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealand humanitarian aid for Gaza worth up to $29 million is being blocked by Israel on the border of the besieged enclave, says the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa.
PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement today that this aid was loaded on some of the 9000 aid trucks sitting ready on the border with Gaza to try to lift the Israeli created famine.
Israel cut off all food, medicine, fuel, and nearly all water supplies entering Gaza three months ago and the Gaza Health Ministry reports that the Palestinian death toll has now topped 54,000 since the war on the enclave began.
Minto said that since then — while Israel had refused to allow more than a trickle of aid into Gaza, and escalated its already horrific military onslaught — the only public statement by Peters had been to offer condolences for the shooting of two Israeli diplomats in Washington.
“Our government’s selective indifference to mass murder is making all of us complicit,” Minto said.
UN officials estimate 600 truckloads of aid a day are needed to feed the people in Gaza.
Gaza’s own local food production has been destroyed by Israel.
Some 70 percent of Gaza is already occupied by Israel or under Israeli evacuation orders.
NZ ‘must take lead again’
Minto said New Zealand had taken a lead in the past and must do so again.
“Our government should be advocating internationally for the enforcement of a protective no-fly zone over Gaza, and a multinational military protection for aid convoys so they can go into Gaza whether Israel approves them or not,” he said.
“At home we should be sending Israel an equally clear message. We must send the Israeli ambassador packing and immediately sanction Israel by ending all trade and other links.
“As each day passes with no concrete action from New Zealand, our government is linking us with the most massive and ongoing war crime of the 21st century.
“Our government will never live down it’s complicity but might salvage some credibility by acting now.”
I am saddened by the death of one of the most inspirational Pacific women and leaders I have worked with — Motarilavoa Hilda Lini of Vanuatu.
She was one of the strongest, most committed passionate fighter I know for self-determination, decolonisation, independence, indigenous rights, customary systems and a nuclear-free Pacific.
Hilda coordinated the executive committee of the women’s wing of the Vanuatu Liberation Movement prior to independence and became the first woman Member of Parliament in Vanuatu in 1987.
Hilda became director of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) in Suva in 2000. She took over from another Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) giant Lopeti Senituli, who returned to Tonga to help the late ‘Akilisi Poviha with the pro-democracy movement.
I was editor of the PCRC newsletter Pacific News Bulletin at the time. There was no social media then so the newsletter spread information to activists and groups across the Pacific on issues such as the struggle in West Papua, East Timor’s fight for independence, decolonisation in Tahiti and New Caledonia, demilitarisation, indigenous movements, anti-nuclear issues, and sustainable development.
On all these issues — Hilda Lini was a willing and fearless chief taking on any government, corporation or entity that undermined the rights or interests of Pacific peoples.
Hilda was uncompromising on issues close to her heart. There are very few Pacific leaders like her left today. Leaders who did not hold back from challenging the norm or disrupting the status quo, even if that meant being an outsider.
Banned over activism
She was banned from entering French Pacific territories in the 1990s for her activism against their colonial rule and nuclear testing.
She was fierce but also strategic and effective.
“Hilda Lini was a willing and fearless chief taking on any government, corporation or entity that undermined the rights or interests of Pacific peoples.” Image: Stanley Simpson/PCRC
We brought Jose Ramos Horta to speak and lobby in Fiji as East Timor fought for independence from Indonesia, Oscar Temaru before he became President of French Polynesia, West Papua’s Otto Ondawame, and organised Flotilla protests against shipments of Japanese plutonium across the Pacific, among the many other actions to stir awareness and action.
On top of her bold activism, Hilda was also a mother to us. She was kind and caring and always pushed the importance of family and indigenous values.
Our Pacific connections were strong and before our eldest son Mitchell was born in 2002 — she asked me if she could give him a middle name.
She gave him the name Hadye after her brother — Father Walter Hadye Lini who was the first Prime Minister of Vanuatu. Mitchell’s full name is Mitchell Julian Hadye Simpson.
Pushed strongly for ideas
We would cross paths several times even after I moved to start the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) but she finished from PCRC in 2004 and returned to Vanuatu.
She often pushed ideas on indigenous rights and systems that some found uncomfortable but stood strong on what she believed in.
Hilda had mana, spoke with authority and truly embodied the spirit and heart of a Melanesian and Pacific leader and chief.
Thank you Hilda for being the Pacific champion that you were.
