|
|
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Following FBI Raid in San Jose, We Say Anti-War Activism Is Not a Crime! Sign Onto the Call Now
>>> Sign onto the statement here: tinyurl.com/handsoffantiwar
In April 2025, San Jose anti-war activist Alex Dillard was subjected to the execution of a federal search warrant. FBI agents raided his home and seized his personal electronic devices, seeking evidence of alleged ties to Russia and implying that he may have been acting as a foreign agent.
We, as the broad progressive people's movements in the U.S. and around the world, as well as members of the San Jose community, stand in solidarity with Alex against these attacks. We assert that these accusations are entirely baseless. They constitute a clear act of political retaliation against Alex's First Amendment-protected beliefs, activities, and associations.
This incident is not isolated. It reflects a broader pattern of repression by federal agencies against activists, journalists, and organizers who speak out against U.S. imperialism, war, and systemic injustice. From the surveillance and harassment of the Black liberation movement to the targeting of Palestinian solidarity organizers, the U.S. government has repeatedly sought to silence dissent through intimidation and legal persecution.
We condemn this latest act of FBI repression in the strongest terms. Such tactics are designed to instill fear, disrupt organizing efforts, and criminalize activism. But we refuse to be intimidated. Our community stands united in defense of the right to dissent and to challenge U.S. militarism, corporate greed, and state violence—no matter how aggressively the government attempts to suppress these voices.
We call on all allies, activists, and organizations committed to justice to sign onto this solidarity statement and to remain vigilant and to push back against these escalating attacks. The government’s efforts to conflate activism with "foreign influence" are a transparent attempt to justify repression—but we will not allow these tactics to silence us. We will continue to speak out, organize, and resist. Solidarity, not silence, is our answer to repression.
Activism is not a crime. Opposing war and genocide is not a crime. Hands off our movements!
Sign onto the statement here: tinyurl.com/handsoffantiwar
Copyright © 2025 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether!
—Bonnie Weinstein
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
1) When Rights Erode for Some of Us, Something Corrodes in All of Us
By Dara Lind, June 16, 2025
Ms. Lind is a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
Jay Lynn Gomez, "Subcontracted Janitor" (2019) / Charlie James Gallery; photograph by Michael Underwood
The Trump administration is often most shocking when it disregards rights many Americans have blithely assumed to be universal. Of course you can’t be punished for writing an opinion essay, because the United States has freedom of speech — except the Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested by masked agents in broad daylight after adding her name to an opinion essay for the student paper. Of course you can’t be imprisoned indefinitely or banished without trial, because the United States guarantees due process of law — except that the administration did just that to more than 200 Venezuelan men this spring.
Of course law enforcement can’t tear-gas you for protesting an immigration operation. Of course the military and the National Guard can’t be deployed to your street when your local authorities say the situation is under control.
It’s not a coincidence that all of these shocks to the conscience are tied to President Trump’s efforts to carry out a mass deportation immigration agenda. Almost five months into his term, the administration has struggled to make good on the “mass” part, but we are now getting a glimpse into how it might do so. It was never going to be possible to deport millions of people, as he promised, without stomping through American communities. This remains both the administration’s signature political issue and the lens through which Trump officials appear to see the world: rights for some and a show of force for others.
The rights to free speech, due process, habeas corpus — these have never been as robust for noncitizens as they have been for citizens, and it has long been disputed exactly how far they extend. The administration has taken advantage of that vagueness, advancing the radical notion that noncitizens simply do not have these rights at all.
The executive branch does not get to impose its will on the law by fiat, and the courts have attempted to hold it in check and, in some cases, have succeeded in doing so. But the administration’s reaction to any setback has been to impugn the idea that it can be challenged at all — by courts, by elected officials, by ordinary citizens assembling in protest.
All this adds up to an insistence not only that noncitizens do not count as “persons” with the rights the Constitution guarantees but also that no one can hold the government accountable for what it does to noncitizens.
The administration’s actions last week, calling the National Guard and Marines into Los Angeles to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from overwhelmingly nonviolent protests, are the culmination of months of efforts to deny that immigration enforcement can be criticized or even scrutinized. The confrontation with Americans exercising their First Amendment rights was inevitable. It is impossible to act as if immigrants have no rights without, eventually, infringing on citizens’ rights to stand up for them.
To demand both absolute power and absolute impunity is the demand of a tyrant.
It has long been easy for citizens to ignore the ins and outs of immigration policy when they are not personally affected by it. That ignorance was cushioned by the unspoken assurance that the people running America believed in the myth many of us were taught in school: that there was something aspirational about being an American, a country founded on universal rights, and that America had drawn generations of immigrants to its shores. If America is both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws, as we’ve so often been told, the government could be trusted to respect both.
But this administration doesn’t believe in our nation-of-immigrants identity. And it turns out that a government with that predilection has a lot of tools at its disposal as it tries to curb the rights of noncitizens. Take the invocation of Title 42, a public health emergency measure passed in 1944, which was imposed in 2020 by the first Trump administration and continued for some time under President Joe Biden to keep out asylum seekers during the Covid pandemic. More recently, the Trump administration has attempted to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 (last used in 1941 after the attack on Pearl Harbor) to justify expelling people accused of being gang members and sending them to Venezuela.
Much of modern immigration law was written during the Cold War. The Cold War ended, but the government’s power to exclude persists — partly in the form of a provision that allows the secretary of state to unilaterally strip a visitor’s legal status if that person might endanger the United States’ foreign policy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked this phrase punitively against both student-visa holders like Ms. Ozturk and permanent residents who have criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza, including Mahmoud Khalil.
For nearly 60 years, since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, the Sixth Amendment guarantee to the right to counsel has been interpreted as the right to a government-appointed lawyer. But because immigration proceedings are civil rather than criminal, noncitizens facing deportation have never had the assurance that a lawyer would be found for them if they could not afford one. Hundreds of thousands of people are deported each year from the United States, and many face their case without counsel. This has begun to raise concerns among progressive Supreme Court justices, but it remains the standard.
Since January, administration lawyers have spent week after week in court arguing, not always successfully, that there is no obligation for the government to correct an erroneous deportation or even to tell judges when flights departed or might depart for other countries. Federal judges have repeatedly had to order the administration not to hold or transfer detainees because the government is violating its obligation to honor writs of habeas corpus — that is, the right to be brought before a court to challenge one’s detention. In response, administration officials have threatened to suspend the writ of habeas corpus entirely.
Immigration hearings are generally open to the public, but ICE agents have begun to deny admission to anyone who lacks an appointment and to arrest advocates reportedly attempting to exercise their rights to observe court proceedings. When staff members for Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, met activists in his district office after observing officers detain migrants in the building, federal agents handcuffed one of his aides, accusing the office of harboring rioters — as if monitoring the government’s compliance with the law were something only the lawless would do.
The president of the Service Employees International Union of California, David Huerta, was federally charged with conspiracy to impede an officer, accused of blocking a gate at a protest. And Representative LaMonica McIver, Democrat of New Jersey, was federally charged for “forcibly impeding and interfering with federal officers” during an altercation in her state outside an ICE detention facility, where members of Congress are supposed to be given free entry to monitor detention conditions. Members of Congress were blocked from entering buildings in Los Angeles and New York this month while attempting to do the same.
And in a dramatic scene last week, federal agents forcibly removed and handcuffed Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, from a news conference where Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, was discussing the troops that were sent in to L.A. The senator had introduced himself and was trying to ask the secretary a question when he was shoved out of the room.
The federal response in Los Angeles is not merely a Trump administration provocation. It is consistent with the administration’s insistence that for citizens to oppose the government’s actions toward noncitizens is to threaten the safety of government agents and perhaps amount to insurrection against the government.
You can see why people have taken to the streets; this is not the America many of us believe in. We believe in an America founded on the guarantee of inalienable rights that cannot be given or taken away. In that America, the government cannot use unaccountable force — that means insisting that ICE agents be identifiable when conducting public arrests and disciplined when they act abusively.
It is an injury for a U.S. citizen to watch what is being done to noncitizens in the name of the United States. It is an additional injury to be rebuked by our government when we attempt to do something about it.
I will not be arrested and deported for writing this essay. In that respect, the legal value of my citizenship remains secure. But what that citizenship is worth, on a deeper level, feels imperiled.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
2) As World Turns Focus to Iran, Lethal Violence Flares at Gaza Aid Sites
The ongoing bloodshed in Gaza is drawing less attention with the international community distracted by the new regional conflict between Israel and Iran.
By Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Abu Bakr Bashir, June 17, 2025
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed this week near aid distribution sites in the Gaza Strip, according to the territory’s health ministry. But the bloodshed has drawn less international attention as the world’s focus shifts to a new regional conflict between Israel and Iran.
Many of the details surrounding the killings on Monday and Tuesday were not immediately clear. But in recent weeks, Israeli forces have repeatedly used lethal force against hungry and desperate Palestinian civilians to control crowds on the approaches to new aid sites, forcing many to choose between food and the risk of getting shot.
