*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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) Over 20 Killed Near Aid Distribution Site in Gaza, Palestinian Health Officials Say
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack. The Israeli military denied any of its fire had harmed people within the site.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, June 1, 2025
Displaced Palestinians returning on Sunday from a food distribution center in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
At least 20 people were killed on Sunday in southern Gaza near an aid distribution site, according to local health officials, as hungry Palestinians gathered en masse hoping to receive some food from the facility.
It was not immediately clear who had opened fire in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its paramedics had evacuated at least 23 killed and 23 wounded from the area, all with gunshot wounds. In a statement, Gaza’s health ministry gave a higher toll of 31.
The Israeli military said it was not aware of any injuries caused by Israeli fire “within the humanitarian aid site,” but did not immediately rule out shooting nearby. Hamas accused Israeli forces of attacking people who had gathered to seek food. The New York Times could not verify the circumstances of the attack.
Over the past week, Israel has launched a contentious plan to overhaul aid distribution in Gaza. Israeli officials say the new system — run mainly by American contractors — of four sites in southern Gaza would prevent Hamas from seizing the food, fuel and other goods, but aid agencies have criticized the initiative.
Huge crowds of Gazans have headed for the new aid sites, hoping to receive a box of food supplies. While some days have gone relatively smoothly, there have also been chaotic scenes, including one instance in which Israeli forces fired what they described as warning shots.
The United Nations and other major humanitarian relief groups have boycotted the sites, accusing Israel of wielding aid as part of its military strategy. U.N. officials said there was little evidence that Hamas systematically diverted relief. Critics in Israel have warned the effort could be the first step toward establishing formal Israeli rule over Gaza.
The new arrangement was drawn up by Israeli military officials and their associates and stipulates that Israeli forces secure the perimeter of four aid sites in southern Gaza. U.S. security contractors are overseeing the distribution of boxes of food there as part of the newly-created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
On Sunday, the foundation reiterated that it was unaware of any attacks in or around its distribution sites. “Our aid was again distributed today without incident,” the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said, adding that reports to the contrary were “fomented by Hamas.”
The violence took place a day after the Trump administration rejected Hamas’s response to a cease-fire proposal. On Saturday night, the United States had suggested a two-month truce to free hostages. Hamas officials argued that the proposal did not go far enough to ensure that the cease-fire would become permanent, an issue that has long been the main sticking point with Israel in the truce talks.
Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Mideast envoy, denounced Hamas’s response as totally unacceptable, saying it “only takes us backward.”
For more than two months, the Israeli authorities imposed a near-total blockade on Gaza, stopping shipments of food, fuel and medicine from entering the enclave in what they called an attempt to pressure Hamas over stalled cease-fire talks.
Since the restrictions were imposed, many Gazans have gone hungry as stockpiles of food dwindled. Communal soup kitchens closed and doctors have reported increasing amounts of malnutrition, including among children. Israel finally began relaxing the ban on humanitarian aid in mid-May.
On Tuesday, chaos erupted at a distribution site in what remained of Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood. Large groups of Palestinians — forced to crowd into small, fenced-in corridors — burst through barriers into the area.
The Israeli military said soldiers fired “warning shots in the area outside the compound” in an effort to restore control. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation denied any “civilians or individuals involved with the distribution of aid” were harmed in the incident.
The International Committee of the Red Cross later reported that its nearby field hospital had received about 48 people — including women and children — suffering from gunshot wounds on Tuesday night. The organization did not say whether the two incidents were connected.
Reporting was contributed by Gabby Sobelman, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Iyad Abuheweila and Myra Noveck.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
2) U.S. Says Hamas Response to Gaza Cease-Fire Proposal ‘Only Takes Us Backward’
Officials said Hamas was seeking changes on guarantees for a permanent end to war. That has long been the core sticking point with Israel.
By Aaron Boxerman, Ronen Bergman and Abu Bakr Bashir, May 31, 2025
Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem, Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv and Abu Bakr Bashir from London.
Displaced Palestinians north of Gaza City on Friday. Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
The White House denounced Hamas’s response on Saturday to a new American cease-fire proposal as totally unacceptable and said it “only takes us backward” after the group sought firmer guarantees that the deal would lead to a permanent end to the war.
Under the U.S. proposal, which was floated by Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Mideast envoy, Israel and Hamas would halt the fighting in Gaza for at least 60 days, during which some hostages would be freed in exchange for Palestinians jailed by Israel. And there would be further U.S.-backed negotiations on a permanent end to the war.
That issue has long been the core sticking point in the truce negotiations. Hamas has been willing to free the remaining Israeli and foreign captives in Gaza as part of a broader deal to end the war. Israel has vowed to continue fighting until Hamas lays down its arms and sends it leaders into exile.
Mr. Witkoff laid the blame on Hamas for the impasse, saying in a statement that its response “only takes us backward.” He said Hamas should accept the U.S. framework as the basis for further intensive negotiations, “which we can begin immediately this coming week.”
A Hamas official outside of Gaza had said earlier on Saturday that the group was seeking amendments to the Witkoff proposal around the guarantees for ending the war decisively.
An Israeli official said Hamas had demanded stronger guarantees that the temporary truce would pave the way for the end of the conflict that began almost 20 months ago. Both the Israeli and the Hamas officials requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel says he is willing to reach a temporary cease-fire with Hamas to free hostages, he has ruled out ending the war unless the group meets Israel’s conditions — which the group has rebuffed for the time being. Mr. Netanyahu’s office released a statement on Saturday saying Hamas was “persisting in its refusal.”
U.S. officials and other mediators have tried to cobble together a new truce since Israel ended the last cease-fire with Hamas in mid-March. But they have struggled to overcome the basic divide in Israel and Hamas’s war aims.
Hamas said on Saturday that it had submitted an answer to the proposal that aimed to achieve a permanent cease-fire, a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and ensure the flow of aid to desperate and hungry Palestinians in Gaza. The wording indicated that the group was seeking more than the current proposal’s guarantee of a temporary pause in hostilities.
The group said if there was agreement, it would turn over 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 others in exchange for an agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners.
About 20 living hostages and the bodies of more than 30 others are believed to still be in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel ended a two-month cease-fire in mid-March — citing a deadlock in talks on the next steps in the truce. Israeli forces then resumed attacks in Gaza while blockading humanitarian aid from entering the enclave, a ban that Israel relaxed only last week.
While Israel and Hamas have both dug into their respective bargaining positions, both sides have also faced rising international pressure lately to halt the fighting.
Palestinians in Gaza, furious and exhausted after more than a year of war, hunger and bombardment, have held rare protests against Hamas calling for the group to leave the enclave it has ruled since 2007. And since resuming its offensive in March, Israel has killed several senior Hamas leaders in Gaza.
On Saturday night, the Israeli military announced that it had killed Muhammad Sinwar, one of Hamas’s top remaining military leaders in Gaza, in airstrikes earlier this month. Mr. Sinwar was the brother of Yahya Sinwar, the former Hamas leader killed by Israeli forces last year and an architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel that ignited the war.
There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas. The Palestinian group has shied away from immediately announcing the deaths of its fighters and commanders during the war.
Meanwhile, Israel’s traditional allies, including the Trump administration, have expressed growing impatience and even anger over the protracted war, the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza that have created a risk of famine, and Israel’s threats to significantly widen the offensive against Hamas.
Israel went to war after Hamas-led Palestinian militants launched the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 as hostages, mostly civilians. Israel’s devastating assault in Gaza has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
3) M.I.T. Class President Barred From Graduation Ceremony After Pro-Palestinian Speech
According to the school, the student delivered a speech, which denounced M.I.T.’s ties to Israel, that had not been preapproved.
By John Branch, May 31, 2025
At a schoolwide ceremony on Thursday at the institute’s campus in Cambridge, Mass., Megha Vemuri commended students who protested on behalf of Palestinians and denounced M.I.T.’s ties with Israel. Credit...Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The 2025 class president of M.I.T. was barred from a graduation ceremony on Friday after delivering a pro-Palestinian speech during a commencement event the day before. The student, Megha Vemuri, is the latest to face discipline after using a graduation as a forum to protest Israel’s war in Gaza.
At a universitywide ceremony on Thursday at M.I.T.’s campus in Cambridge, Mass., Ms. Vemuri commended students who protested on behalf of Palestinians and denounced M.I.T.’s ties with Israel. The Boston Globe reported last year that based on data from the U.S. Department of Education, M.I.T. reported receiving $2.8 million in grants, gifts and contracts from Israeli entities between 2020 and 2024.
School officials confirmed that they later told Ms. Vemuri that she was prohibited from attending the undergraduate ceremony on Friday.
“MIT supports free expression but stands by its decision, which was in response to the individual deliberately and repeatedly misleading Commencement organizers and leading a protest from the stage,” a school spokesperson said in a statement.
The school said that Ms. Vemuri, who grew up in Georgia, will receive her degree. Sarat Vemuri, her father, said that she was a double major, in computation and cognition and linguistics, and was told that she will receive her diploma by mail.
He otherwise referred questions to his daughter, who provided a statement saying that she was not disappointed to miss Friday’s ceremony.
“I see no need for me to walk across the stage of an institution that is complicit in this genocide,” she wrote.
She added that she was “disappointed” in M.I.T.’s response, saying school officials “massively overstepped their roles to punish me without merit or due process.”