Stanley Simpson is director of Fiji’s Mai Television and general secretary of the Fijian Media Association. Father Walter Hadye Lini wrote the foreword to Asia Pacific Media editor David Robie’s 1986 book Eyes Of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.
As part of our Memorial Day special, we speak with death row inmate Keith LaMar live from the Ohio State Penitentiary, after the release of The Injustice of Justice, a short film about his case that just won the grand prize for best animated short film at the Golden State Film Festival. “I had to find out the hard way that in order for my life to be mine, that I had to stand up and claim it,” says LaMar, who has always maintained his innocence. LaMar was sentenced to death for participating in the murder of five fellow prisoners during a 1993 prison uprising. His trial was held in a remote Ohio community before an all-white jury. On January 13, 2027, the state intends to execute him, after subjecting him to three decades in solitary confinement. LaMar’s lawyer, Keegan Stephan, says his legal team has “discovered a lot of new evidence supporting Keith’s innocence” that should necessitate new legal avenues for LaMar to overturn the conviction.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Fiji lawyer Nazhat Shameem Khan has been elevated to the top prosecutorial position at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
The Office of the Prosecutor at ICC has announced that deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan and Mame Mandiaye Niang have taken over leadership following chief prosecutor Karim AA Khan KC’s temporary leave of absence.
The ICC states the deputy prosecutors will continue to rely on the support and collaboration of the Rome Statute community, and all partners, in carrying the office’s mandate forward.
In 2014, Nazhat Khan was appointed Fiji’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and Vienna, and to Switzerland and took up the ICC post in 2021.
Pacific Media Watch notes that Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan had issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in Gaza, and also against three Hamas leaders who have been killed in the war on Gaza. In contrast to most of the world’s condemnation and a majority of UN members, Fiji supports Israel and its main backer, United States, in the war.
Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.
Samoan-Kiwi filmmaker Tuki Laumea checks in with indigenous communities in 10 Pacific nations for a new Al Jazeera documentary series, reports RNZ Saturday Morning.
As the Pacific region becomes a battleground for global power-play, many island nations are still fighting for basic sovereignty and autonomy, says Pacific filmmaker Tuki Laumea.
Pacific leaders are smart, well-educated and perfectly capable of making their own decisions, the Fight for the Pacific filmmaker told RNZ Saturday Morning, so they should be allowed to do that.
“Pacific nations all want to be able to say what it is they need without other countries coming in and trying to manipulate them for their resources, their people, and their positioning.”
Fight for the Pacific: Episode 1 – The Battlefield. Video: Al Jazeera
Laumea knew the Pacific was a “poor place” but filming Fight for the Pacific, he was shocked by the extreme poverty of New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak population.
While indigenous people generally have what they need in countries like Samoa and Tonga, it is a different story in Kanaky New Caledonia, Laumea says.
Laumea and fellow journalist Cleo Fraser — who produced the series — discovered that the country was home to two divided worlds.
In the prosperous French south, people sip coffee and smoke cigarettes and seem to be “basically swimming in money”.
Pacific filmmaker Tuki Laumea . . .Kanaky New Caledonia home to two divided worlds. Image: RNZ/Nine Island Media
Living in extreme poverty
But just over the hill to the north, the Kanak people — who are 172 years into a fight for independence from French colonisers – live in extreme poverty, he says.
“People don’t have enough, and they don’t have access to the things that they really needed.”
Kanak community leader Jean Baptiste . . . how New Caledonia has been caught up in the geopolitical dynamics between the United States, China and France. Image: AJ screenshot APR
“They’re so close to us, it’s crazy. But because they’re French, no-one really speaks English much.”
The “biggest disconnect” he saw between life there and life in NZ was internet prices.
“Internet was so, so expensive. We paid probably 100 euros [around NZ$190] for 8 to 10 gig of data.
“These guys can’t afford a 50-cent baguette so we’re not going to get lots and lots of videos coming out of Kanaky New Caledonia of what their struggle looks like. We just don’t get to hear what they’ve got to say.”
Over the years, the French government has reneged on promises made to the Kanak people, Laumea says, who just want what all of us want — “a bit of a say”.
Struggling for decades “They’ve been struggling for decades for independence, for autonomy, and it’s been getting harder. I think it’s really important that we listen now.”
With a higher rate of homelessness than any US state, the majority of dispossessed people on Hawai’i are indigenous. Image: RNZ/Nine Island Media/Grassroot Institute of Hawai’i
With a higher rate of homelessness than any US state, the majority of dispossessed people are indigenous, he says.