The aid sites began operating a few weeks ago under a new Israeli-backed system run by an American-led company, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. It replaces a system overseen by the United Nations and aims to provide food to civilians without the supplies falling into the hands of Hamas.
The United Nations and other international groups have condemned the new initiative, however, partly because civilians must pass Israeli soldiers to reach the sites, putting them in greater danger. They have also said the amount of aid getting through is woefully inadequate for the population’s needs.
“The danger is too high for me to go to these centers,” Awni Abu Hassira, 38, from Gaza City, said in a phone interview. “I don’t want to face death this way.”
The Gaza Health Ministry said that at least 20 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and more than 200 wounded early Monday when a crowd gathered near an aid distribution site in southern Gaza. Israel said it was still looking into the reports.
The ministry reported a similar event on Tuesday morning that it said had resulted in more than 50 deaths. On both days, the victims were taken to a hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
Thanos Gargavanis, a World Health Organization emergency officer and trauma surgeon, told reporters in a briefing from Gaza that the violent episodes this week were “again the result of another food distribution initiative by a non-U.N. actor,” an apparent reference to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Asked for comment on Tuesday’s violence, the Israeli military said that “a gathering was identified adjacent to an aid distribution truck that got stuck in the area of Khan Younis” near Israeli forces operating in the area. The statement, using the abbreviation for the Israel Defense Forces, added that it was “aware of reports regarding a number of injured individuals from I.D.F. fire following the crowd’s approach” and was reviewing the matter.
It said the military “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals.”
Israel also said that two of its soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Gaza in recent days.
Videos shared on social media and verified by The New York Times showed the aftermath of deadly violence on Tuesday in Khan Younis, where crowds of people had gathered around a traffic circle to wait for aid early in the day.
In one video filmed by a local photographer, at least 20 bodies are visible on darkened ground where blood is pooling, and many are bleeding. Two of the bodies are severely mangled, and two other people have bleeding head wounds.
Other footage circulating on social media and reviewed by The Times shows people screaming and yelling as crowds run through the area.
On Monday, Naseem Hassan, a medic at a hospital in Khan Younis, described the difficulty of aiding people who were shot as they tried to collect food from a nearby aid distribution point. He said scores of Palestinian victims had been rushed to his hospital.
“People who are injured have to crawl or be carried for over a kilometer to reach us,” said Mr. Hassan, who works at Nasser Hospital. “We couldn’t reach the aid centers, ambulances can’t get there,” he added.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday that one of its field hospitals had treated more than 200 people after the shootings near the aid site.
“Due to the ongoing restrictions of humanitarian assistance, people are struggling to access basic goods, including fuel,” the Red Cross said in a statement.
The United Nations has warned that Gaza’s population is on the brink of famine, with thousands of children already severely malnourished.
“The facts speak for themselves,” said Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Speaking in Geneva on Monday, he called Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a source of “horrifying, unconscionable suffering” and urged governments to “wake up” and pay attention.
“All those with influence must exert maximum pressure on Israel and Hamas to put an end to this unbearable suffering,” he said.
Ameera Harouda, Nick Cumming-Bruce and Sanjana Varghese contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
3) ‘Project Runway’ Designer Is Fatally Shot During Utah ‘No Kings’ Protest
Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39, a Samoan-born fashion designer, was participating in an anti-Trump protest in Salt Lake City on Saturday when he was shot by a man working security, the police said.
By Alexandra E. Petri and Neil Vigdor, June 15, 2025
A fashion designer who competed on “Project Runway” and who helped style celebrities for the red carpet was shot to death on Saturday during a “No Kings” protest against the Trump administration in Salt Lake City, the police said.
The authorities identified the designer, Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39, as a bystander who was killed during a confrontation between two armed volunteers who were assisting with crowd control at the protest and a man who was carrying an AR-15-style rifle and was dressed in all black.
The volunteers drew their guns after the armed man removed the rifle from his backpack and began running toward the crowd, holding his weapon in a “firing position,” the police said.
One of them fired three times, wounding the gunman and also striking Mr. Ah Loo, who was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Tributes to Mr. Ah Loo, who appeared on Season 17 of “Project Runway” in 2019 and who lived in Utah with his wife and two children, poured in after the shooting.
Auli’i Cravalho, a native Hawaiian, who was the voice of the heroine in the Walt Disney animated film “Moana,” noted that she wore Mr. Ah Loo’s custom designs to the world premiere of “Moana 2” in 2024.
“There are no words to hold the grief of losing @afa.ahloo,” she wrote on Instagram of Mr. Ah Loo, who was born in Samoa and was known as Afa. “Afa’s creations,” she added, “are and remain thoughtful, elegant and powerful portrayals of Pacific culture.”
Mr. Ah Loo was 32 when he appeared on “Project Runway,” in which he celebrated his Pacific Islander heritage.
“Who would have thought that this island boy, growing up in Samoa in a hut, would design something that was in L.A, Fashion Week, Australian Fashion Week and in Buckingham Palace?” Mr. Ah Loo said in that season’s first episode.
That episode featured a dress Mr. Ah Loo designed for the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange in 2018 that was on display at Buckingham Palace. Mr. Ah Loo, who was representing Samoa, appeared on four episodes that season but did not win.
According to an affidavit, the police responded to reports of gunfire at the protest just before 8 p.m. local time. Officers found Mr. Ah Loo with a gunshot wound, and emergency medical workers administered aid.
The police arrested the man with the rifle, who was identified as Arturo Gamboa, 24, and charged him with murder, Chief Brian Redd of the Salt Lake City Police Department said at a news conference on Sunday.
Chief Redd called the shooting “sudden and alarming.”
“No one should fear coming to a peaceful and lawful demonstration in our city,” he said.
The police also detained two other people, who were wearing “high-visibility neon vests” and who were “possibly part of the event’s peacekeeping team,” Chief Redd said.
They were not publicly identified and it was not clear whether either would face charges. Chief Redd said that the one who fired the shots was cooperating with investigators.
The security volunteers told the police that they monitored Mr. Gamboa after he moved away from the crowd and ducked behind a wall. One of them said he saw Mr. Gamboa take the rifle out of his backpack and “begin to manipulate it,” according to the affidavit.
The security workers took out their guns and yelled to Mr. Gamboa to drop his weapon. Witnesses told the police that Mr. Gamboa ran toward the crowd of demonstrators, according to the affidavit.
Mr. Gamboa “did not fire a shot,” Chief Redd said at the news conference. According to the affidavit, he acted in a manner that showed “a depraved indifference to human life,” and knowingly engaged in conduct that created “a grave risk of death” to Mr. Ah Loo, and thereby caused Mr. Ah Loo’s death.
In addition to the rifle, the police recovered a gas mask and a backpack, according to the affidavit.
Chief Redd said that Mr. Gamboa, who wore a black mask to the protest, had no criminal history. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.
Sarah Parker, a national coordinator with the 50501 Movement, described the event’s “peacekeepers” as volunteers who helped direct the march and were responsible for keeping attendees safe. (The group’s name reflects its goal of holding at least 50 protests against the Trump administration in 50 states, united under one movement.)
There were an estimated 15 to 20 such volunteers at the protest in Salt Lake City, Ms. Parker said. It was not clear whether all of them were armed.
Eunic Epstein-Ortiz, a national spokeswoman for “No Kings,” the name of the nationwide protests against the Trump administration, condemned the violence in Salt Lake City.
“This movement is rooted in nonviolence, dignity and justice — and we grieve any loss of life or injury,” Ms. Epstein-Ortiz said.
Utah does not regulate how guns are carried in public, according to research from Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group.
Chief Redd said the police were investigating the training and preparation standards that were required of people who were working at the event.
In a statement on Monday, the Salt Lake City Police Department appeared to distance itself from the “peacekeepers” description that organizers used to describe those helping with crowd control.
There was nothing in the permit for the event indicating that armed security would be present, according to the department, which said that neither of the two men who engaged the gunman were current or former law enforcement officers.
The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
Detectives are still investigating “why Gamboa pulled out his rifle and began to manipulate it” and “why he ran from the peacekeepers when they confronted him,” the police said in a statement.
Chief Redd described the protest on Saturday in Salt Lake City as peaceful. “This came out of nowhere,” he said of the shooting.
The “No Kings” rallies were planned to coincide with a military parade in Washington, D.C., celebrating the Army’s 250th anniversary on Saturday, which was also President Trump’s 79th birthday.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
4) Appeals Court to Consider if Trump Can Control National Guard in L.A.
A three-judge panel will determine whether National Guard troops can remain under President Trump’s command in Los Angeles as protests against immigration raids continue.
By Charlie Savage, Laurel Rosenhall and Richard Fausset, June 17, 2025
A three-judge panel will consider whether the Trump administration can continue directing National Guard troops in California. Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times
A federal appeals court will hear arguments Tuesday to determine whether President Trump, against the wishes of Gov. Gavin Newsom, can keep using California’s National Guard to protect immigration enforcement agents and quell protesters in Los Angeles.