College campuses have been contending with protest encampments and accusations of antisemitism since the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza. Those tensions, coupled with the Trump administration’s attacks on universities, have left some school communities wrestling with how to balance civility and safety with open expression and debate.
And at some schools students looking to make a statement have seized on end-of-year ceremonies as a powerful platform, delivering speeches that diverged from the remarks they had told school officials they would make.
At New York University in mid-May, officials withheld a diploma from, a student, Logan Rozos, after he referred to “the atrocities currently happening in Palestine” in a commencement speech.
At George Washington University, a graduate named Cecilia Culver used her speech to urge others to not donate to the school and repeated requests for it to divest from companies doing business in Israel. The university barred her from campus and university-sponsored events.
At M.I.T., Ms. Vemuri was one of nine speakers at Thursday’s ONEMIT Commencement Ceremony.
Ms. Vemuri’s speech, read from wrinkled sheets of paper, was about four minutes long and addressed her classmates and some of their efforts to protest Israel.
“You showed the world that M.I.T. wants a free Palestine,” she said, adding, “the M.I.T. community that I know would never tolerate a genocide.”
After Ms. Vemuri left the dais to cheers, Sally Kornbluth, the school president, spoke next. She paused as some in the audience chanted.
“OK, listen folks,” she said. “At M.I.T., we believe in freedom of expression. But today is about the graduates.”
Ms. Kornbluth has found herself on this type of tightrope before. In December 2023, she was one of three university presidents called to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The committee pressed the officials over their responses to campus protests and allegations of antisemitism.
Ms. Kornbluth managed to avoid the level of criticism levied at Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, who were soon replaced by their schools.
Throughout most of the 2023-24 school year, pro-Palestinian encampments and tense standoffs played out on many campuses across the country. Last year’s graduation ceremonies were often used as forums for protest, including orchestrated walkouts. Generally, protesters and speakers were not disciplined.
But universities, especially elite ones like M.I.T. and its Cambridge neighbor, Harvard, have been under even more pressure since President Trump took office in January. His administration is yanking federal funding for grants and research, launching investigations into diversity programs and trying to cut international enrollment.
Schools everywhere feel the threat, and hope to avoid the government’s scrutiny.
Ms. Vemuri’s speech prompted criticism from the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, a key ally of President Trump.
“Ignorant. Hateful. Morally bankrupt. Where is the shame—or appropriate response from the institution?” he wrote on X. “Have your children avoid MIT & the Ivy League at all costs.”
Jack Begg contributed research.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
4) U.K. Faces Most Serious Military Threat Since Cold War, Starmer Says
Prime Minister Keir Starmer cited “growing Russian aggression” as he outlined ambitious rearmament plans, including building up to 12 attack submarines.
By Stephen Castle and Mark Landler, Reporting from London, June 2, 2025
Prime Minister Keir Starmer walking past a Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarine at a shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, England, in March. Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain promised on Monday to bring his country to “war-fighting readiness” as he announced plans to build up to 12 new attack submarines and invest billions of pounds in nuclear and other weaponry as part of new military strategy for a more dangerous world.
“The threat we now face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War,” Mr. Starmer said at a media conference on Monday morning, pointing to “war in Europe, new nuclear risks, daily cyberattacks,” and “growing Russian aggression,” in British waters and skies.
“I believe that the best way to deter conflict is to prepare for it,” Mr. Starmer added, speaking at an industrial facility in Glasgow, ahead of the release of the government’s strategic defense review, which will outline plans to increase production of drones and increase stockpiles of munitions and equipment.
Britain’s ambitious rearmament plan comes against the gathering clouds of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, American disengagement from Europe and rising global tensions. Mr. Starmer presented his plans hours after one of the most intense aerial bombardments of the three-year war, with Ukrainian drones striking air bases deep in Russian territory.
The review, led by George Robertson, a former secretary general of NATO, was set up last year soon after Mr. Starmer won a general election. But its task was given fresh urgency amid growing evidence of President Trump’s weakened commitment to European security and his ambivalent and at times ingratiating attitude toward President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
The review is scheduled for release on Monday afternoon but among the recommendations made public in advance by the government were the procurement of up to 7,000 British-built long-range weapons and the creation of a new cybercommand, alongside an investment of a billion pounds, equivalent to $1.35 billion, in digital capability.
Money will be invested in protecting critical British underwater infrastructure as well as in drones which have proved highly effective in the war in Ukraine.
More than £1.5 billion of additional funding will be put into repairing and renewing housing for the military as the government aims to help recruitment and retention in the British Army, where numbers have fallen to the lowest level since the Napoleonic era.
On Monday, the government stressed the benefits for the domestic economy of investing in rearmament, but the question hanging over the new strategy is how much, in fiscally strapped times, the British government can afford to spend.
Mr. Starmer has promised to increase Britain’s outlay to 2.5 percent of gross national product, paying for it by diverting resources from overseas aid development. Speaking to the BBC, he said Britain needed “to go on from there,” but added that he could not set a precise date for when that number would rise to 3 percent until he was sure of exactly where the money would come from.
In a statement, the government said its conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarine fleet would be significantly expanded, with up to 12 new vessels to be built as part of a security alliance with the United States and Australia, known as Aukus, which is designed to counter China’s growing influence.
The government described the new strategy as a “landmark shift in our deterrence and defense: moving to warfighting readiness to deter threats and strengthen security in the Euro Atlantic area.”
Speaking on Monday, Mr. Starmer was at pains to restate Britain’s commitment to NATO and the trans-Atlantic alliance, a strategy he has pursued by assiduously cultivating Mr. Trump on security and trade issues.
But among the eye-catching recommendations expected from the review is one to consider purchasing fighter jets capable of firing tactical nuclear weapons, a potential harbinger of declining British dependence on the American nuclear umbrella.
Writing on social media, Mike Martin, a lawmaker for the Liberal Democrats and a military veteran, said that the details known so far about the review were a “sign that the U.K. government no longer fully trusts the Americans to be engaged in European security.”
He wrote: “The drop dead giveaway is the air dropped nuclear weapons,” adding that “this is a key capability that the US provides that enables nuclear escalation without going all the way up to destroying Moscow with nuclear weapons fired from our submarines.”
British governments have produced defense reviews at least once a decade since World War II: The last one was conducted in 2021 and updated in 2023.
Mr. Robertson, who is now a member of the House of Lords, was assisted by Fiona Hill, a former adviser to the first Trump administration, and Richard Barrons, a former deputy chief of Britain’s defense staff. Ms. Hill, a British-born expert on Russia, emerged as a vocal critic of Mr. Trump’s dealings with Mr. Putin after she left the National Security Council in July 2019.
The tone of the latest document is likely to be different from that produced four years ago in which the Conservative government of Boris Johnson promised to bind itself closer to the United States. That review laid out Mr. Johnson’s vision of a post-Brexit “Global Britain,” one that his successors largely discarded and which Mr. Starmer has replaced with an effort to reset ties with the European Union.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
5) Gaza Cease-Fire Negotiations Hit a New Impasse Over an Old Dispute
For 18 months, Hamas has pushed for a permanent truce while Israel has held out for a temporary one. That wide gap has stymied efforts to end the war.
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, June 2, 2025
Israeli military strikes on Gaza have added to the suffering of Palestinian civilians as cease-fire talks have dragged on. Credit...Jehad Alshrafi/Associated Press
Through nearly 20 months of war in Gaza, a changing carousel of mediators and negotiators have tried — and failed — to reach a lasting truce between Hamas and Israel. William J. Burns and Brett McGurk led the way for the Biden administration, before Steve Witkoff tried on behalf of President Trump.
Whoever the mediator, one intractable dispute has consistently prevented a deal. Hamas wants a permanent cease-fire that would essentially allow the group to retain influence in postwar Gaza. Israel wants only a temporary deal that would allow it to renew its failed efforts to defeat Hamas.
Now, once again, that fundamental difference is the main obstacle to a new truce. After a renewed flurry of mediation from Mr. Witkoff and his team last week, Hamas sought stronger guarantees that any new cease-fire would evolve into a permanent cessation of hostilities.
Though the proposed new deal would officially last for 60 days, Hamas pushed for a clause that guaranteed “the continuation of negotiations until a permanent agreement is reached.” That wording would technically allow for the 60-day cease-fire to be extended indefinitely, scuppering Israeli hopes of returning to battle.
Hamas’s demand drew a familiar response from Israel. “Hamas’s response is totally unacceptable and is a step backward,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
This new version of an old dispute has not immediately collapsed the negotiations. Egypt and Qatar, the two main Arab mediators, released a joint statement on Sunday in which they pledged “to intensify efforts to overcome the obstacles facing the negotiations.”
Even as Mr. Witkoff condemned Hamas’s response, saying that it “only takes us backward,” he suggested on social media that talks over the details of a truce could “begin immediately this coming week” if the group softened its position.
Hamas subsequently said it was ready “to immediately begin a round of indirect negotiations to reach an agreement on the points of contention.” But, as ever, it included a caveat: those negotiations must lead “to a permanent cease-fire and a full withdrawal of the occupation forces.”
As has been the case throughout the war, much will depend on the United States’ willingness to push Israel and Hamas to reach a compromise. It was President Trump’s pressure that convinced Mr. Netanyahu to accept a temporary truce in January. Mr. Netanyahu then broke the cease-fire two months later after consulting the Trump administration, a White House spokesman said at the time.