“You leave Waikiki — which probably not a lot of people do — and the beaches are just lined with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of homeless people, and they’re all sick, and they’re all not eating well.”
Indigenous Hawai’ians never ceded national sovereignty, Laumea says. During World War II, the land was “just taken” by the American military who still reign supreme.
“The military personnel, they all live on subsidised housing, subsidised petrol, subsidised education. All of the costs are really low for them, but that drives up the price of housing and food for everyone else.
“It’s actually devastating, and we all need to maybe have a little look at that when we’re going to places like that and how we contribute to it.”
Half of the Marshall Islands’ 50,000-strong population live in the capital city of Majuro. Image: Public domain/RNZ
Treated poorly over nuclear tests
Laumea and Fraser also visited the Marshall Islands for Fight for the Pacific, where they spoke to locals about the effects of nuclear testing carried out in the Micronesian nation between 1946 and 1958.
The incredibly resilient indigenous Marshall Islanders have been treated very poorly over the years, and are suffering widespread poverty as well as intergenerational trauma and the genetic effects of radiation, Laumea says.
“They had needles stuck in them full of radiation . . . They were used as human guinea pigs and the US has never, ever, ever apologised.”
Laumea and Fraser — who are also partners in life — found that getting a series made about the Pacific experience wasn’t easy because Al Jazeera’s huge international audience does not have much interest in the region, Laumea says.
“On the global stage, we’re very much voiceless. They don’t really care about us that much. We’re not that important. Even though we know we are, the rest of the world doesn’t think that.”
Journalist Cleo Fraser and filmmaker Tuki Laumea at work. Image: Matt Klitscher/Nine Island Media/RNZ
To ensure Fight for the Pacific (a four-part series) had “story sovereignty”, Laumea ensured the only voices heard are real Pacific residents sharing their own perspectives.
Sovereign storytellers
“We have the skills, we’re smart enough to do it, and the only thing that people should really be acknowledging are sovereign storytellers, because they’re going to get the most authentic representation of it.”
Being Pasifika himself, the enormous responsibility of making a documentary series that traverses the experiences of 10 individual Pacific cultures loomed large for Laumea.
Editing hundreds of hours of footage was often very overwhelming, he says, yet the drive to honour and share the precious stories he had gathered was also his fuel.
“That was the thing that I found the most difficult about making Fight for the Pacific but also probably the most rewarding in the end.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Democrats in the Senate are preparing to fight an attempt by Republicans to limit federal courts’ authority to block abuses of power by the Trump administration.
The looming showdown over the judiciary’s power to issue contempt orders stems from a single sentence tucked into the thousand-page budget bill, which passed the House of Representatives by a single vote on Thursday.
“This is a slap in the face to the concept of separation of powers,” said a spokesman for Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.).
If enacted, the provision — found on page 544 out of 1,082 — would restrict how federal judges can hold government officials or other litigants in contempt if they defy court-issued injunctions and restraining orders. Contempt is the primary enforcement mechanism available to courts, and in cases around the country judges have weighed whether to issue contempt findings against President Donald Trump’s deputies.
In April, one judge found there was probable cause for contempt after the administration transported dozens of Venezuelan men to a notorious prison in El Salvador despite an order temporarily blocking such deportations — a ruling that’s paused while a federal appellate court considers the issue.
Contempt is also on the table against White House officials in the fight to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, and just this week another judge floated possible contempt charges over deportation flights to South Sudan.
Frustrated at such judges’ gall and the proliferation of injunctions against the Trump administration’s actions on everything from immigration to transgender rights to federal staffing, Republicans now hope to use the budget bill to curb judicial power.
The provision passed by the House would prohibit judges from enforcing contempt orders unless they also require the litigants that sought the injunction in the first place to put up a security bond. Essentially this means requiring plaintiffs — whether individuals like Abrego Garcia or the unions, civil liberties advocates and watchdog groups that have filed suits challenging broader policies — to put down money in case an injunction is later found to be “wrongful.”
“Republicans are once again seeking to twist the rules to avoid accountability and advance their overtly political interests by attempting to shut down federal courts’ enforcement mechanism.”
“It would make no sense to require the plaintiffs in these suits to pay bonds to be able to have access to the federal courts,” explained Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of U.C. Berkeley School of Law, “and insisting on it would immunize unconstitutional government conduct from judicial review.” The relevant federal rule about security bonds and injunctions is generally relaxed when the lawsuit alleges illegal conduct by the government.