The hearing, convened by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, comes at a time when local organizers have vowed to continue protesting against immigration raids, though demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles have quieted since the weekend.
A district court judge, Charles Breyer, determined last week that Mr. Trump’s use of the National Guard was illegal and temporarily ordered the president to return control of the forces to Mr. Newsom.
But the Trump administration immediately appealed the ruling, and the Ninth Circuit panel stayed the lower court decision while it considers the matter. The panel consists of two appointees of Mr. Trump and one of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
It may ultimately be up to the Supreme Court whether a president can bypass governors to deploy the National Guard in states under the law Mr. Trump invoked. The outcome of the case could carry significant implications for limits on the use of the military force on domestic soil.
The three-judge panel on Tuesday will consider the narrow, but consequential, matter of whether Mr. Trump can keep controlling the troops for now while the legal fight continues to play out.
Protests erupted earlier this month after Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out workplace raids in Los Angeles as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Democratic leaders and activists have criticized ICE for raiding Southern California workplaces and carrying out indiscriminate sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods rather than focusing on people with serious criminal histories.
In response to the backlash, Mr. Trump invoked a rarely used statute to take federal control of the National Guard in the name of guarding immigration agents and facilities against protesters. Governor Newsom objected to that step, saying that it was needlessly inflammatory and that local and state law enforcement agencies could handle unruly elements within the larger group of protesters. Some demonstrations included a segment of people who vandalized property, threw objects and started fires, but most protesters were peaceful.
In downtown Los Angeles on Monday, things had returned to close to the normal state of semi-bustle two days after the “No Kings” rally drew tens of thousands of protesters angered by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns. Evidence of a week of protest was everywhere, with anti-ICE graffiti on buildings and anti-Trump signs scattered around.
Many storefronts in Little Tokyo, which was hit hard last week by vandalism, remained boarded up. But packs of Japanese tourists in matching Shohei Ohtani baseball jerseys were milling around, taking pictures under a looming mural of the star before he made his Dodgers pitching debut on Monday night.
Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles announced on Monday that she was loosening the downtown curfew so that it would begin two hours later, at 10 p.m. rather than 8 p.m. It would still last until 6 a.m.
“The curfew, coupled with ongoing crime prevention efforts, have been largely successful in protecting stores, restaurants, businesses and residential communities from bad actors who do not care about the immigrant community,” Ms. Bass said in a statement.
The city seemed to be taking a breath. Police officers were no longer stationed in significant numbers outside Los Angeles City Hall. Many of the places where federal troops had been positioned last week were no longer under guard.
One exception was a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs ambulatory care center, east of City Hall. A dozen Marines were stationed there on Monday in full battle gear, rifles close at hand. Last week, National Guard troops, protecting the same spot, had attracted hundreds of angry protesters. Now there were four or five of them. One woman, dressed in traditional Aztec garb, burned incense and occasionally blew out a call of defiance on a shell.
The mobilization last week was the first time the federal government had deployed troops under federal control in a state over the clear objections of its governor since 1963, when President John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard to carry out the court-ordered desegregation of the University of Alabama, which that state’s governor, George Wallace, was resisting.
(President Lyndon B. Johnson also federalized the state’s National Guard to protect civil rights marchers in 1965 without a formal request from Governor Wallace, but the governor did not object in that instance.)
But Mr. Kennedy used the Insurrection Act. Mr. Trump invoked a different statute as authority for his move, a rarely used law that allows a president to take federal control of a state’s National Guard under certain conditions — like when there is a rebellion against federal authority or the government is unable to enforce federal law through normal forces — and says such mobilization orders must go “through” governors.
Judge Charles Breyer, of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, ruled last week that the move was illegal. He said that the conditions in Los Angeles fell short of a “rebellion” and that immigration enforcement agents were still able to detain undocumented migrants despite encountering protesters during raids.
“While ICE was not able to detain as many people as defendants believe it could have, ICE was nonetheless able to execute the federal immigration laws,” he wrote. “Indeed, ICE continues to carry out enforcement actions, executing those laws.”
The judge also ruled that the administration failed to comply with the statute’s procedural requirement because in following through on Mr. Trump’s order, Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, sent a directive taking control of California’s militia to the general who oversees it — bypassing Mr. Newsom.
The Trump administration has argued that it was up to the president to decide whether the conditions laid out in the statute were met and that courts could not second-guess Mr. Trump’s determination. It also argued that Mr. Hegseth satisfied the procedural requirement because the general acts on behalf of the governor in commanding the National Guard.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth have separately activated about 700 active-duty Marines to assist in protecting immigration enforcement activities. The state had asked Judge Breyer to limit them to protecting federal buildings and to ban them from going out in the field to accompany ICE agents on raids, citing a 19th-century law that generally bars using the military for law enforcement unless the Insurrection Act is invoked.
But because the Marines had not yet been deployed into the city at the time of Thursday’s hearing, Judge Breyer said it would be premature for him to issue any such order. The Marines have since gone into Los Angeles and were videotaped detaining a man who was trying to enter a federal building. It turned out he was trying to run an errand at the Veterans Affairs office.
“The deployment of armed military personnel, skilled in warfare against external enemies, on domestic soil” has inflamed tensions and fear in Los Angeles, city officials argued in a friend of the court brief supporting the district court’s decision to grant Mr. Newsom’s request for a restraining order.
Officials from dozens of other cities across the nation signed onto a similar brief arguing that local police departments have long-established protocols for handling unrest and that the presence of military forces who are not coordinating with them heightens the risk of danger to officers and the public.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
5) Supreme Court Upholds State Ban on Transgender Care for Minors
The justices ruled that Tennessee’s law, which prohibited some medical treatments for transgender youths, did not violate equal protection principles.
By Adam Liptak, June 18, 2025
The Tennessee law was enacted in 2023, amid a sweeping national pushback to expanding rights for transgender people. Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
Here’s the latest on the decision.
The conservative majority on the Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a state ban prohibiting some medical treatments for transgender youths, shielding similar laws in more than 20 other states.
The vote in the case was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. acknowledged the “fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field.” But he wrote in the majority opinion that these questions should be resolved by “the people, their elected representatives and the democratic process.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench. She spoke of the potential harms of the court’s decision for transgender youth and their families. She closed her reading with this: “In sadness, I dissent.”
Here’s what else to know about the case, United States v. Skrmetti:
· The treatments: The law prohibits medical providers from prescribing puberty-delaying medication, offering hormone therapy or performing surgery to treat the psychological distress caused by incongruence between experienced gender and that assigned at birth.
· Transgender rights: The Tennessee law was enacted in 2023, amid a sweeping national pushback to expanding rights for transgender people. Since then, controversies about military service, athletes, bathrooms and pronouns have played a role in President Trump’s second-term agenda.
· The case: The doctor and three families who sued to challenge the Tennessee law said it discriminated based on both sex and transgender status, violating the Constitution’s equal protection clause. They noted that the law specified that those prohibited treatments were allowed when undertaken for reasons other than gender transition care.
· U.S. politics: In a measure of the shifting politics around transgender issues, the Biden administration intervened on those fighting the ban. After Mr. Trump took office, he issued an executive order directing agencies to take steps to curtail surgeries, hormone therapy and other gender transition care for youths under 19. And in February, his administration formally reversed the government’s position in the case and urged the justices to uphold the law.
· Arguments: The law’s challengers stressed that the major American medical associations support the prohibited treatments as crucial for alleviating the psychological distress of many transgender youths. Tennessee’s brief countered that scientific uncertainty meant that legislatures rather than courts should decide what treatments are available to minors.
· Reaction: The Tennessee Equality Project, among the L.G.B.T.Q. organizations that argued against the law, said on social media that “the consequences of this devastating decision will be felt by anyone who needs gender-affirming care.” Jonathan Skrmetti, the Tennessee attorney general whose office defended the state law, called it a common-sense victory, saying in a statement that the decision “recognizes that the Constitution lets us fulfill society’s highest calling — protecting our kids.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
6) Iran War Reflects a Changed Middle East and a New Israeli Military Doctrine
For years, Israel contained its conflicts with Tehran, Hamas and Hezbollah. The broad assault on Iran highlights a shift in strategy.
By Patrick Kingsley, June 18, 2025
Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief, has covered the Middle East for more than a decade.
For nearly two decades, Israel avoided all-out war with its biggest enemies.
It fought contained conflicts with Hamas, but ultimately allowed the group to retain power in Gaza. It maintained an uneasy calm with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, even as its fighters entrenched themselves in southern Lebanon. And despite planning a major assault on Iran, it limited its attacks to smaller, clandestine operations.
Israel’s massive, ongoing assault on Iran highlights an extraordinary shift in Israeli military doctrine since Hamas, Iran’s Palestinian ally, attacked the country in October 2023. It is a change that has redrawn the power dynamics in the Middle East, unraveled Iran’s regional alliance and enshrined Israel as the dominant military force in the region.