It is hard to foresee an imminent breakthrough unless one side crosses the red lines that they have consistently set since the final weeks of 2023. Israeli officials have suggested they could agree to a permanent truce if Hamas disarmed and its leaders left Gaza for exile. While some Hamas officials have expressed openness to some kind of compromise over their weapons, the group has publicly rejected the premise.
In the meantime, Palestinian civilians in Gaza face growing hardship, amid continuing Israeli airstrikes, widespread food shortages, and a chaotic start to a new Israeli-backed aid distribution scheme. And in Israel, the families of hostages held in Gaza are no closer to seeing their loved ones. More than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel resumed fighting in March, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
On both sides, internal dynamics could prove decisive in shaping what happens next. Growing dissent against Hamas could encourage the group to agree to a temporary truce to shore up its short-term control over Gaza. A rise in looting, as well as Israel’s assassination of key Hamas leaders, have highlighted the group’s weakening grip on the territory.
In Israel, Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition could collapse if he agrees to end the war. But it is unclear if he can drag out the conflict indefinitely. The Israeli military is mainly staffed by reservists who have spent much of the last 20 months away from their day jobs and families.
Many of them are exhausted and, if the war continues, there are growing concerns that a significant number will refuse to serve as often or for such long stretches. That would make it hard for Israel’s military leadership to staff ground operations, let alone implement a full occupation that would require tens of thousands of troops to sustain.
Aaron Boxerman and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
6) Consumers Are Financing Their Groceries. What Does It Say About the Economy?
Increased use of “buy now, pay later” loans may signal shifting consumer habits, but could also be a troubling sign of financial stress.
By Julie Creswell, June 2, 2025
“Food prices are 28 percent higher than they were in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those continued high prices are particularly tough for lower-income households, which spent roughly a third of their after-tax income on food in 2023, compared with 13.5 percent for middle-income households, according to the Department of Agriculture. Those same lower-income households — earning less than $50,000 a year — are also the biggest users of buy now, pay later programs, according to the annual survey of U.S. households released last month by the Federal Reserve.”
Tia Hodge with her husband, Jason, and their daughter Nevaeh at their home in Austell, Ga. Mrs. Hodge uses a “buy now, pay later” service to help cover the cost of groceries. Credit...Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times
For some American consumers, “buy now, pay later” loans aren’t just for big-ticket items like televisions and vacations. They’re for groceries, too.
When Tia Hodge stocked up at her local Kroger in early April, her bill was nearly $400. At checkout, she scanned her app from Klarna, a buy now, pay later company that offers short-term loans. Klarna paid the grocery store for the 71 items in the cart. Mrs. Hodge split her payments to Klarna into four installments of about $100, with zero interest.
“Food prices have skyrocketed,” said Mrs. Hodge, of Austell, Ga., who plans how much she’ll spend on each trip to the grocery store based on her cash flow and other expenses that month, including credit-card debt and student loans. Being able to spread out the payments for groceries has helped her family of four — soon to be five — budget better, she said.
Mrs. Hodge, 29, is hardly alone. Nearly a quarter of consumers using buy now, pay later loans finance groceries, up from 14 percent a year ago, according to a recent LendingTree survey. And it’s not just groceries; more Americans are using these loans to pay for recurring monthly bills, such as electricity, heat, internet and streaming services like Hulu.
Consumers can break up gasoline purchases into installments or pay for the burrito or burger order delivered to their home in bite-size pieces. People are going on social media to share tips on how to use the short-term financing even for rent.
While some borrowers say the loans are a useful way to manage cash flow, others say the increased use of buy now, pay later plans for day-to-day essentials is a troubling sign that more consumers are financially stressed.
“I don’t think there’s any question that it is at least a sign of how much people are struggling,” said Matt Schulz, chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree. “If you’re living paycheck to paycheck and you’re on a tight budget and you have several of these loans out at one time, it can be very easy to get over your skis here.”
Others don’t see a problem, and view this type of financing for day-to-day expenses as part of the industry’s growth and a better option than paying with traditional credit cards.
“I don’t think it’s a sign of the financial apocalypse per se,” said Christopher Uriarte, a payments expert at the consulting firm Glenbrook Partners. “We’re seeing these companies getting into many different sectors that they have not traditionally been in.”
Buy now, pay later financing, a cousin to once-popular layaway programs, gained momentum during the pandemic when online shopping surged. In 2019, consumers in the United States bought about $2 billion worth of goods and services using pay-later loans. By 2023, that amount ballooned to more than $116.3 billion, according to CapitalOne Shopping Research. But that is still a small fraction of the $1.18 trillion that consumers bought with credit cards in 2025, according to the latest consumer debt data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
As companies like Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay quickly grow, the increased availability and ease of obtaining these loans could encourage young and low-income Americans to take on more debt than they should, some consumer groups warn. Companies that offer pay-later loans typically do not conduct hard credit checks, as traditional credit cards do.
Instead, the pay-later firms approve short-term financing, $500 for a television or $40 for a fast-food takeout order, based partly on a consumer’s stated income and payment history with the company. Typically consumers aren’t charged interest if they pay the installments on time. A majority of pay-later companies make most of their money by charging fees to retailers.
Many of the loans aren’t routinely reported to credit bureaus or captured in public data, a potential hidden source of risk to the financial system that is sometimes referred to as phantom debt.
Consumers and pay-later companies argue that the loans are a better and cheaper financing option than traditional credit cards that have steep interest rates.
“I’ve used the loans for groceries and even to pay my phone bill,” said Randis Dennies, 42, an operations supervisor for a retailer distribution center in Memphis. He said the loans allowed him to manage his cash flow better and to borrow with zero interest.
“When everything has gotten so expensive — groceries, gas — it makes my life easier to use these loans to buy my groceries or whatever else I need at that moment,” he added.
The companies that offer these loans are teaming up with an increasing variety of merchants.
Affirm is using its experience in underwriting higher-cost purchases, like furniture and exercise equipment, to underwrite “everyday purchases,” a spokesman said in an email.
Food prices are 28 percent higher than they were in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those continued high prices are particularly tough for lower-income households, which spent roughly a third of their after-tax income on food in 2023, compared with 13.5 percent for middle-income households, according to the Department of Agriculture.
Those same lower-income households — earning less than $50,000 a year — are also the biggest users of buy now, pay later programs, according to the annual survey of U.S. households released last month by the Federal Reserve.
“Inflation in food prices and across all of our daily lives has led people to take on debt or dip into their savings,” said Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst at the financial website Bankrate.
And there are signs that borrowers are under strain with these loans. Nearly a quarter of all pay-later users made a late payment last year, up sharply from 2023, the survey reported.
Klarna, a Swedish company that is among the fastest-growing providers in the United States, reported a 17 percent year-over-year increase in credit losses in the latest quarter. The company, which has paused its I.P.O. plans amid tariff-related market volatility, said its default rate had risen only marginally and represented a tiny share of its total loans.
Last year under the Biden administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau worried that pay-later customers would be especially vulnerable if the economy worsened and issued an interpretive rule to regulate the companies the same way it does the credit card industry.
This spring the agency, which the Trump administration has tried to dismantle, said it would not “prioritize enforcement actions” on pay-later loans.
Mrs. Hodge said she had started to use buy now, pay later loans a couple of years ago when she moved to the Atlanta area from New York and money was tight.
She said she carefully tracked her spending and bank withdrawals, and never had a late or missed payment, which, she fears, would mean losing access to these loans. “This is a resource that helps my family, and I don’t want to mess that up,” she said.
Stores and service providers also seem eager to offer the payment option, even though it’s fairly costly for merchants to do so. The fees that the pay-later companies charge are often more than double the “swipe” fees merchants pay to process transactions with credit card networks and banks.
ut it may be worth it because customers are more likely to make a purchase and buy more items when the loans are available, Mr. Uriarte said.
“In the beginning when I started to use these plans, I was very irresponsible,” said Victoria Blocker, who works for a Veterans Affairs hospital in Augusta, Ga. Then, one day, she looked at her bank account and was surprised to see nearly daily withdrawals from the various pay-later companies.
Since then, she has been using the financing only for specific big-ticket purchases, like her honeymoon trip to Hawaii.
“I had to take a step back,” Ms. Blocker said. “It had become a trap for me.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
7) Trump Administration Highlights: Alaska Wilderness to Be Opened to Drilling and Mining
Lisa Friedman, Reporting from Washington, Published June 2, 2025, Updated June 3, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/02/us/trump-news#national-petroleum-reserve-alaska-trump-drilling
The Trump administration said on Monday that it planned to eliminate federal protections across millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness, a move that would allow drilling and mining in some of the last remaining pristine wilderness in the country.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the Biden administration had exceeded its authority last year when it banned oil and gas drilling in more than half of the 23 million-acre area, known as the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The proposed repeal is part of President Trump’s aggressive agenda to “drill, baby, drill,” which calls for increased oil and gas extraction on public lands and the repeal of virtually all climate and environmental protections.
“We’re restoring the balance and putting our energy future back on track,” Mr. Burgum said in a statement.
The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska is an ecologically sensitive expanse of land about 600 miles north of Anchorage, bounded by the Chukchi Sea to the west and the Beaufort Sea to the north. It is the largest single area of public land in the United States. It covers crucial habitat for grizzly bears, polar bears, caribou, thousands of migratory birds and other wildlife.