As written, the provision would be retroactive, which Chemerinsky warned would mean “hundreds and hundreds of court orders – in cases ranging from antitrust to protection of private tax information, to safeguarding the social security administration, to school desegregation to police reform – would be rendered unenforceable.”
Chemerinsky considers the provision in the budget bill fundamentally “anti-democratic” and also “unconstitutional as violating separation of powers.”
Before the bill went to the House floor, Democrats tried to take the provision out, but the Rules Committee voted along party lines to keep it.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee see the contempt provision as mere pretense to dilute judges’ authority, and they vowed to fight to remove it from the budget bill.
“As written, it would authorize outright defiance of every single injunction in effect across the country – not just nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in an emailed statement.
“Republicans are once again seeking to twist the rules to avoid accountability and advance their overtly political interests by attempting to shut down federal courts’ enforcement mechanism,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) in an emailed statement.
“This move is a disingenuous and dangerous effort to shield the Trump administration from legal challenges and consequences by attempting to make court orders unenforceable,” wrote Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) by email. “I’ll fight against this Republican power grab bent on destroying our democracy.”
Like many provisions in the bill sent to the Senate this week, the contempt restriction has no apparent link to fiscal matters, which makes it vulnerable to procedural challenge. Under the so-called “Byrd rule,” named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Congress cannot use the budget reconciliation mechanism to legislate about matters that are “extraneous” to the budget.
The contempt provision “clearly violates the Byrd rule,” Whitehouse wrote in his statement, and a Democratic committee aide similarly told The Intercept that there was a plan in the works “to challenge the provision as a violation of the Byrd rule.”
“This is about telling courts what to do, not about the budget,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director for federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, who has studied reconciliation and the Byrd rule, which is applied by the Senate’s parliamentarian. “Very unlikely to make it past Byrd.”
A spokesman for Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, implicitly conceded that the provision faces significant parliamentary hurdles in its current form.
“Chairman Grassley is considering approaches to address universal injunctions through reconciliation that comply with the Senate’s Byrd rule,” Grassley’s press secretary, David Bader, wrote in an email to The Intercept on Friday.
Protesting New Zealanders donned symbolic masks modelled on a Palestinian artist’s handiwork in Auckland’s Takutai Square today to condemn Israel’s starvation as war weapon against Gaza and the NZ prime minister’s weak response.
Coming a day after the tabling of Budget 2025 in Parliament, peaceful demonstrators wore hand-painted masks inspired by Gaza-based Palestinian artist Reem Arkan, who is fighting for her life alongside hundreds of thousands of the displaced Gazans.
The protest coincided with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon addressing the Trans-Tasman Business Circle in Auckland.
The demonstrators said they chose this moment and location to “highlight the alarmingly tepid response” by the New Zealand government to what global human rights organisations — such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — have branded as war crimes and acts of collective punishment amounting to genocide.
“This week, we heard yet another call for Israel to abide by international law. This is not leadership. It’s appeasement,” said a spokesperson, Olivia Coote.
“The time for statements has long passed. What we are witnessing in Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe, and New Zealand must impose meaningful sanctions.
“Israel’s actions, including the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, forced displacement, and obstruction of humanitarian aid, constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of which we are signatories.”
A self-portrait by Palestinian artist Reem Arkan who depicts the suffering of Gaza – and the beauty – in spite of the savagery of the Israel attacks. Image: Insta/@artist_reemarkan
“This is an action that does nothing to protect the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza who face daily bombardment, siege, and starvation,” Coote said.
The protesters are calling on the New Zealand government to act immediately by:
Imposing sanctions on Israel; and
Suspending all diplomatic and trade relations with Israel until there is an end to hostilities and full compliance with international humanitarian law.
“This government must not be complicit in atrocities through silence and inaction,” Coote said. “The people of Aotearoa New Zealand demand leadership as the world watches a genocide unfold in real time.”
A street theatre protester demonstrates today against starvation as a weapon of war as deployed by Israel in its brutal war on Gaza. Image: APR
Six universities received letters from Congress in March asking them to turn over information on programs where Chinese students participate and work. Now, academic workers speaking through their unions are demanding that their schools reject calls to turn over information on the students and faculty.