Having given Hamas years to prepare for the Oct. 7 attack, Israel reversed course afterward to unleash one of the most destructive campaigns in recent warfare. It then assassinated most of Hezbollah’s leadership and decimated large parts of southern Lebanon. Now, in Iran, it is carrying out the kind of broad and brazen attack that it long threatened but never dared to enact.
“We are changing the face of the Middle East,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel during a press briefing on Monday. “And this could lead to far-reaching changes within Iran itself,” he added.
For now, that second claim remains unproven. The Israeli military campaign has weakened Iran, but it has not yet destroyed the country’s nuclear program or collapsed its government, and it may still fall short of both. The war could also devolve into an intractable quagmire with no exit strategy or offramp.
Mr. Netanyahu’s broader point is harder to contradict. Hamas is no longer a threat to Israel. Hezbollah’s influence over Lebanon — let alone the danger it poses to Israelis — is much diminished. The government in Syria, a pillar of Iran’s regional alliance, was overthrown last December, in part because Hezbollah could no longer come to its aid.
These tectonic shifts also speak to a vast change within the Israeli psyche and strategic outlook since Hamas’s attack in October 2023.
For Israel’s critics, the attack was the inevitable consequence of the country’s blockade of Gaza, occupation of the West Bank, and failure to resolve the Palestinian conflict through diplomatic concessions. Many Israelis have drawn the opposite conclusion: They believe that the October attack — the deadliest in Israeli history — stemmed from Israel’s failure to pre-emptively and decisively defeat its enemies.
“In the 20 years before Oct. 7, we allowed threats to develop beyond our borders, trusting that our intelligence would give us prior warnings of any attack,” said Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence.
“The trauma of Oct. 7 completely changed that mind-set and made us willing to take risks that we didn’t take in the past,” General Yadlin said. “We will no longer wait to be attacked, and we will not wait to be surprised.”
The approach echoes Israel’s strategic outlook in the early decades of its existence, when it often acted more swiftly and decisively to remove threats on its borders, General Yadlin said. The clearest example was in June 1967, when Israel pre-emptively attacked Egypt after the Egyptian military moved troops toward the Israeli border.
“As Egypt massed troops on our southern border, we did not wait to be surprised,” General Yadlin said. “Now, we are reviving that doctrine.”
Israel’s new approach is the culmination of months of re-evaluation, during which the military’s confidence — crushed by the failures of Oct. 7 — was gradually restored.
While Israel’s approach to Hamas was immediately wrathful, the country was initially wary of taking on Hezbollah and Iran. Mr. Netanyahu called off a pre-emptive attack on Hezbollah in the first week of the war in 2023, amid fears that Israel would struggle to maintain a multi-front war against the Iran-led alliance.
For nearly a year, Israel fought only a low-level border conflict with Hezbollah. Despite increasing clashes with Tehran in 2024, Israel limited its strikes on Iran to avoid an all-out conflict.
Israel’s approach began to change last September, when a sequence of unexpected moves allowed Israel to decimate much of Hezbollah’s senior leadership.
That increased Israel’s confidence and prompted its leaders to order a more decisive assault on the group. Troops invaded southern Lebanon and the air force killed Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah.
Israel then severely weakened Iran’s air defense systems and successfully repelled massive barrages of Iranian missiles, giving Israel greater confidence in its offensive and defensive abilities. More than a year after Oct. 7, Israeli leaders finally concluded that they had a rare window of opportunity to mount a decisive blow against Iran’s nuclear program.
Though Israel’s new approach has undercut Iran’s regional influence, it has done little to resolve Israel’s oldest and most intractable problem: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In Gaza, Israel’s retaliation has led to widespread destruction and bloodshed, reinstating a fearsome sense of Israeli might and reducing Hamas’s threat for a generation.
But the conflict has provided no clear long-term trajectory for either Gaza or the wider Palestinian question. Mr. Netanyahu has consistently ignored opportunities to end the war, balking at the idea of either leaving Hamas’s remnants in charge or allowing other Palestinian groups to take over.
“Instead, we are left with only bad options,” said Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli foreign minister. “Either occupation or chaos, rather than a diplomatic process involving moderate regional and Palestinian stakeholders that could change the reality on the ground for both Palestinians and Israelis.”
A similarly aimless dynamic could yet emerge in Iran, analysts said, if the Israeli leadership fails to clearly define its goals there and set an exit strategy.
For now, Israeli officials hope the United States will join the attack and help Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. If the United States stays away, and if Iran refuses to stop the enrichment by choice, it is unclear whether Israel’s forceful new doctrine will achieve the kind of game-changing outcomes that many Israelis desire.
“One wonders whether effective military performance is matched by a sober political vision,” said Nimrod Novik, a former senior Israeli official and a fellow at Israel Policy Forum, a research group in New York. “Or, like in Gaza, we are left without an endgame. Time will tell.”
Johnatan Reiss and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
7) Trump’s Conflicting Messages on Workplace Raids Leave Businesses Reeling
Trump officials insist the president is fully committed to mass deportation. But they have been careful not to directly contradict the president’s attempt to offer a reprieve to certain businesses.
By Tyler Pager, Miriam Jordan, Hamed Aleaziz and Emmett Lindner, Published June 17, 2025, Updated June 18, 2025
Tyler Pager and Hamed Aleaziz reported from Washington, Miriam Jordan from Los Angeles, and Emmett Lindner from New York.
An immigration agent making an arrest last month in Miami. Lack of clarity over the Trump administration’s deportation agenda is dividing Republicans. Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times
President Trump is sending conflicting messages about his immigration crackdown, promising a reprieve for certain industries that rely on immigrant labor while doubling down on his promise to arrest and deport anyone who is living in the United States illegally.
The situation has left business owners unclear on exactly what the Trump policy is, just days after the president said “changes are coming” to help those in the farming and hospitality industries whose employees are too scared to show up for work.
“One minute you have a message saying they won’t go after agriculture, the next something else,” said Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League, a growers organization in the Central Valley of California.
Mr. Cunha said it was causing “tremendous havoc” in the country’s largest agricultural region.
“First thing this morning I got calls from my growers asking, ‘Does this mean they are going to come after the workers in the fields?’” Mr. Cunha said.
The muddled messages coming out of the White House and from Trump officials suggest the president is caught between competing factions on an issue that has come to define his political identity and that he credited for his victory last year.
Last week, Mr. Trump drew immediate backlash from even his most fervent supporters after he acknowledged that his hard-line policies were hurting certain industries that rely on immigrant labor, like farming, hotels and restaurants.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials then issued a directive pausing most raids on those work sites to align with Mr. Trump’s position, frustrating many people inside the White House who have pressed for a more aggressive approach.
In the days since that ICE directive went out, Trump administration officials have scrambled to contain the fallout — insisting that the president is fully committed to deporting millions of people. But they have also been careful not to directly contradict Mr. Trump’s attempt to give a respite to business leaders in key industries.
“The president has been incredibly clear,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts.”
But it was the president who emphasized in a social media post last week the need to protect “very good, long time workers” in the farming and hospitality industries. That message came after a lobbying campaign from Brooke Rollins, the secretary of agriculture, and business leaders who warned about the impacts of the immigration crackdown on key industries.
A few days later, amid the backlash from some of Mr. Trump’s own staff and loyal allies, the president posted again, exhorting ICE officials to intensify their efforts. He called for a focus on the country’s largest cities, specifically calling out Los Angeles, Chicago and New York — and made no mention of workplace raids.
But ICE had already scaled up its operations in New York City since Mr. Trump took office. While the workplace raids that touched off protests in Los Angeles have not been as common in New York, the agency has deployed its agents to conduct home raids across the city and, in recent weeks, has arrested more and more immigrants showing up for routine court hearings in Manhattan.
Over the weekend, Kristi Noem, the secretary of Department of Homeland Security, sent a letter to ICE officials instructing them to be aggressive in their deportation efforts.
“We promised the largest deportation operation in history and that is exactly what we will do,” she wrote in a letter obtained by The Times. “Your performance will be judged every day by how many arrests you, your teammates and your office are able to effectuate. Failure is not an option.”
Ms. Noem said that “worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts,” but she added an important caveat. She said that any “large-scale worksite actions” must be “properly coordinated through leadership.”
The lack of clarity over how the Trump administration is carrying out the deportation agenda continues to divide the Republican Party. Many Trump officials and allies want to see enforcement operations expanded. They see any industry carve-outs as undermining the president’s promise to deport all undocumented immigrants.
“We should not declare any industry or any worksite that uses large numbers of illegal immigrants off-limits for enforcement of federal law,” Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, said on Sunday on CBS.
But other allies of the president continue to stress the importance of immigrant workers, maintaining that they are essential to many industries and that there are not Americans willing to fill the gap if they are deported.
Representative Andy Harris, Republican of Maryland and the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, joined industry leaders to make that case on Tuesday. Mr. Harris said that the president “realizes that, running in parallel with their deportation of criminals and other people here illegally, there has to be an effort to figure out how to make sure that we have the work force we need.”