Created in the early 1900s, the reserves were originally envisioned as a fuel supply for the Navy in times of emergency. But in 1976, Congress authorized full commercial development of the federal land and ordered the government to balance oil drilling with conservation and wildlife protection.
Mr. Burgum accused the Biden administration of prioritizing “obstruction over production and undermining our ability to harness domestic resources at a time when American energy independence has never been more critical.”
The announcement came as Mr. Burgum traveled to Alaska, accompanied by Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Chris Wright, the secretary of the Energy Department. The three were expected to encourage companies to drill in sensitive areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to support a liquefied natural gas pipeline in the state.
The plan to allow drilling in the petroleum reserve drew praise from the oil industry.
Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change, which is heating the planet and creating dangerous new weather patterns. Alaska is warming at a rate two to three times as fast as the global average, resulting in thawing permafrost and melting sea ice. It is also disrupting the hunting, fishing and food-gathering practices of Indigenous communities.
Alaska Native groups have been divided over the Trump administration’s plans for the region.
“Too often, federal decisions that affect our homelands are made without the engagement of the North Slope Inupiat, the people these decisions will affect the most,” said Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Inupiat, which represents Inupiat leadership organizations on the North Slope and supports oil and gas projects.
The group supports allowing oil and gas projects in the region, and Mr. Harcharek said the visit by Mr. Burgum and others “shows the federal government sees our communities and people as partners, not a check-the-box exercise.”
Others said opening up the reserve threatened to destroy habitat for caribou and thousands of migratory birds, and would put communities that depend on subsistence hunting at risk.
“This is very concerning to us,” said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, a former mayor of the predominantly Inupiaq city of Nuiqsut.
Matt Jackson, the Alaska State senior manager at The Wilderness Society, an environmental group, called the repeal of environmental protections an outrage.
“This move will accelerate the climate crisis at a time when the ground beneath Alaska communities is literally melting away and subsistence foods are in decline,” Mr. Jackson said.
Environmental groups and the fossil fuel industry have battled for decades over Alaska’s most pristine and remote places, which often happen to lie over significant oil, gas and mineral deposits.
During his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — home to migrating caribou, polar bears, musk oxen, millions of birds and other wildlife — to drilling. But a lease sale there held in January flopped, ending without a single bidder.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
8) Israeli Soldiers Open Fire Near Gaza Aid Site. Gaza Officials Say 27 Are Killed.
It was the second such shooting by Israeli forces in three days near the same aid site in southern Gaza, which is part of a contentious new Israeli and American-backed initiative.
By Patrick Kingsley, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Iyad Abuheweila and Aaron Boxerman, June 3, 2025
Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad from Haifa, Israel, and Iyad Abuheweila from Istanbul.
Israeli soldiers opened fire Tuesday morning near crowds of Palestinians walking toward a new food distribution site in southern Gaza, the Israeli military said. The Red Cross and Gaza health ministry said at least 27 people had been killed.
It was the second such large-scale shooting by Israeli forces in three days near the same aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah, where thousands of desperate and hungry Palestinians are coming early each day in hopes of securing a food handout. Israeli soldiers opened fire on Sunday near an approach to the same food distribution site, and Palestinian officials said they killed at least 23 people.
The shootings, which the military said occurred roughly about 500 yards from the food distribution site, were the latest chaos surrounding a contentious new Israeli-backed system for food distribution sites in Gaza, where American private contractors oversee the handout of cardboard boxes of aid.
The Israeli-American initiative has only announced four aid distribution points — compared with 400 under the previous U.N.-coordinated aid distribution system. And on most days, most of the four sites have not been operational.
The United Nations has criticized the new system, saying that it endangers civilians by forcing them to walk for miles to get food on a risky passage through Israeli military lines. And it has argued that the positioning of the Israel-backed distribution points, which are all in the enclave’s south, could facilitate an Israeli plan to displace the population of northern Gaza.
A U.N. memo circulated before the initiative launched warned of “overcrowded distribution sites” and that Israeli forces or U.S. contractors might “use force to control crowds.” The memo also cautioned about the potential for “organized and opportunistic looting” near the hubs.
Many of those problems have been in evidence in the week since the system began operations. And much is riding on the new aid initiative: Aid agencies say Gaza faces the threat of widespread starvation in the wake of the 80-day Israeli blockade on food deliveries that ended in mid-May.
In the latest violence on Tuesday, the Israeli military said the troops fired near “a few” people who had strayed from the designated route to the site and who did not respond to warning shots. The statement called them “suspects” and said they had “posed a threat” to soldiers. But a military spokeswoman declined to explain the nature of the perceived threat.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has faced mounting international criticism, including from the country’s traditional allies. Last month, Britain, France and Canada said in a joint statement that the latest Israeli threats to mount a massive offensive against Hamas, as well as its two-month blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza, were “wholly disproportionate.”
Israel says the new aid system is needed to prevent Hamas from stealing and stockpiling food, as well as from financing its war effort by selling food to civilians at elevated prices. U.N. officials have argued there is no evidence that international aid was diverted by Hamas.
Huge crowds of hungry Palestinians are arriving early each morning at the new aid sites seeking food handouts. They often walk for miles on foot in the pre-dawn darkness.
But rather than orderly handouts, Palestinians witnesses described to The New York Times a chaotic scramble for whatever boxes of goods remain.
The aid program is overseen by a new and untested private group, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which pays American contractors to distribute food from sites in Israeli-occupied areas of southern Gaza. It replaced a system overseen by the United Nations, which distributed food from roughly 400 sites across the entire territory.
The foundation said it was aware of the reports of shootings “well beyond” the area of the aid site on Tuesday. But it said the site itself had operated “safely” throughout the morning. The military said it was aware of reports of casualties and was looking into it.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has faced mounting international criticism, including from the country’s traditional allies. Last month, Britain, France and Canada said in a joint statement that the latest Israeli threats to mount a massive offensive against Hamas, as well as its two-month blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza, were “wholly disproportionate.”
Israel says the new aid system is needed to prevent Hamas from stealing and stockpiling food, as well as from financing its war effort by selling food to civilians at elevated prices. U.N. officials have argued there is no evidence that international aid was diverted by Hamas.
Huge crowds of hungry Palestinians are arriving early each morning at the new aid sites seeking food handouts. They often walk for miles on foot in the pre-dawn darkness.
But rather than orderly handouts, Palestinians witnesses described to The New York Times a chaotic scramble for whatever boxes of goods remain.
The aid program is overseen by a new and untested private group, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which pays American contractors to distribute food from sites in Israeli-occupied areas of southern Gaza. It replaced a system overseen by the United Nations, which distributed food from roughly 400 sites across the entire territory.
The foundation said it was aware of the reports of shootings “well beyond” the area of the aid site on Tuesday. But it said the site itself had operated “safely” throughout the morning.
Aid groups said the bloodshed over the past few days demonstrated the risks of the new system.
“Today’s events have shown once again that this new system of aid delivery is dehumanizing, dangerous and severely ineffective,” Claire Manera, an emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement on Sunday.
“It has resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians that could have been prevented. Humanitarian aid must be provided only by humanitarian organizations who have the competence and determination to do it safely and effectively.”
Many of the casualties from the shootings have been arriving at the International Committee of the Red Cross’s field hospital in Rafah, a short distance away. On Tuesday, the clinic received the bodies of 19 people as well as eight others who subsequently died from their wounds, the Red Cross said in a statement.
Jamal Azzam, a nurse at the Red Cross hospital, said in a phone interview that he had treated many young Gazans alongside his colleagues admitted for gunfire wounds. He said that in one case, several wounded Gazans were brought to the clinic in an animal cart.
“The scenes were tragic,” he said. “It was like a battlefield full of blood and injured — everyone was lying on the ground, everyone screaming and everyone shouting.”
Dr. Ahmad al-Farra, a senior administrator at Nasser Hospital, a medical center in Khan Younis a few miles from the site of the shootings, said in a phone interview that the hospital’s ability to treat the wounded had been hindered by critical equipment shortages, Dr. al-Farra said.
“For three days now, we haven’t even had sterile gauze,” he said, adding that they had been forced to borrow basic supplies from a nearby field hospital.
Some Israelis said that Hamas was trying to undermine the new system by instigating chaos and encouraging people to riot.
“Hamas is under pressure due to the food distribution operation managed by an American company, and is trying in every way to sabotage it,” Naftali Bennett, Israel’s former prime minister, wrote on social media. “Hamas wants to control the food, and through it, to control the people. Israel is denying Hamas this control.”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem, Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel, and Bilal Shbair from Deir al-Balah, Gaza.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
9) Deportation Flights Reach Highest Level Under Trump So Far
By Albert Sun and Brent McDonald, June 3, 2025
President Trump’s mass deportation plans appear to have accelerated in May, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement flying more removal flights than in any other month since he took office, according to public flight data collected by Tom Cartwright, an immigration advocate who tracks ICE flights.
The latest government data shows the number of daily deportees averaged about 850 per day in the first two weeks of May, following a gradual climb since early March. The increasing pace of ICE removal flights through the month suggests deportation numbers could continue to trend upward in June.
According to the data collected by Mr. Cartwright and verified by The New York Times, ICE conducted 190 deportation flights in May, more than in any other month since September 2021, and 1,083 total flights including domestic transfers and returns from deportations, more than in any month since at least the first Trump administration.