The demand for information on Chinese students is part of a growing attack by the Trump administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill against universities in the U.S. The congressional focus on Chinese students in particular comes against the backdrop of rising of Sinophobia and racism against Chinese Americans under the guise of criticism of the Chinese government, said a scholar who focuses on science and technology in U.S.–China relationships.
“This issue has been weaponized by the national security establishment in the U.S. — an issue of civil liberties is being treated through the means and lens of a great power rivalry and the means and lens of national security,” said Yangyang Chen, a fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. “That is being further used to victimize the members of the same community in the name of protecting them.”
The letters demanding information about the Chinese students came from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, chaired by Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich.
Describing the student visa program as a “Trojan horse for Beijing,” the committee called on the universities to provide information on all the schools that Chinese students at their institution previously attended; sources of tuition funding; what kind of research Chinese students are conducting; a list of programs that include Chinese participants and their sources of funding; and a list of labs and research initiatives where Chinese students work.
The committee also requested a country-by-country breakdown of applicants, admittances, and enrollees at each university.
The letters were sent to Carnegie Mellon University, Purdue University, Stanford University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Maryland, and the University of Southern California. Universities have said that the letters did not request information on individuals but rather on aggregate statistics. Some schools have issued statements that they would act in accordance with privacy protections for students. (The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party did not respond to a request for comment.)
Chen, the Yale scholar, said, “This is an infringement of the Chinese students and scholars’ civil liberties.”
“A Dangerous Precedent”
While many universities — especially well-heeled elite institutions — have faced criticisms for failing to aid their international students, pushback against powerful forces in Washington continues to grow. In the case of the Chinese students, academic workers are hoping universities will show fortitude in staving off congressional Republicans.
On Wednesday, a coalition of 21 academic worker unions signed an open letter to executives and trustees at their schools raising concerns about the risks facing Chinese students and demanding that schools refuse to provide any information on Chinese students, faculty, or post-doctoral scholars to the House committee.
“Complying with these letters’ requests would not only contribute to demonizing Chinese nationals, but also set a dangerous precedent for victimizing any group arbitrarily labeled as a threat,” they wrote. “At a time when the Trump administration is targeting internationalfaculty, students, and academic workers, standing fast to strong principles of fairness, due process and academic freedom is more important than ever.”
“Blaming China has become a bipartisan strategy.”
“These letters are part of a broader escalation of anti-Chinese sentiment that has intensified with rising U.S.-China tensions,” said Valentina Dallona, political director for the nonprofit Justice Is Global, which helped organize the letter. “As U.S. policymakers grapple with what may be the end of the neoliberal order and the shifting balance of global power, blaming China has become a bipartisan strategy. This scapegoating not only fuels discrimination but also jeopardizes international research partnerships that are crucial for addressing global challenges.”
Schools have so far complied with the requests, according to statements from universities in response to inquiries from The Intercept and accounts from graduate students.
The University of Southern California downplayed the implications of the request, said Daniel Delgado, a historian at the school and member of a graduate student union organized under the auspices of the United Auto Workers. The school implied that the information requested in the letter is typical or publicly available, Delgado said.
“That doesn’t address the core problem, which is the targeting of Chinese students and use of this war-mongering to create fear and to target Chinese international workers,” he said. “That’s what I think they’re trying to basically ignore by downplaying the significance of this information request.”
The University of Maryland has not told students if the school will voluntarily provide information to government entities looking to target individuals, said Rose Ying, a graduate student at Maryland and an organizer with the university’s graduate student union.
Maryland administrators have said they won’t work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless they have a judicial warrant — which is signed by a judge based on probable cause indicating a crime, whereas administrative warrants are issued by ICE itself without a judge’s review.
“But we are trying to get them to talk about information requests more broadly,” she said. “If this committee comes back and says, ‘Hey, we actually want a list of individuals’ — would they give over that information?”
A spokesperson for the University of Maryland said they turned over information in accordance with federal and state law by the deadline of April 25. In a statement to The Intercept, university spokesperson Katie Lawson said, “It is our understanding that the request did not seek personally identifiable information.”
A spokesperson for Carnegie Mellon said the school had responded to the committee’s inquiry but did not answer questions about what kind of data it turned over.
In a March statement, Stanford said the committee had requested aggregate information not specific to individuals. “Stanford will continue working to support our students and also to fulfill our legal obligations in protecting individual student privacy,” the university said, noting that it would “assure the security and integrity of the research environment.”