“With an unemployment rate of 4 percent, you’re not going to find American workers for a lot of these tasks,” Mr. Harris said during a news conference held by the American Business Immigration Coalition, which represents 1,700 employers. “You haven’t found them even when the unemployment rate was higher. And again, to get the economic boost going that the president talked about, I think it’s a great sign the administration finally realized there is a need for foreign workers.”
Rebecca Shi, the chief executive of the coalition, said businesses could not make a plan without clear guidance. But she said the debate had left her with a glimmer of optimism.
“What these last few days of this back and forth has shown,” she said, “is at least there is a willingness to have a debate about this.”
Immigrant communities have been accompanying the twists and turns of the administration on Spanish-language TV and social media.
“Folks were expressing hope that there would be less enforcement on farm workers and hotel workers, and then we hear that the administration is going ahead with enforcement,” said Eduardo Delgado, an official with Migrant Equity Southeast, an advocacy group in Georgia.
“Immigrant families have been on an emotional roller coaster,” he said. “Every day, they have to wake up to news that directly impacts them and still have to go to work to provide for their families while wondering if they will come home to their children.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting from Calgary, Alberta, and Luis Ferré-Sadurní from New York.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
8) Humanitarian Aid Trickles Into Northern Gaza
A convoy of trucks brought food parcels into the territory, where civilians are at risk of starvation and have been suffering worsening conditions, with such aid shipments rare in recent weeks.
Visuals by Saher Alghorra, Text by Saher Alghorra and Neil Vigdor, June 17, 2025
Palestinian citizens headed to an area in the northwest of Gaza City, after aid trucks loaded with food parcels entered, on Monday.
For one of the few times in recent months, humanitarian aid trickled on Monday into northern Gaza, where a convoy of trucks carrying food was greeted by masses of civilians desperate for food.
Thousands of Palestinian men, women and children rushed to the distribution point in the northwest part of Gaza City, where they received food aid in cardboard boxes from the U.N. World Food Program that they then lugged home through the rubble and sand of the war-ravaged territory.
“I just want to feed my children — they haven’t eaten in two days,” a thin man carrying an aid box said.
The food shipments went through inspections by Israeli authorities before being allowed to cross into Gaza, a process that has become increasingly contentious after Israel blocked humanitarian aid for more than two months.
Humanitarian groups have warned that the vast majority of the 2.2 million people who live in Gaza are at risk of starving unless the shipments, now at a trickle, are ramped up.
Israeli officials have expressed mistrust in the United Nations, suggesting that it has an anti-Israel bias. The country has also accused Hamas of diverting aid under a previous distribution system managed by the United Nations.
People hoisted the boxes on their shoulders and heads and stuffed supplies into their clothes or bags that they had brought with them. They scooped up items that had fallen onto the ground.
The procession of people, filing along the beachhead past makeshift tents and the ruins of buildings, kicked up clouds of dust.
The distribution centers have been fraught with chaos and danger for the territory’s civilian population. In the southern part of the territory, more than 70 Palestinians have been killed near aid distribution sites in the past two days, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which blamed Israeli forces for the violence.
In northern Gaza, some families were waiting at their doorsteps for their sons to return. One woman saw her son coming back with supplies, and she expressed her joy with a celebratory ululation.
Humanitarian groups say that the current level of aid represents a mere fraction of the shipments that they had been making during a temporary cease-fire that had lasted from January to March.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
9) ‘There was a massive boom’: A doctor recounts the missile strike on an Israeli hospital.
By Natan Odenheimer, Reporting from Beersheba, Israel, June 19, 2025
Large slabs of concrete were all that remained from what was once the top floor of the hospital building. Rubble and shattered glass blanketed the surrounding area, even hundreds of feet away. Melted plastic and burned wiring filled the air with a foul smell.
Hours after an Iranian missile hit part of the Soroka Medical Center, a major hospital complex in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Thursday, firefighters brought the blaze under control while rescue teams scoured the site and medical teams transferred patients to other facilities.
“There was a massive boom and blast wave,” said Dr. Vadim Bankovich, head of the Orthopedics Department, whose office faces the floor of the old surgical building that took a direct hit.
Shlomi Codish, the director general of the hospital, said that much of the building had been evacuated in recent days. Mr. Codish said that all patients and medical staff had been in protected spaces when the missile struck, and that the hospital was treating several patients with minor injuries.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed it had targeted Israeli military facilities next to the hospital, according to the Fars news agency, an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards. It offered no evidence for the claim, and Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the claim.
When he received an alert on his cell phone warning him of incoming missile fire, Dr. Bankovich said he and his team rushed to a windowless safe space, where patients at his department were already gathering. After leaving the safe space 10 minutes later, he found cabinets toppled, ceiling panels scattered on the ground, and medical devices shattered.
“Windows blew out everywhere, even those reinforced with iron in the protected rooms,” said Dr. Bankovich, referring to the hospital’s safe rooms. He and his team had been sitting 100 feet away from the site of the missile strike. Now, the view from his office is one of destruction.
Dr. Bankovich said that his department would have to be shut down because of the damage.
“We felt the warmth of the blazes,” he said.
The strike on Soroka Medical Center came on the seventh day of the war, and was the first time a hospital has been directly hit since Iran began launching missiles and drones at Israel, in retaliation for Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and senior military commanders.
In recent days, Iran has scaled back its missile fire, and the Israeli military has eased some of its wartime directives for civilians, signaling that it believes the threat from Iran’s missile fire has diminished. But the strike on the hospital underscored that Iran can still inflict serious damage within Israel, despite the Israeli military’s strikes on missile launchers in Iran and its advanced air defense systems, which have intercepted most projectiles midair.
Since the war began on Friday, Iranian attacks have hit several population centers — including high-rise residential buildings and a research institute — killing at least 24 people and injuring more than 800, according to Israeli health authorities.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed to avenge the strike on the hospital. “We will make the tyrants from Tehran pay the full price,” he said in a post on X.
Standing in a staff parking lot carpeted with rubble and shattered glass, as damaged cars were towed away, Avichay Amrami, 38, a hospital attendant, recalled how “people were running in different directions after the strike. There was chaos.”
Concerned that the hospital building was at risk of collapse, Mr. Amrami and his co-workers immediately began evacuating patients to safer areas.
“Luckily, the floor that was hit was empty,” Mr. Amrami said.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
10) Trump, Iran and the Specter of Iraq: ‘We Bought All the Happy Talk’
President Trump is pondering swift military action in Iran. There were similar expectations that the war in Iraq would be quick and triumphant.
By Elisabeth Bumiller, Reporting from Washington, June 18, 2025
A little more than 22 years ago, Washington was on edge as a president stood on the precipice of ordering an invasion of Baghdad. The expectation was that it would be a quick, triumphant “mission accomplished.”
By the time the United States withdrew nearly nine years and more than 4,000 American and 100,000 Iraqi deaths later, the war had become a historic lesson of miscalculation and unintended consequences.
The specter of Iraq now hangs over a deeply divided, anxious Washington. President Trump, who campaigned against America’s “forever wars,” is pondering a swift deployment of American military might in Iran. This time there are not some 200,000 American troops massed in the Middle East, or antiwar demonstrations around the world. But the sense of dread and the unknown feels in many ways the same.
“So much of this is the same story told again,” said Vali R. Nasr, an Iranian American who is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “Once upon a time we didn’t know better, and we bought all the happy talk about Iraq. But every single assumption proved wrong.”
There are many similarities. The Bush administration and its allies saw the invasion of Iraq as a “cakewalk” and promised that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators. There were internal disputes over the intelligence that justified the war. A phalanx of neoconservatives pushed hard for the chance to get rid of Saddam Hussein, the longtime dictator of Iraq.
And America held its breath waiting for President George W. Bush to announce a final decision.
Today Trump allies argue that coming to the aid of Israel by dropping 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs on Fordo, Iran’s most fortified nuclear site, could be a one-off event that would transform the Middle East. There is a dispute over intelligence between Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, who said in March that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon, and Mr. Trump, who retorted on Tuesday that “I don’t care what she said.” Iran, he added, was in fact close to a nuclear weapon.
Some of the same neoconservatives who pushed for the war in Iraq are now pushing for war with Iran. “You’ve got to go to war with the president you have,” said William Kristol, a Never Trumper and editor at large of The Bulwark who was a prominent advocate of war with Iraq. “If you really think that Iran can’t have nuclear weapons, we have a chance to try to finish the job.”
And once again the nation is waiting for a president to decide. “I may do it, I may not do it, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday when asked about his thinking on striking Iranian nuclear facilities.
There are the familiar questions about an endgame. Mr. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, and under a “Mission Accomplished” banner he triumphantly declared combat operations in Iraq were at an end. But the country was in chaos as he spoke.
Today many American officials fear there will be a wider war if the United States bombs Fordo, including retaliatory attacks on U.S. bases in the region by pro-Iran militias and strikes on ships in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthis.