Immigration arrests spiked immediately after Mr. Trump took office, but deportations had remained relatively flat because of a drop in the number of people apprehended at the border.
The Trump administration has rolled back Biden-era protections for many migrants, expanding who has been targeted for deportation. ICE has also pursued new enforcement tactics, including arresting people at routine check-ins and at immigration courts. The agency has also sought to expand the use of expedited removal, a fast-track process that skirts ordinary due process.
In April, deportation numbers began increasing, approaching levels not seen since last year.
The top destinations for ICE removal flights remain in Central America and Mexico. While ICE flights don’t present a complete picture — since some people are deported by land or on commercial airlines — flight destinations are perhaps the best indicator of whom the United States is deporting, as the government does not release data on deportees’ country of origin.
Two removal flights a week are now regularly traveling to Venezuela after President Nicolás Maduro, under pressure from the Trump administration, agreed to accept deportees after a year-long pause. In May, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for nearly 350,000 Venezuelans in the United States and humanitarian parole for over 500,000 more migrants who arrived recently.
Other top destinations for deportation flights are similar to before Mr. Trump took office. Flights on military planes, which happened frequently in February, are now happening only rarely.
Domestic ICE flights also rose sharply through April and May, according to flight data. These internal “shuffle flights” most likely reflect the increase in ICE arrests around the country and the transfer of detainees to large detention centers in states such as Louisiana, New Mexico and Texas before they are deported.
Most ICE flights are operated by one of two charter companies, Global X and Eastern Air Express. Recently, ICE has also expanded the fleet of planes it uses for deportations, including contracting with commercial carriers like Avelo Air for charter services.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
10) Now the President Is an Art Critic
By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, June 4, 2025
Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Last week, President Trump announced that he had fired the head of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
“Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am herby terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of D.E.I., which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement will be named shortly.”
There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Trump’s disdain for Sajet, given his aggressive effort to rid the federal government of “D.E.I.,” which has turned out to mean the mere presence of nonwhites and women the president doesn’t like in positions of authority.
The issue complicating his effort to remove Saget, however, is that the National Portrait Gallery is part of the Smithsonian Institution, which is independent of the federal government. And the portrait gallery was established by congressional statute — neither the gallery nor the Smithsonian is in the executive branch.
The museum’s bylaws don’t describe exactly how dismissals are supposed to work, but as a matter of procedure (and it seems law), the only person with the direct power to remove Sajet would be Lonnie G. Bunch III, who serves as secretary of the Smithsonian. And Bunch, in turn, is accountable to the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, which consists of the chief justice of the United States, the vice president, three members of the Senate, three members of the House of Representatives and nine private citizens.
Trump, in other words, has as much power to remove Sajet from her post as I do — that is to say, none at all. Of course, there is more to power than what’s on paper. Trump may not have the formal capacity to shape the leadership of any of the Smithsonian’s museums, but if others treat him as if he does, then, well, what’s the difference?
The struggle over the leadership of the National Portrait Gallery is altogether minor in the larger story of Trump’s assault on the institutions of American government, but it is nonetheless illustrative of the nature of that attack.
The president’s effort to dominate the federal government and subvert the constitutional order rests on two pillars.
One is a claim of unitary executive authority. The president, in this view, doesn’t simply lead the executive branch; the president is the executive branch. He is meant to wield total control over its operations, and no other entity or institution can question his decision or act independently of his will. If he wants to remove a federal official or dismantle an entire agency, then he can, regardless of what Congress has laid out in the law or what the courts will allow.
It’s as if, to borrow a famous formulation from medieval political thought, the president has two bodies: “a body mortal, subject to all infirmities that come by nature or accident, to the imbecility of infancy or old age, and to the like defects that happen to the natural bodies of other people” and a “body politic” that is “a body that cannot be seen or handled, consisting of policy and government, and constituted for the direction of the people, and the management of the public weal.”
The other pillar concerns not the scope of the president’s authority but the extent of his reach. As Trump appears to see it, anything that might touch the president’s body — which is to say anything that might interface with the federal government — falls under his domain. It is then grafted onto the executive branch and subject to his absolute authority.
The Smithsonian is not a part of the executive branch, but because it is within the purview of the federal government, Trump claims it’s his to dispose of as he wishes. The Library of Congress is, well, the Library of Congress, but Trump has tried to pull it into his orbit. Still less are the nation’s law firms part of the executive branch; nonetheless, Trump has tried to claim them as part of the president’s body, subject to his demands. At this moment, Trump is using the pretext of federal research funding to try to wield power over — and effectively destroy — America’s most powerful universities. In the same way that his personal life has been defined by his rapacious greed, Trump’s political project is now an unrestrained effort to bring as much of American society as possible under his control.
Donald Trump’s authoritarian approach to the presidency is tied to several long-running threads in American political history. There is the plebiscitary presidency of Franklin Roosevelt and the much-maligned “imperial” presidency of his successors. There is also the notion of the president as the embodiment of a certain national spirit, an idea that stretches back to George Washington. And there is, more recently, the tangled relationship between Trump’s belief in his total authority and the efforts of a Supreme Court with a Republican-appointed majority to establish a system of presidential supremacy, where the executive is insulated — if not outright isolated — from real legal or political accountability.
But these are building blocks and not the whole structure. They cannot produce the thing. It is Trump’s compulsion to dominate — his ego-driven quest for mastery over everything and everyone he encounters — that has shaped the latent potential for a monarchical presidency into something as close to reality as we’ve yet seen in American life.
The question, looking — perhaps prematurely — to a post-Trump world, is how to go back, how to reverse America’s slide into despotism. There is no easy answer, nor is there an obvious path to an answer. There is not even a public consensus about the nature of our current situation, much less the political will necessary to make root-and-branch changes to the American constitutional order. But it is precisely that kind of change, whether in the form of a serious effort to amend the Constitution or in the form of a full-blown constitutional convention, that we need to bring that order back into balance and preserve the nation’s experiment in self-government.
We should treat Trump and his openly authoritarian administration as a failure, not just of our party system or our legal system, but also of our Constitution and its ability to meaningfully constrain a destructive and system-threatening force in our political life. And while we can stipulate the extent to which Trump’s rise was contingent on the particular choices of particular people, it is also true that a less countermajoritarian and antidemocratic system might have kept Trump out of office.
You may recoil at the thought of constitutional failure, but this would not be the first time our Constitution failed; we live in the world established by our original, explosive failure in the 19th century to contain and resolve a vital political question.
What is hard to know, at this moment, is whether it will take a similar catastrophe to push us to reform — in the most literal sense of that word — our Constitution and refound our Republic or whether we must wait for the full consequences of failure to weigh on our lives before we begin to try to dig ourselves out.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
11) ICE Detains Family of Suspect in Colorado Attack
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency would be investigating whether Mohamed Sabry Soliman’s family had information about his alleged plot.
By Hamed Aleaziz, Reporting from Washington, June 3, 2025
Police officers near the site of the attack in Boulder, Colo. Credit...Michael Ciaglo for The New York Times
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on Tuesday arrested and detained the family of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the Egyptian man who allegedly led a terror attack Sunday in Colorado, officials said.
“Today the Department of Homeland Security and ICE are taking the family of suspected Boulder, Colo., terrorist and illegal alien Mohamed Soliman into ICE custody,” the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said in a video message on social media on Tuesday.
Ms. Noem said that the agency would also be investigating what his family knew about the attack, which injured 12 people during an event in Boulder in support of the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. The suspect allegedly threw homemade Molotov cocktails into the crowd.
The State Department revoked the visas of Mr. Soliman’s wife and five children after the attack, said Tricia McLaughlin, a D.H.S. spokeswoman. ICE officials arrested them on Tuesday, she said.
The White House trumpeted the arrests on social media, saying on Tuesday afternoon that the family “could be deported by tonight.”
Mr. Soliman entered the United States in August 2022 on a tourist visa, which he later overstayed, D.H.S. officials said Monday. He applied for asylum in the fall of 2022 with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, but his case was still pending, officials said. During his time waiting for his case to be processed, he was able to obtain a work permit, they said.
Trump administration officials have pointed to the attack as proof of what they say were lax immigration policies during the Biden administration.
“Suicidal migration must be fully reversed,” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, said on social media Sunday.
The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that his agency would be targeting other foreign nationals for potential revocation of visas.
“In light of yesterday’s horrific attack, all terrorists, their family members, and terrorist sympathizers here on a visa should know that under the Trump Administration we will find you, revoke your visa, and deport you,” he wrote on social media on Monday.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
12) Israeli-Backed Aid Sites in Gaza Close Temporarily After Deadly Shootings
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said it was working to improve operations, a day after the Red Cross said at least 27 Palestinians were killed near a distribution center.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, June 4, 2025
Receiving treatment at a hospital in southern Gaza on Tuesday after gunfire broke out at an aid distribution site in the area. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The contentious Israeli-backed group distributing food in Gaza closed its sites on Wednesday, a day after Palestinians trying to get supplies came under Israeli fire near one of the organization’s aid centers.
The group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, said that its four centers would be shut until Thursday to work on “organization and efficiency” to better prepare for the huge numbers of Palestinians who have traveled to the sites since operations began more than a week ago.
The foundation added that Israeli troops were doing their own preparations along access roads leading to the distribution centers, without specifying what that entailed.