In response to questions, Stanford University spokesperson Luisa Rapport pointed to the March statement and said the school had responded to the committee’s letter and would continue to “work cooperatively” with them.
A spokesperson for USC said the school was complying with the congressional request. “We are cooperating with the select committee’s inquiries,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept, “and are following all applicable privacy laws and other legal protections, as we do for all matters.”
An Auckland University law academic says Samoa’s criminal libel law under which a prominent journalist has been charged should be repealed.
Lagi Keresoma, the first female president of the Journalists Association of Samoa (JAWS) and senior journalist of Talamua Online, was charged under the Crimes Act 2013 on Sunday after publishing an article about a former police officer, whom she asserted had sought the help of the Head of State to withdraw charges brought against him.
JAWS has already called for the criminal libel law to be scrapped and Auckland University academic Beatrice Tabangcoro told RNZ Pacific that the law was “unnecessary and impractical”.
“A person who commits a crime under this section is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding 175 penalty units or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months,” the Crimes Act states.
JAWS said this week that the law, specifically Section 117A of the Crimes Act, undermined media freedom, and any defamation issues could be dealt with in a civil court.
JAWS gender representative to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said Keresoma’s arrest “raises serious concerns about the misuse of legal tools to independent journalism” in the country.
Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson called on the Samoan government “to urgently review and repeal criminal defamation laws that undermine democratic accountability and public trust in the justice system”.
Law removed and brought back
The law was removed by the Samoan government in 2013, but was brought back in 2017, ostensibly to deal with issues arising on social media.
Auckland University’s academic Beatrice Tabangcoro . . . reintroduction of the law was widely criticised at the time. Image: University of Auckland
Auckland University’s academic Beatrice Tabangcoro told RNZ Pacific that this reintroduction was widely criticised at the time for its potential impact on freedom of speech and media freedom.
She said that truth was a defence to the offence of false statement causing harm to reputation, but in the case of a journalist this could lead to them being compelled to reveal their sources.
The academic said that the law remained unnecessary and impractical, and she pointed to the Samoa Police Commissioner telling media in 2023 that the law should be repealed as it was used “as a tool for harassing the media and is a waste of police resources”.
Tonga and Vanuatu are two other Pacific nations with the criminal libel law on their books, and it is something the media in both those countries have raised concerns about.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Journalists in Papua New Guinea are likely to face legal threats as powerful individuals and companies use court actions to silence public interest reporting, warns Media Council of PNG president Neville Choi.
As co-chair of the second Community Coalition Against Corruption (CCAC) National Meeting, he said lawfare was likely because Parliament had passed no laws to protect reporters and individuals from such tactics.
Choi said journalists were being left unprotected against Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) — legal actions used by powerful individuals or corporations to silence criticism and reporting.
“In Papua New Guinea right now, we don’t have any law to stop SLAPPs,” Choi said.
“Big corporations or organisations with more money can use lawsuits to silence people, civil society and the media. That’s the reality.”
SLAPPs are lawsuits filed not to win on merit, but to drain resources, silence critics, and stop public debate.
In some other countries, anti-SLAPP laws exist to protect journalists and whistleblowers. But in PNG, no such legal shield exists.
Legal pressure for speaking out
“We’ve seen it happen,” Choi added, referring to ACTNOW PNG’s Eddie Tanago, a civil society advocate who has faced legal pressure for speaking out.
“He’s experienced it. And we know it can happen to journalists too.”
Participants in the second CCAC National Meeting in Port Moresby . . . journalists are being left unprotected from corporate lawfare. Image: PNG Post-Courier
Despite increasing threats, journalists do not have access to legal defence funds or institutional protection.
Choi confirmed that there was no system in place to defend reporters who were hit with defamation lawsuits or other forms of legal retaliation.
“Our advice to journalists is simple. Do your job well. The truth is the only protection we have,” he said.
“If you stick to facts, follow professional ethics and report responsibly, you reduce your risk. But if you make a mistake, you leave yourself open to lawsuits.”
The Media Council, in partnership with Transparency International under the CCAC, are discussing the idea of drafting an anti-SLAPP law but no formal proposal has been put forward yet.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
A West Papua independence leader says escalating violence is forcing indigenous Papuans to flee their ancestral lands.
It comes as the Indonesian military claims 18 members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) were killed in an hour-long operation in Intan Jaya on May 14.
In a statement, reported by Kompas, Indonesia’s military claimed its presence was “not to intimidate the people” but to protect them from violence.