Adm. William F. Fallon, who in 2007 and 2008 oversaw all American military operations in the Middle East as head of U.S. Central Command, said on Wednesday that he had concerns about Iran spiraling out of control after an American strike.
“What’s the plan?” he said. “What’s the strategy? What’s the desired end state? Iran not having a nuclear weapon is something few people would disagree with. But what is the relationship we would have with Iran in the bigger Middle East? We’re just knee-jerking.’’
One person who sees little similarity between the run up to Iraq and now is David H. Petraeus, the general who commanded American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and led the 101st Airborne Division in the initial invasion in Baghdad. “This is clearly the potential run up to military action, but it’s not the invasion of a country,” he said on Wednesday.
Mr. Trump, he said, should deliver an ultimatum to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, and order him to agree to the complete dismantlement of his nuclear program or face “the complete destruction of your country and your regime and your people.” If the supreme leader rejects the ultimatum, Mr. Petraeus said, “that improves our legitimacy and then reluctantly we blow them to smithereens.”
Mr. Nasr said a hopeful scenario after a strike would be the total destruction of Fordo and an Iran that comes to the table and agrees to a negotiated end to its nuclear program. But if the Iranians respond militarily, as they say they will, Mr. Nasr said that Mr. Trump would be compelled to counterattack, particularly if Americans are killed on U.S. bases in the region.
“And then you don’t know where it’s going to stop, and Trump is really risking a repeat of the Iraq war,” he said. Iran is larger than Iraq, he noted, with a population of roughly 90 million and a far more capable, nationalistic military than the Iraqi army.
John Bolton, a neoconservative who served as one of Mr. Trump’s first term national security advisers, was a big advocate for the war in Iraq, and is now a supporter of a U.S. attack on Iran.
“Bomb Fordo and be done with it,” he said on Wednesday. “I think this is long overdue.’’
Mr. Bolton wrote a book about his time working for Mr. Trump that enraged the president, and Mr. Trump retaliated by revoking Mr. Bolton’s Secret Service protection, despite death threats that Mr. Bolton faces from Iran.
The two no longer speak, so Mr. Bolton said he had no idea what Mr. Trump would decide. He was not sure if Mr. Trump knew himself. But in his experience, Mr. Bolton said, Mr. Trump was “frantic and agitated” in national security crises.
“He talks to a lot of people and he’s looking for somebody who will say the magic words,” Mr. Bolton said. “He’ll hear something and he’ll decide, ‘That’s right, that’s what I believe.’ Which lasts until he has the next conversation.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
11) Brad Lander Tried to Escort Immigrants Facing Arrest. He’s Not Alone.
A growing army of volunteers has mustered at immigration courts during a month-old campaign to detain people showing up for routine hearings.
By Luis Ferré-Sadurní, June 19, 2025
The New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, was arrested by federal authorities on Tuesday outside an immigration court as he escorted a man facing arrest. Credit...Olga Fedorova/Associated Press
When Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, was arrested on Tuesday by federal agents at an immigration courthouse in Manhattan, Mr. Lander said he had simply been trying to escort an immigrant whom agents wanted to detain.
His arrest underscored a trend that has emerged in New York City’s immigration courts: A growing number of volunteers and activists have begun showing up to escort immigrants out of courthouses amid President Trump’s month-old campaign to arrest people showing up for routine hearings.
During the past few weeks, a loose network of immigration activists and advocates has sprung up in the city’s three main immigration courts. Their goal, they say, is to help immigrants who show up without lawyers to navigate a labyrinthine and daunting system, and to accompany migrants past federal officers, who are often masked and not wearing uniforms.
Before, volunteers might have accompanied immigrants to hearings, but only in recent weeks have they had to consider what happens when they leave “because ICE wasn’t waiting on the other side of the door before,” said Camille J. Mackler, the founder and executive director of Immigrant ARC, a collaborative of immigration legal services providers. “We really are just there to bear witness in a nonviolent way.”
Mr. Lander, who is running for mayor, maintained that is what he was trying to do on Tuesday when federal officers approached an immigrant named Edgardo to arrest him. Video shows Mr. Lander appearing to hold on to Edgardo and refusing to let go as officers were trying to arrest the man over Mr. Lander’s protestations.
The Department of Homeland Security saw it differently. The agency accused Mr. Lander of assaulting and obstructing federal officers as they were performing their duties, all to boost his mayoral campaign.
The altercation thrust the work of the volunteer escorts into the national debate about Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, due process rights and the behavior of federal immigration agents.
Why are people accompanying migrants at courthouses?
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency initiated a national operation last month to begin arresting certain immigrants as they leave court hearings.
The new tactic works like this: An immigrant appears for a hearing in an immigration court to determine whether they can lawfully remain in the country. Suddenly, the government prosecutor asks the judge to dismiss the case. The dismissal terminates certain legal protections that the immigrant had, allowing ICE agents in the hallway to apprehend the person and place them in an expedited deportation process.
As ICE began showing up at immigration courts, so did more and more volunteers — activists, faith leaders, lawyers and everyday New Yorkers looking to get involved.
They often provide immigrants, many of whom lack lawyers, with legal guidance, though not necessarily representation. They pass out fliers written in Spanish, French, Arabic and other languages informing them of their rights and explaining the government’s new arrest strategy. And they take down their name, country of origin and case number so that relatives can be contacted if they are detained and to look up where they are being held.
Then, the volunteers try to walk with some migrants — especially those at risk of being arrested because their cases were just dismissed — out of the hearing rooms and past federal officers.
“They are armed, and a lot of them are masked,” said Allison Cutler, an immigration lawyer at the New York Legal Assistance Group, which provides legal help to low-income people, including immigrants. “People are terrified as soon as they step foot out of the elevator.”
What can federal agents do?
ICE officers are responsible for detaining noncitizens who are violating federal immigration laws. But federal officers are generally permitted to arrest anyone who attempts to obstruct an arrest, which is a federal crime.
“We can’t have anyone interfering with our ICE arrest operations,” Todd Lyons, the ICE acting director, told Fox News after Mr. Lander’s arrest.
“We’ve always said that if anyone impedes our arrest operations, no matter who you are, you will be taken into custody,” Mr. Lyons said.
As of Wednesday, the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which had said it was reviewing the incident, had not brought charges against Mr. Lander.
Asked about volunteers accompanying people in immigration courts, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for D.H.S., said, “Anyone who actively obstructs or assaults law enforcement, including U.S. citizens, will of course face consequences which include arrest.”
Have the volunteers prevented arrests?
The main goal of accompanying immigrants, volunteers say, is to provide comfort and safety to people who are often afraid of showing up in court, especially during the string of arrests, and to make sure they are not alone if they are detained.
It is difficult to gauge whether volunteers are deterring ICE agents from moving in for arrests. Before he was detained, Mr. Lander had shown up at the courts twice and escorted out immigrant families who appeared at risk of arrest after their cases were dismissed, walking them by federal agents.
“Does this excessive accompaniment mean that somebody didn’t get detained?” Ms. Mackler, the leader of Immigrant ARC, said. “Obviously, we would love for that to be the outcome, but more important, the goal would be to make sure that the person isn’t alone.”
Federal agents have continued to arrest immigrants even when they are surrounded by volunteers, occasionally leading to volatile altercations between the officers and activists.
Mr. Lander had been appearing at immigration court in conjunction with Immigrant ARC. Ms. Mackler said that her organization had trained volunteers not to act in a way that would provoke or escalate a situation with law enforcement officers.
“Our instructions for our volunteers are to not engage or interfere with law enforcement,” she said. “But I’m also not going to tell a New York City elected official how he shows up to protect New Yorkers.”
Who else is showing up at the courts?
Immigration courts — which are operated by a branch of the Department of Justice called the Executive Office for Immigration Review — are open to the public.
In recent weeks, they have attracted more immigration lawyers looking to help migrants who do not have attorneys and members of the public who observe and document court proceedings to ensure transparency and accountability.
Visitors are generally allowed to sit in during hearings after passing through metal detectors in the lobbies of the three Manhattan courthouses that have immigration courts.
Judges can close certain proceedings to the public, especially those involving people who are sharing sensitive personal information during asylum hearings.
Democratic politicians have descended on the courthouse at 26 Federal Plaza, which also houses ICE offices where detained immigrants have sometimes been held for days in overcrowded conditions.
On Wednesday, Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Dan Goldman, both Democrats, sought to conduct an oversight visit to the 10th floor but were denied access by the ICE deputy field office director, William Joyce.
“Because we were told not to,” Mr. Joyce told the congressmen during an exchange in the lobby.
“We will continue to go up the chain, and we will get answers,” Mr. Goldman later said at a news conference.
Nate Schweber contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
12) Appeals Court Lets Trump Keep Control of California National Guard in L.A.
A panel rejected a lower court’s finding that it was likely illegal for President Trump to use state troops to protect immigration agents from protests.