The Israeli military warned Palestinians not to approach the sites or the adjacent roads, saying that they were now considered “combat zones.”
The pause in operations followed days in which dozens of Palestinians trying to reach one of the foundation’s sites in the southern Gaza city of Rafah were killed after coming under fire, according to local health workers.
On Tuesday, the Red Cross and Gaza health officials said that at least 27 people had died in the second large-scale deadly shooting in recent days. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said that a number of civilians had been injured and killed in an area outside the site but did not provide a number.
According to the Red Cross: “The majority of cases suffered gunshot wounds. Again, all responsive patients said they were trying to reach an assistance distribution site.”
The Israeli military said its forces had opened fire roughly a third of a mile from the distribution site after they identified “several suspects moving toward them” away from the Israeli-designated access route. After they failed to respond to warning shots, troops fired “near a few individual suspects,” the military said.
Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, later suggested that the casualty numbers from the incident were inflated but did not provide an alternate toll. He said the Israeli military was investigating.
On Sunday, more than 20 Palestinians were killed near an aid site, according to Gaza health officials.
The deadly incidents have further ensnarled the Israeli-backed aid effort, which has come under severe international criticism since its inception.
Hunger has become widespread in Gaza after an 80-day Israeli blockade on food, fuel, medicine and other supplies. The Israeli government began relaxing those restrictions last month and allowed some aid to enter the enclave, much of which has been destroyed during the war.
Israel has said that the new aid distribution system, with sites located in areas secured by Israeli troops and overseen mainly by U.S. contractors, would prevent the supplies from falling into the hands of Hamas. The United Nations, however, says there is no evidence that Hamas systematically diverted international aid under the previous U.N.-coordinated distribution program.
The United Nations and other aid groups have boycotted the initiative and have warned that it could endanger Palestinian civilians by forcing them to travel on foot through a war zone and past Israeli lines.
The rollout of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been chaotic. Its executive director resigned hours before the initiative was set to begin operations, and Palestinians pushed through fences at one of the sites last week, prompting Israeli troops to fire warning shots.
Huge crowds of hungry Palestinians have been arriving early each morning at the aid sites, often walking for miles in the pre-dawn darkness. Palestinian witnesses have described a violent scramble for whatever boxes of food are available.
The foundation has pushed back against much of the criticism, arguing that Hamas is trying to undermine the initiative. In a statement on Tuesday, the foundation said that more than 100,000 boxes of food had been allocated at the sites.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
13) Deadly Aid Deliveries in Gaza
Israel’s troops have repeatedly shot near food distribution sites.
By Lauren Jackson, June 4, 2025
In Jabaliya, Gaza. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
Israel’s decision to change how food is distributed in Gaza hasn’t just been disruptive — it has been deadly.
Last week, the military empowered private, mostly American contractors to deliver aid. They began getting food to some Gazans after an Israeli blockade stopped supplies for nearly three months.
The war has decimated farmland that once grew wheat and olives, and without crops or food shipments, Gaza has become the “hungriest place on Earth,” according to the U.N. As the first cardboard boxes of food arrived, people sprinted, scaled barriers and joined surging crowds to get them. And Israeli troops stationed near the aid sites have repeatedly opened fire. Nearly 50 people have been killed and dozens wounded, according to Red Cross officials.
All of the new sites suspended operations today, and Gazans are desperate for food and water. Below, I explain what is happening and why.
A new program
For most of the war, experienced groups like the United Nations have distributed aid. It has been contentious.
Aid groups say their work has been unsafe and constrained: Israel has targeted aid convoys and facilities that it erroneously determined to be a threat and repeatedly blocked deliveries. At the same time, Israel said some aid workers had ties to Hamas. And it claimed that Hamas had diverted many of the supplies. (That couldn’t be verified by The Times, and the U.N. said it was exaggerated.)
So last week, Israel implemented a new system. It transferred the responsibility to a private group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which pays American contractors to deliver food. Israel conceived of the plan and said the process would be “neutral” and “independent,” but the group’s leader said he didn’t think that was possible, so he resigned.
A chaotic rollout
The group began operating last week after Israel lifted an 80-day blockade on aid deliveries. The contractors were quickly overwhelmed.
Hungry Palestinians have walked for miles and gathered before dawn at the distribution sites. The crowds have panicked and shoved in the dark for a chance to get one of the limited cardboard boxes of food. Israeli soldiers stationed near the sites have repeatedly opened fire. The circumstances are contested, but the Red Cross reported that at least 27 people were killed yesterday morning and at least 21 people were killed in a shooting on Sunday.
In response to one shooting, the military said the troops had fired near “a few” people who it said had strayed from the designated route to a food site and who did not respond to warning shots. The statement said these people had “posed a threat” to soldiers, though a military spokeswoman declined to explain the nature of the threat.
Israel has blocked international correspondents from reporting on the ground in Gaza, and Hamas restricts what journalists can report on within the territory. Given the conflicting accounts, “it’s hard to say with certainty how these incidents have unraveled,” Patrick Kingsley, The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, told me. “Our interviews left us with the impression that those sudden surges have alarmed Israeli soldiers, prompting them to open fire.”
Abdulrahman Odeh, 21, said he saw several bodies carted away after the shooting, but was eventually able to get a carton of aid. “There’s no system or order to receive it,” he said. “It’s survival of the fittest.”
Others weren’t able to get a box: “We go, we see dead and injured people in front of us, and we leave empty-handed,” Rasha al-Nahal, a displaced Palestinian, said. “The only thing we get from going is humiliation.”
The chaos has several causes:
Widespread hunger: Israel’s recent blockade left all of Gaza on the brink of famine, according to the U.N. “There’s enormous desperation and need,” my colleague Aaron Boxerman, a reporter in Jerusalem, said. “Finding enough food and clean water is often a daily struggle for many Gazans.” People have dug holes to get unsanitary water and ground animal feed into makeshift flour to survive. (These photos show how emaciated many children have become.)
Scarcity: There are few places to get food. The new program has announced only four distribution points; the previous, U.N.-coordinated system had 400. It’s rare that all four sites are open, and there isn’t enough food for everyone.
Military strategy: Israel says the new system is needed to stop Hamas stealing, stockpiling and selling food, all of which could help the group, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization, sustain its power. The U.N. claims Israel may have another goal — displacing people from northern Gaza by concentrating aid sites in the south.
The response
The shootings come at a particularly bad time for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even Israel’s allies have condemned its approach to delivering food. Britain, Canada and France also denounced his plans to expand the war as “disproportionate” and “egregious.”
“The bloodshed heightens international scrutiny on Prime Minister Netanyahu at a time when he faces growing foreign demands, including from President Trump, to reach a truce with Hamas,” Patrick said. “The bigger the global outcry, the greater pressure he will face to compromise in the cease-fire negotiations.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
14) E.P.A. Workers Are Unsettled as ICE Makes Arrests in Their Building
As immigration officials ramp up a crackdown in downtown Manhattan, employees at a neighboring federal agency have been ordered not to get in the way.
By Ana Ley, June 4, 2025
Federal immigration officers in Lower Manhattan and across the nation have begun arresting migrants immediately after court hearings if they have been ordered deported or if their cases have been dismissed. Credit...Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
Officials with the federal Environmental Protection Agency have admonished their workers not to interfere with arrests by immigration officers in a downtown Manhattan building where the agency has offices, underscoring tension among federal employees as President Trump escalates his crackdown on immigrants.
A spokeswoman for the E.P.A. said an email was sent on Monday to regional employees after agency workers had asked questions about the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers inside the federal building at 290 Broadway, which also houses a Department of Justice immigration court.
Immigration agents in recent days have been arresting migrants after their court hearings if they have been ordered deported or if their cases have been dismissed, a tactic that represents an aggressive new approach by ICE as part of Mr. Trump’s effort to boost deportation numbers.
A union representative for workers at the E.P.A. said that some employees had been pushed out of the way in elevators and had felt threatened coming to and from work since the ICE agents started appearing in the lobby of the building.
In the memo sent on Monday by an E.P.A. security official, employees were urged to identify themselves as federal staff by wearing their work badges to “significantly reduce the likelihood of employees being engaged by law enforcement.” The memo also ordered E.P.A. employees not to hinder ICE operations.
“The advice in this note reflects our priority, which is the safety of our employees,” said Mary Mears, an E.P.A. spokeswoman.
Officials with the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and ICE did not respond to questions about the email. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Suzy Englot, president of Local 3911 of the American Federation of Government Employees and an E.P.A. staff member who works in the building on Broadway, said that many workers have been unsettled by the detention activities they have witnessed in the past two weeks. Ms. Englot said that some workers have been concerned about the welfare of the migrants, while others have been worried that agents might confuse them for the people they are there to arrest.
“Several members of our union have witnessed people being detained as they exit elevators, put in handcuffs, taken away somewhere,” Ms. Englot said. “Generally, people have started to feel unsafe.”
Ben Mabie, a staff organizer for Local 98 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers who works across the street from 290 Broadway, said he had overheard security guards teasing workers about carrying their passports when they step away from their offices to use the restroom. Mr. Mabie said that employees of color had expressed concern about being targeted.
“A lot of these arrests, and sometimes tussles over arrests, are taking place right in front of where child care for the federal building takes place,” Mr. Mabie said. “These are armed agents that are literally, you know, sometimes 15, 20 feet away.”