“We will not allow the people of Papua to live in fear in their own land,” it said.
Indonesia’s military said it seized firearms, ammunition, bows and arrows. They also took Morning Star flags — used as a symbol for West Papuan independence — and communication equipment.
The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda, who lives in exile in the United Kingdom, told RNZ Pacific that seven villages in Ilaga, Puncak Regency in Central Papua were now being attacked.
“The current military escalation in West Papua has now been building for months. Initially targeting Intan Jaya, the Indonesian military have since broadened their attacks into other highlands regencies, including Puncak,” he said.
Women, children forced to leave
Wenda said women and children were being forced to leave their villages because of escalating conflict, often from drone attacks or airstrikes.
ULMWP interim president Benny Wenda . . . “Indonesians look at us as primitive and they look at us as subhuman.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
Earlier this month, ULMWP claimed one civilian and another was seriously injured after being shot at from a helicopter.
Last week, ULMWP shared a video of a group of indigenous Papuans walking through mountains holding an Indonesian flag, which Wenda said was a symbol of surrender.
“They look at us as primitive and they look at us as subhuman,” Wenda said.
He said the increased military presence was driven by resources.
President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has a goal to be able to feed Indonesia’s population without imports as early as 2028.
Video rejects Indnesian plan
A video statement from tribes in Mappi regency in South Papua from about a month ago, translated to English, said they rejected Indonesia’s food project and asked companies to leave.
In the video, about a dozen Papuans stood while one said the clans in the region had existed on customary land for generations and that companies had surveyed land without consent.
“We firmly ask the local government, the regent, Mappi Regency to immediately review the permits and revoke the company’s permits,” the speaker said.
Wenda said the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) had also grown.
But he said many of the TPNPB were using bow and arrows against modern weapons.
“I call them home guard because there’s nowhere to go.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have begun waiting outside immigration courts in federal buildings across the country to arrest people immediately after judges dismiss their immigration cases. The ICE tactic appears to be a shift aimed at increasing the pace of deportations.
At New York’s Varick Immigration Court, ICE agents on Wednesday began checking the documents of everyone who left, according to a source present who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retaliation. The court is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.
“They are indeed checking individuals off lists and attempting to detain them once they leave court,” they said.
According to the source, ICE detained at least two people after they left the courtroom.
In a statement to The Intercept, ICE said it issued guidance in January permitting its officers to conduct operations near courthouses “discreetly” and that doing so was in the interest of public safety.
“Arrests of illegal aliens in courthouses is safer for law enforcement and the general public because these criminals have gone through security and been verified as unarmed,” ICE spokesperson Marie Ferguson said in a statement to The Intercept. “ICE will make thoughtful decisions in each case and do whatever is most likely to keep the American people safe.”
“They’re basically circumventing due process.”
Camille Mackler — founder and executive director of Immigrant Arc, a group of legal advocates working on immigration issues — said she’d heard that ICE was conducting targeted operations in several jurisdictions across New York and other states, including Maryland, Arizona, California, Texas, and Illinois.
Reports began circulating on social media on Tuesday that ICE had begun efforts to get cases dismissed that had been pending for less than two years so that the agency could immediately apprehend immigrants and force them into an expedited removal process — effectively side-stepping the typical immigration court process.
“They’re moving to end those cases so they can move forward with a more aggressive form of deportation without the requirement to see a judge or request asylum,” Mackler said. “They’re basically circumventing due process.”
On Tuesday, immigration advocates said they saw ICE agents at immigration courts in Los Angeles detaining people after their cases were dismissed.
“There were two ICE officers inside the courtrooms who would notify the officers sitting in the hallway when a case was dismissed,” Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of legal advocacy group Immigrant Defenders Law Center, wrote on BlueSky.
A day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Department of Homeland Security issued a guidance allowing ICE officers to conduct arrests at “protected” areas, including courthouses. This reversed a Biden-era directive that limited arrests at sensitive locations. According to the guidance, officers must first receive approval from ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor to conduct arrests at courthouses. The guidance also instructs ICE to arrest people “discreetly” at non-public areas of the courts and to use the “non-public entrances and exits.”
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FBI arrested a judge in Wisconsin last month for “obstructing” an immigration arrest operation. According to the FBI’s criminal complaint, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan allegedly told an immigrant to use the “jury door” to exit the courtroom after agents working with ICE arrived to arrest him.