By Charlie Savage and Laurel Rosenhall, Published June 19, 2025, Updated June 20, 2025
National Guard troops were stationed in front of the Metropolitan Detention Center last week. Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times
A federal appeals court on Thursday cleared the way for President Trump to keep using the National Guard to respond to immigration protests in Los Angeles, declaring that a judge in San Francisco erred last week when he ordered Mr. Trump to return control of the troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
In a unanimous, 38-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the conditions in Los Angeles were sufficient for Mr. Trump to decide that he needed to take federal control of California’s National Guard and deploy it to ensure that federal immigration laws would be enforced.
A lower-court judge had concluded that the protests were not severe enough for Mr. Trump to use a rarely-triggered law to federalize the National Guard over Mr. Newsom’s objections. But the panel, which included two appointees of Mr. Trump and one of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., disagreed with the lower court.
“Affording appropriate deference to the president’s determination, we conclude that he likely acted within his authority in federalizing the National Guard,” the court wrote, in an unsigned opinion on behalf of the entire panel.
The ruling was not a surprise. During a 65-minute hearing on Tuesday, the panel’s questions and statements had telegraphed that all three judges — Mark J. Bennett, Eric D. Miller and Jennifer Sung — were inclined to let Mr. Trump keep controlling the Guard for now, while litigation continues to play out over California’s challenge to his move.
Mr. Trump praised the decision, saying in a Truth Social post late Thursday that it supported his argument for using the National Guard “all over the United States” if local law enforcement can’t “get the job done.”
Mr. Newsom, in a response on Thursday, focused on how the appeals court had rejected the Trump administration’s argument that a president’s decision to federalize the National Guard could not be reviewed by a judge.
“The president is not a king and is not above the law,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump’s authoritarian use of U.S. military soldiers against citizens.”
The Trump administration had urged the appeals court to find that the judiciary could not review Mr. Trump’s decision to take control of a state’s National Guard under the statute he invoked, which sets conditions like if there is a rebellion against governmental authority that impedes the enforcement of federal law.
The appeals court declined to go that far.
Supreme Court precedent “does not compel us to accept the federal government’s position that the president could federalize the National Guard based on no evidence whatsoever, and that courts would be unable to review a decision that was obviously absurd or made in bad faith,” the appeals court wrote.
But, the judges said, the violent actions of some protesters in Los Angeles had hindered immigration enforcement, and that was sufficient for the judiciary to defer to Mr. Trump’s decision to invoke the call-up statute.
The appeals court also rejected the state’s contention that the call-up order was illegal because Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, sent the directive to a general in charge of the National Guard, even though the statute says any such edict must go “through” the governor. The court said the general was Governor Newsom’s agent, and that was good enough.
“Even if there were a procedural violation, that would not justify the scope of relief provided by the district court’s” order stripping Mr. Trump of control of the guard, the ruling added.
The state could choose to ask the full appeals court to rehear the matter, or it could directly ask the Supreme Court to intervene. But the state might also just move on from the current part of the dispute, since the ruling on Thursday pertains to a short-lived temporary restraining order that will soon be obsolete anyway.
Either way, litigation in the case is set to return on Friday to the San Francisco courtroom of a Federal District Court judge, Charles Breyer, for a hearing. He is weighing whether to issue a more durable preliminary injunction restricting what Mr. Trump can do with some 4,000 National Guard troops or 700 active-duty Marines his administration has also deployed into the city.
Judge Breyer’s temporary restraining order concerned only the National Guard and whether it was lawful for Mr. Trump to mobilize them under federal control. At the hearing on Friday, he is also set to address a state request to limit troops under federal control to guarding federal buildings, and to bar them from accompanying Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the workplace raids that sparked the protests.
That request centers on a 19th-century law, the Posse Comitatus Act, that generally makes it illegal to use the military for domestic law enforcement. The Trump administration has argued that the troops are not themselves performing law enforcement tasks, but rather are protecting civilian agents who are trying to arrest undocumented migrants.
Mr. Hegseth suggested that he might not obey a ruling from the lower court, telling senators on the Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that he doesn’t “believe district courts should be setting national security policy.”
Conditions in Los Angeles have calmed significantly over the past week, and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles announced on Tuesday that she was ending the downtown curfew, a week after it had first been imposed. She said local law enforcement efforts have been “largely successful” at reimposing order.
California officials have said from the beginning that local and state police could handle the protesters, and that Mr. Trump’s decision to send in federal troops only inflamed matters. But speaking with reporters outside the White House on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he felt empowered to send troops anywhere violent protests erupt.
“We did a great job. We quelled that thing,” the president said of the demonstrations in Los Angeles. “And the fact that we are even there thinking about going in, they won’t bother with it anymore. They’ll go someplace else. But we’ll be there, too. We’ll be wherever they go.”
Greg Jaffe contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
13) This Loophole Buried in Trump’s Bill Is Anything but Beautiful
By Brad Setser, June 20, 2025
Mr. Setser served as an official in the Treasury Department in the Obama administration.
Paulo Nunes dos Santos/Bloomberg, via Getty Images
It is hard to think of a less coherent pair of policies: President Trump’s tax policy encourages the very offshoring that his tariffs are intended to stop.
Take the more than $600 billion pharmaceutical industry. Over the past few months, Mr. Trump and his associates have repeatedly criticized companies’ moves to offshore much drug making, particularly to Ireland. “We can’t be beholden and rely upon foreign countries for fundamental things that we need,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on April 13.
But the tax incentives in Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax and spending package helped generate this problem in the first place — a problem that would continue under the Republican bill under consideration. Mr. Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act created a loophole that made it far more profitable for the pharmaceutical giants, including Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Merck, to manufacture some of their most profitable drugs in Ireland. Unsurprisingly, that is what happened, with America’s imports of pharmaceuticals soaring to $250 billion in 2024, way up from $110 billion in 2016.
American companies now report earning about $350 billion in profits annually in the world’s major centers of corporate tax avoidance, which include Ireland, Luxembourg, Singapore and a handful of others. And while the major drug companies have mastered the art of taking advantage of the loopholes created by the 2017 law, semiconductor equipment producers and other Big Tech companies use the same special tax break.
Fortunately, it isn’t too late to make sensible changes that would raise revenue and get rid of this strange incentive.
Republicans tend to blame Ireland’s lower corporate tax rate for the proliferation of corporate tax avoidance, but the real incentive comes from this obscure corner of our tax code. It offers a far lower 10.5 percent tax rate for global profits if a global company moves the profits from its intellectual property offshore. The tax rate for domestic profits, in contrast, is 21 percent. The tax break was created by Republicans who were searching for a compromise that would stop companies from moving their headquarters overseas without fully ending tax competition and the associated pressure on U.S. corporate tax rates.
That provision did stop the trend of companies moving their headquarters overseas. But it also didn’t take long for pharmaceutical companies to realize that they could cut their total tax bill in half by transferring their intellectual property (like, say, a patent for a new drug) to a subsidiary overseas. And to satisfy a different and equally obscure provision of the tax code, they needed to move their manufacturing as well. Soon, Big Pharma began reporting to the I.R.S. that it earned almost all of its income abroad. They have all but stopped paying domestic corporate taxes.
Apple uses the same 2017 provision in a different way, and thanks to the lower tax rate on its foreign sales, its overall tax rate has been around 15 percent in a typical year. And it is likely that Apple is now paying the largest share of its corporate tax in Ireland — a country where it doesn’t make or sell very much.
Mr. Trump wants to solve these problems — and almost every problem — with tariffs. But tariffs are an indiscriminate tool. They risk raising the price of all medicines and certainly will increase the prices of many generic medicines that are far more affordable than their patent-protected cousins. Generic medicines are sold at razor-thin margins, so their makers cannot eat the tariff out of their profits. A far better policy would be to just get rid of these strange tax quirks in the “big, beautiful bill” to begin with. Passing the Close the Round-Tripping Loophole Act that the Senate Finance Committee members Ron Wyden, Mark Warner, Raphael Warnock and Peter Welch just introduced would be a very welcome step in the right direction.
Fixing the tax code is about putting the interest of the United States ahead of the interest of large global companies. It doesn’t make sense for an “America First” president to push with one lever and pull with another. Better to get the tax policy right at the start.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
14) Pro-Palestinian Activists Break Into U.K.’s Biggest Air Base in Security Breach
The Palestine Action group said two of its members had entered R.A.F. Brize Norton on electric scooters and sprayed red paint in aircraft engines and on the runway.
By Lizzie Dearden, Reporting from London, June 20, 2025
R.A.F. Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, southern England, houses about 5,800 service personnel. Credit...Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In a startling breach of security, activists from a Pro-Palestinian group on Friday broke into Britain’s largest air force base and damaged two aircraft in what they said was a protest against the country’s military support for Israel.
The group, called Palestine Action, posted footage online showing two people using electric scooters to move around the base, R.A.F. Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, which is used for overseas operations.