Historically, immigration officials have avoided courthouse arrests because of concerns that they might deter people from complying with orders to appear in court. The new operations have taken place across the country during the past two weeks.
E.P.A. workers have faced a drumbeat of challenges under Mr. Trump’s presidency, and the added ICE presence has felt like another blow, Ms. Englot said.
The agency has been one of Mr. Trump’s targets in his war on the federal bureaucracy. Mr. Trump and his administration have argued that spending cuts are necessary to reduce government bloat and excessive public spending. While experts and workers acknowledge that reforms are needed in the federal work force, some believe that the administration’s tactics, including offering blanket deferred resignations to two million workers, have lacked thought, empathy or strategy.
“I think for a lot of people, this is just adding another really awful thing on top of what has already been a really tough few months,” Ms. Englot said.
She added: “And then, it’s also the worry that we all have as people who are public servants. You know, we care about other people, and we worry about what’s happening.”
Jefferson Siegel contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
15) Steelers send letter to fans angry about players attending Donald Trump rally: Reports
By Zach Powell, June 3, 2025
The Pittsburgh Steelers sent a letter in response to upset fans who reached out to the organization about current and former players attending a rally for President Donald Trump last Friday, according to multiple reports.
Quarterback Mason Rudolph, safety Miles Killebrew and former Steelers running back Rocky Bleier attended the president’s rally in West Mifflin, Pa., a town 11 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. The trio presented Trump with a No. 47 Steelers jersey with Trump’s name on the back, which stirred up displeasure among some fans and season-ticket holders.
In the formal letter from the Steelers, sent via email Monday, the team acknowledged the fan outrage while expressing each player’s ability to convey their own opinion, per reports.
“We understand that a recent rally in Pittsburgh has generated a range of reactions from our fan base,” the letter said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Our alumni and current players make their own individual decisions that reflect their views, and they do not necessarily represent the view of the entire Pittsburgh Steelers organization. We appreciate your passion and your continued support of the team.”
Trump first called up Bleier, a four-time Super Bowl champion with the Steelers who played 11 seasons in Pittsburgh, to the stage. He was followed by Rudolph, who received praise from Trump and attendees at the rally, before Trump announced Killebrew.
“I think he’s gonna get a big shot, he’s tall, he’s handsome, got a great arm, and I have a feeling he’s gonna be the guy,” Trump said, referring to Rudolph.
Pittsburgh’s players have a history of sharing their political views. Former wide receiver Antonio Brown and former running back Le’Veon Bell appeared at a Trump rally outside of Pittsburgh in October, citing their support for Trump weeks before Election Day.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
16) New Travel Ban Stokes Uncertainty as President Bars Citizens of 12 Countries
The order, which primarily targets countries in Africa and the Middle East, revives an effort from President Trump’s first term that led to chaos and court battles.
By Enjoli Liston, June 5, 2025
Travelers at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey last month. The travel ban prohibits citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States. Credit...Dakota Santiago for The New York Times
Citizens of 12 countries, primarily in Africa and the Middle East, grappled on Thursday with the news that President Trump had barred them from traveling to the United States, reviving a travel ban from his first term that led to chaos and legal challenges.
When the president’s order takes effect on Monday, citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen will not be allowed to enter the United States. It was not immediately clear why those countries were selected.
The ban announced by Mr. Trump on Wednesday was his latest crackdown on immigration. In recent months he has ordered raids across the country to detain immigrants, blocked asylum seekers at the southern border and barred international students from Harvard University, among other steps.
Last year the State Department issued about 170,000 total visas to citizens of the 12 countries subject to the ban. The new order touches more parts of the world and could affect more people than the travel ban announced during Mr. Trump’s first term, in 2017, which targeted seven Muslim-majority countries. Two of those countries, Syria and Iraq, were not named in this order.
Here’s what else to know:
· Partial ban: Mr. Trump also imposed restrictions on travel from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela, but stopped short of a full ban. Citizens of those countries cannot come to the United States permanently or get tourist or student visas.
· Colorado attack: Mr. Trump’s order came days after an Egyptian man was arrested and charged with attacking a group in Boulder, Colo., that had been honoring the hostages held in Gaza. Announcing the ban, the president said the attack “underscored the extreme dangers” posed by the entry of some foreigners. The ban does not include Egypt.
· War-torn nations: The action is an effort to stop immigration from nations that Mr. Trump claimed to have a “large-scale presence of terrorists,” among other concerns. Many of the countries subject to the ban have been wracked by conflict, while others are ruled by repressive regimes. In both cases, Mr. Trump’s proclamation closes the door on those hoping to flee to the United States to build new lives.
· Some exceptions: Among those exempted from the travel ban are green card holders, dual citizens, refugees who have already been granted asylum in the United States, and athletes and coaches, and their families, who are traveling for major sports events.
· Legal challenges: The newly announced ban is more likely to withstand legal challenges than the first because the administration has learned lessons from the litigation against that effort, legal experts said.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
17) Rights groups, but few world leaders, race to condemn the travel ban.
By Amelia Nierenberg, June 5, 2025
Protesting Trump’s immigration ban at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in 2017. Credit...Dylan Hollingsworth for The New York Times
In 2017, when President Trump tried to ban citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days, global leaders denounced the move and Americans hurried to airports to protest.
But on Thursday, the morning after Mr. Trump targeted people from a dozen countries in a new ban, the immediate reaction was muted. Some leading rights groups condemned the move on social media, but few governments had a quick and decisive response to share.
“President Trump’s new travel ban is discriminatory, racist and downright cruel,” Amnesty International USA wrote on social media. “By targeting people based on their nationality, this ban only spreads disinformation and hate.”
“This ban disproportionately targets Muslim-majority nations and undermines the United States’ foundational principles of equality under the law,” Human Rights First said in a statement, noting the harm it could do to Afghans who helped the United States during the war there.
Abby Maxman, president and chief executive of Oxfam America, said in a statement that the ban “marks a chilling return to fear, discrimination and division.” She added: “This policy is not about national security — it is about sowing division and vilifying communities that are seeking safety and opportunity in the U.S.”
Shawn Paik contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
18) Judge Orders Trump Administration to Take Steps to Give Due Process to Deported Migrants
The judge also said the men, expelled under the Alien Enemies Act, were likely to prevail in their claims that they had been treated unfairly, deported with no chance to contest their removals.
By Alan Feuer. June 4, 2025
Judge James E. Boasberg compared the expelled men to characters in a Kafka novel. Credit...Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg
A federal judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to take steps toward giving nearly 140 Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador in March under a rarely invoked wartime law the due process that they had been denied.
In a sweeping and at times outraged opinion, the judge, James E. Boasberg, compared the expelled men to characters in a Kafka novel. Judge Boasberg also asserted that they were likely to prevail in their claims that President Trump had treated them unfairly by deporting them without hearings to a brutal Salvadoran prison under the expansive powers of the wartime statute, known as the Alien Enemies Act.
Judge Boasberg did not weigh in on the question of whether Mr. Trump had invoked the act lawfully when he expelled the men, who are accused of being members of the street gang Tren de Aragua, to the prison in El Salvador on March 15. He simply asserted that the White House had stripped them of their rights by not allowing them to contest their deportations before they were flown into the custody of jailers at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, also known as CECOT.
“Perhaps the president lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act,” Judge Boasberg wrote. “Perhaps, moreover, defendants are correct that plaintiffs are gang members. But — and this is the critical point — there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the government’s say-so.”
Instead, Judge Boasberg continued, Trump officials “spirited away planeloads of people before any such challenge could be made. And now, significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.”
The 69-page ruling by Judge Boasberg was the latest flashpoint in a monthslong legal battle between the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been defending the Venezuelan men, and administration officials, who have sought time and again to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport people accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua with as little friction as possible.
Federal courts around the country have been divided on the issue of whether Mr. Trump has properly invoked the law, which was first passed in 1798 and is meant to be used only in times of declared war or during an invasion by a hostile foreign nation.
A federal appeals court in New Orleans is set to hear arguments on that question at the end of the month in a case that is likely to end up at the Supreme Court. The justices have already decided that the White House failed to give immigrants ample opportunity to challenge their removals under the act, but they have not yet issued an opinion on whether Mr. Trump’s claims that the presence of Tren de Aragua in the United States is tantamount to an invasion and that its members have been acting at the behest of a hostile Venezuelan government comport with reality.
The A.C.L.U. hailed Judge Boasberg’s decision.
“The court correctly held that the government cannot send people to a brutal foreign prison without any due process and then decline all responsibility to remedy the blatant constitutional violation,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer for the A.C.L.U.
The case in front of Judge Boasberg is unique. It is the sole legal proceeding in which the A.C.L.U. is trying not to prevent immigrants who are still in the United States from being expelled under the act, but rather is seeking to get due process for those who have already been deported under its powers to El Salvador.
The history of the case is fraught: The administration flew the 137 Venezuelan men in question to El Salvador from an airport in Texas even as Judge Boasberg was holding a hastily convened virtual hearing to consider the question of whether their removals were lawful.
The judge ordered the planes to be turned around midair, but officials failed to comply. He has since threatened to open an investigation into whether contempt sanctions are warranted, but the federal appeals court in Washington that sits over him has temporarily placed that inquiry on hold.