In a statement, Palestine Action said that two activists had sprayed red paint into the turbine engines of two Airbus Voyagers and damaged them with crowbars, as well as spraying more red paint on the runway to “symbolize Palestinian bloodshed.” The group said that the two people who carried out the vandalism “managed to evade security and arrest” during the incursion in the early hours of Friday morning.
In a statement, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, called the incident “disgraceful,” saying: “Our Armed Forces represent the very best of Britain and put their lives on the line for us every day. It is our responsibility to support those who defend us.”
Palestine Action has carried out a series of acts of vandalism at high-profile and supposedly secure locations, including defense manufacturers.
Thames Valley Police, the force responsible for the area, said in a statement that officers were working with the Ministry of Defense and with the R.A.F. to investigate. Inquiries “are ongoing to locate and arrest those responsible,” the force noted.
In a statement, the Ministry of Defense said, “We strongly condemn this vandalism of Royal Air Force assets. We are working closely with the police who are investigating.”
The ministry did not immediately respond to a question on whether it would open a review of security at the site.
Grant Shapps, a former British defense secretary, wrote on social media that there needed to be a “full security review.”
“Storming an RAF base isn’t protest — it’s a national security breach,” he wrote. “The blame lies squarely with these reckless activists, but ministers must now explain how on earth it was allowed to happen.”
In its statement on Friday, Palestine Action claimed that the targeted planes “can carry military cargo and are used to refuel” military aircraft, including fighter jets, from the British, Israeli and militaries.
But Greg Bagwell, a former senior R.A.F. commander and a fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said the planes damaged by the group were incompatible with Israeli fighter aircraft and could not be used to refuel them.
“They couldn’t have gotten a more wrong aircraft,” he said in an interview. “They have targeted aircraft that are not the aircraft they think they are.”
The Israeli Air Force flies American-built fighter planes such as the F-15, the F-16 and the F-35A, Mr. Bagwell said, all of which can only be fueled with a boom-style method that is not used by the planes that were damaged on Friday.
Palestine Action has previously conducted vandalism and protests at sites in Britain operated by the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems and at companies with links to that firm, and also at other defense companies.
Several activists have been prosecuted over the protests, including five people who were imprisoned last year for causing about $1.3 million of damage to a weapons equipment factory in Glasgow in June 2022.
Britain’s largest R.A.F. base, Brize Norton houses about 5,800 service personnel, 300 civilian staff members and 1,200 contractors.
Mr. Bagwell said that he believed many military bases around the world were vulnerable to the kind of intrusion the group made on Friday.
“Airfields are large pieces of real estate that have miles of fence line,” he said. “It’s not an easy piece of territory to protect everywhere. Anybody with a wire cutter or ladders could be able to get in.”
Adding more human protection or electronic monitoring along every part of a major military base like Brize Norton would be very expensive. But Mr. Bagwell said that officials needed to take the risk seriously.
He said that the breach showed that it would not have been difficult for terrorists or agents of a foreign government to have done something more sinister at the base.
“It was exactly the sort of activity that the likes of Russia and Iran would like to promote,” he said. “This time it was a protester, but next time it could be someone who was doing something on behalf of others.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
15) Famine and Genocide are Changing Society in Gaza
By Tareq S. Hajjaj
—Mondoweiss, June 19, 2025
Palestinians carry food parcel, distributed by ‘Gaza Humanitarian Relief Foundation’ as people struggle with hunger during ongoing Israeli attacks in Gaza City on June 16, 2025. Photo by Omar Ashtawy APAImages
Ahmad Mosabih, 16, carried what he deemed suitable for a journey that was not meant for someone his age. He took an iron hammer, fifty centimeters long, placed a utility knife in his pocket, and left his home at 3 a.m. with one goal: to obtain a sack of flour.
Ahmad had been preparing for this trip since the night before. Once he was ready at dawn, he set out from the western part of Gaza City, from the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, heading southwest towards the al-Nabulsi roundabout. This location is the gateway to northern Gaza through which aid trucks pass. The trucks belong to merchants, commercial companies, or humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza. Regardless of who is operating them, they’re Ahmad’s only hope for a temporary lifeline.
The journey from Tal al-Hawa to the al-Nabulsi roundabout takes just under an hour. Ahmad, accompanied by some of his relatives and neighbors, found thousands of people waiting when they arrived, scattered into groups and looking out apprehensively for any approaching truck. Everyone was trying to get food, but they were also well aware of the dangers: the possibility of gunfire by Israeli forces — which has become a daily occurrence — and the threat of theft or robbery from other Gazans if they do manage to secure a sack of flour.
Ahmad, who later felt immense pride for returning safely, did not feel that pride as he stood among the crowd waiting for flour, but life had forced his hand.
The war has erased the details of social life and left nothing but destruction, and a harrowing daily journey in the attempt to survive. This has been the reality for the thousands of Palestinians making the harrowing trip each day to the aid distribution centers run by the Israeli-backed and U.S.-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and every time Israeli forces open fire on the crowds and commit another aid massacre.
Ahmad returned to his displacement shelter in Tal al-Hawa at noon, carrying a sack of flour. That was his victory. Yet the transformations in Ahmad’s life extend far beyond securing food, and all of Gaza’s population has undergone the same transformation.
Societal transformation: fighting for survival
Since the war began, the majority of Gaza’s residents have lived in displacement centers, struggling each day to access the bare minimum of life’s necessities. Famine takes hold, eases slightly, then recurs, but the whole time, the killing never stops.
Living under such conditions for prolonged periods has changed society. The new society that is emerging in Gaza, one born under bombardment and annihilation, is all about fighting for food and survival.
“What would drive me to go on a journey like this?” Ahmad muses. “What would make me wake up so early in the morning and set off on a journey filled with death? A stray bullet could hit me. Or maybe a missile like the one that the Israeli army fires on hungry people.”
“I might survive the army and make it home, but I might find a thief waiting for me,” Ahmad continues. “I’ve learned through this war that if you are not strong, your bread will be taken by those stronger than you.”
“This war has turned us into monsters,” Ahmad says. “This was never our life. This was never our nature. This was not what we woke up to do every day.”
Ahmad talks about how life was different, how homes were full of food, and the land was always cultivated. “Now our land is planted with tanks, missiles, and the blood of the fallen,” he says.
He no longer has the luxury of thinking about the future. When asked about it, he defines “the future” as the next day. “If I survive today, I may talk about tomorrow, but there’s no guarantee I’ll live to see it.”
To live knowing you are being exterminated
Nabil Hammou, 39, can be identified by a circular dust stain on his pants left from sitting on the sidewalk all day. He laments how this is not the life he once knew.
A university graduate with a master’s degree, Nabil used to work at a private company, but his life was turned upside down when his home in Shuja’iyya was destroyed, after which he moved in with his sister-in-law in al-Wihda Street in Western Gaza City.
Despite the hardship, Nabil considers himself fortunate to have found a roof after the bombing and that he did not end up in a tent. Yet driven by embarrassment, he feels compelled to leave the house from morning to night, spending his day outside and only returning to sleep beside his family at night.
To him, this daily sacrifice gives his sister-in-law the space and privacy she deserves. He gives her the day and takes the night.
“Look at us,” says Nabil. “I sometimes feel ashamed when people pass by and see me sitting in the same place all day. No one knows why I’m here. Some think I’m a beggar. Others assume I have no place to go. And in truth, I don’t.”
Nabil chooses the street so he isn’t a burden on those hosting him. As he sits, others join him from among the displaced. It would seem he is not the only person in this situation.
Dozens of people now spend their days walking the streets, not because they have nothing to do, but because they have nowhere else to go. Many stay with relatives temporarily in overcrowded homes or live in tents unfit for daytime shelter in the extreme heat. They end up on the streets and in public spaces, passing the time away outside walls that are not theirs.
But the new social structure emerges most starkly in the tents. Encampments for the displaced hold no privacy. Thin pieces of fabric separate one family from another, and bathing and using the restroom require long waits. Children are born into hunger and raised in a nothingness characterized by want.
In the coastal Mawasi area of Khan Younis, Amina al-Sayyed, 52, sits in her tents and describes the societal changes she has observed. “Killing is now routine,” she says. “Not an hour passes without hearing that someone was martyred or a whole family has been wiped out. It shapes our children’s consciousness. It’s all they talk about.”
“Not long ago, my five-year-old son witnessed a massacre in Mawasi Khan Younis,” she continues. “He came to me and said, ‘I saw a salad of people.’ That expression crushed me, the way he described it. That’s how he processed the scattered and torn bodies.”
She explains that her children’s lives have drastically changed. Most of their days are spent waiting in lines: bread lines, food distribution lines, aid lines.
“Their lives have changed — or, more accurately, their childhoods are over,” Amina explains. “They are now all responsible for things they cannot provide — food and safety.”
Amina says her children go to sleep every night afraid, and not a day has passed when she has seen them sleep peacefully. But the most devastating thing, she says, is to continue living knowing you are being actively exterminated, and being unable to stop it.
“We are being exterminated… and we know we are being exterminated,” Amina says. “The world knows it, it sees it. But it continues.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