In many ways, Judge Boasberg’s ruling raised as many questions as it answered. While he told the administration that it must “facilitate” the ability of the men being detained in El Salvador “to contest their removal” under the Alien Enemies Act, he put off for the moment the thorny issue of “what such facilitation must entail.”
The A.C.L.U. had requested a more robust solution, asking Judge Boasberg to order the government to facilitate the return of the men to the United States. But the judge said he intended to “proceed in measured fashion,” beginning by allowing Trump officials to propose how the men being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center should receive the due process to which they are “constitutionally due.”
The Justice Department, representing the White House, had tried to avoid responsibility altogether for the deported men, arguing that they were in Salvadoran, not American, custody and thus were beyond the reach of the U.S. judicial system.
In his ruling, Judge Boasberg said that while it was “a close question,” he agreed with the government’s position. He asserted that the facts in the case appeared to show that “the United States and El Salvador have struck a diplomatic bargain vis-à-vis the detainees” and that he could not second-guess that arrangement — even though, as he acknowledged, several top Trump officials had made public statements that the administration was deeply involved in the plans to hold the men at the terrorism center.
Still, Judge Boasberg said the White House had a legal duty to give the men it had summarily expelled to El Salvador the due process they had been denied. While the judge conceded that the White House had expansive powers to conduct foreign affairs, he maintained that officials had to “right their legal wrongs.”
“Absent this relief,” he wrote, “the government could snatch anyone off the street, turn him over to a foreign country and then effectively foreclose any corrective course of action.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
19) ‘Carol,’ Whose Detention Rattled Her Small Missouri Town, Is Released
Ming Li Hui’s detention by the immigration authorities brought the reality of President Trump’s immigration crackdown to rural Missouri, where supporters rallied for her freedom.
By Jack Healy, June 4, 2025
Ming Li Hui, known to people in Kennett, Mo., as Carol, immigrated to the United States 20 years ago. Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
An immigrant waitress from Hong Kong whose looming deportation brought home the reality of President Trump’s immigration crackdown to her conservative Missouri hometown was freed on Wednesday after more than a month in jail.
“They released me,” the waitress, Ming Li Hui, better known as Carol to everyone in Kennett, Mo., said in a voice mail message left for her lawyer and relayed to The New York Times.
Her lawyer, Raymond Bolourtchi, said Ms. Hui, 45, had been released under a federal immigration program that offers a “temporary safe haven” to immigrants from Hong Kong and a handful of other countries who are concerned about returning there. The so-called deferred enforced departure gives Ms. Hui a reprieve but does not guarantee her future in the United States.
“By no means are we in the clear,” Mr. Bolourtchi said. “But at this point I’m optimistic. It’s an immediate sigh of relief.”
Ms. Hui, who was born in Hong Kong, entered the United States 20 years ago on a short-term tourist visa and stayed long past its expiration, in the process building a life, having three children and becoming a beloved waitress serving waffles and hugs to the breakfast crowd at a diner in Kennett, a rural farming town in the Bootheel of Missouri.
She was ordered deported more than a decade ago but had been able to stay in the country through a series of temporary permissions from the immigration authorities that ended abruptly with her arrest in late April.
On Wednesday, the news of her release buzzed through the city of 10,000. Residents attending a City Council meeting asked each other: “Is Carol really out?” “Is she coming home?”
“I didn’t think it could really happen,” said Lisa Dry, a city councilwoman who called for Ms. Hui’s release.
The staff of John’s Waffle and Pancake House was elated. The diner, a morning mainstay in Kennett, rallied the community to bring attention to her story. Her co-workers organized a “Carol Day” fund-raiser, put petitions to free her on every table and swapped out the servers’ shirts with black-and-yellow T-shirts that read, “Bring Carol Home.”
“It took a whole village,” said Liradona Ramadani, whose family runs the restaurant.
Ms. Hui’s story drew widespread attention as it raced from the waffle house to the local newspaper, The Delta Dunklin Democrat, and beyond. The musician Sheryl Crow, who grew up in Kennett and whose name is on a sign announcing Kennett as her hometown, posted an Instagram message in support of Ms. Hui.
The public outrage and backlash to Ms. Hui’s arrest was remarkable in a town like Kennett, the seat of a rural county where 80 percent of voters supported Mr. Trump last November, and where many voters said they had supported his promises of mass deportations.
But many in Kennett said Ms. Hui should not have been apprehended. To them, she was not a gang member or a criminal alien. She was a mother of three they talked with at soccer and Little League games, who served them waffles and egg skillets, who cleaned houses as a side job and went to Sunday Mass at the local Catholic church.
Mr. Bolourtchi, Ms. Hui’s lawyer, had tried to get her yearslong immigration case reopened after she was arrested in April and said he had been preparing to file a federal lawsuit directly challenging her detention. Before he could, he said, a federal immigration official recommended that Ms. Hui be released under the deferred enforced departure program.
She next has to check in with the authorities on June 25. A spokesman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately reply to a request for comment about her release.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
20) Four States Ask F.D.A. to Lift Special Restrictions on Abortion Pill
The states consider it a move to force the F.D.A. to review and acknowledge extensive research showing the pill’s safety.
By Pam Belluck, Pam Belluck covers reproductive health, June 5, 2025
Mifepristone, which blocks a hormone necessary for pregnancy to develop, was approved for abortion in the U.S. in 2000. Credit...Adria Malcolm for The New York Times
In a strategy aimed at countering efforts to further restrict the abortion pill mifepristone, attorneys general of four states that support abortion rights on Thursday asked the Food and Drug Administration to do the opposite and lift the most stringent remaining restrictions on the pill.
The petition filed by Massachusetts, New York, California and New Jersey might seem surprising given the opposition to abortion expressed by Trump administration officials. But the attorneys general consider it a move that would require the F.D.A. to acknowledge extensive scientific research that has consistently found mifepristone safe and effective, said an official with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office who worked on the filing and asked not to be named in order to share background information. It would also prevent the F.D.A. from changing mifepristone regulations while the petition is pending.
The petition notes that at a May senate hearing, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, responded to questions by Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, who opposes abortion, by saying he had ordered the F.D.A. to do a “complete review” of mifepristone.
“We want to make sure that when F.D.A. is making these decisions that they have all the data in front of them, all of the really powerful data that show that mifepristone is safe,” the Massachusetts official said.
The F.D.A. is required to respond within 180 days by granting or denying the request, or saying it needs more time. In its responses, the agency must document its position, which could be useful in lawsuits, including one that the four states could file if their petition is denied.
Mifepristone, which blocks a hormone necessary for pregnancy development, was approved for abortion in America in 2000. The F.D.A. imposed an additional regulatory framework called Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS, on mifepristone. That framework has been used for only about 300 drugs, currently covering only about 60 medications.
Mifepristone is the first pill in the two-drug medication abortion regimen in the United States, used through 12 weeks of pregnancy. It is followed 24 to 48 hours later by misoprostol, which causes contractions like a miscarriage. Misoprostol can terminate pregnancies itself but hasn’t generally been targeted by abortion opponents, perhaps because it isn’t specifically approved for abortion and can treat several medical conditions, including ulcers.
In the last decade, the F.D.A. reviewed new data on mifepristone and lifted several restrictions, including a requirement that patients obtain it in person from a provider. That change, in 2021, allowed it to be prescribed by telemedicine and mailed to patients, expanding access to mifepristone, now used in nearly two-thirds of American abortions.
The states’ filing, called a citizen petition, seeks a complete lifting of the REMS framework, saying that “given mifepristone’s well-established, 25-year safety record, F.D.A.’s current restrictions on mifepristone are no longer justified by science or law.” Citing new studies, it says “mifepristone’s safety has remained stable even as its restrictions have been lessened” and that continuing the restrictions “cannot be squared with the F.D.A.’s lack of REMS programs on drugs that have significantly more risks than mifepristone.”
Recently, a conservative faith-based organization released a report saying that mifepristone is more dangerous than the vast majority of studies show. Some conservative Republicans have urged Mr. Kennedy and the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, to review the drug based on that report.
Medical experts in reproductive health point to flaws in the report, including that it was not peer-reviewed and doesn’t disclose the source of the insurance claims data it analyzed. The report also uses atypical methods to characterize what it calls “serious adverse events,” making it unclear, for example, whether an emergency room visit involved complications from mifepristone or other, more common issues that were either not serious or were unrelated to abortion, reproductive health experts say.
Asked about the report at a recent hearing, Dr. Makary said “there is no peer-reviewed publication, and the underlying data set is not available, but when it does become available, we’re going to take a hard look at it.” In a written response to Senator Hawley, Dr. Makary said he was “committed to conducting a review of mifepristone and working with the professional career scientists at the agency who review this data.”
The petition requests that if the F.D.A. declines to lift the REMS, it “exercise its discretion not to enforce” some or all of those restrictions in the four states because their regulations are sufficient.
The REMS provisions still in place include special certification processes for prescribers and for pharmacies dispensing mifepristone, requirements the petition says are unnecessary and have discouraged some providers from offering the medication.
Another requirement is an agreement patients must sign saying they are taking mifepristone because they decided to terminate their pregnancy. But mifepristone is also used to help with miscarriages, and, the petition notes, miscarriage patients must sign the same form.
For years, leading medical organizations have called for removing REMS restrictions on mifepristone, and several lawsuits seeking REMS removal are pending against the F.D.A., including one by attorneys general of 12 other states.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
21) Selfishness Is Not a Virtue
By David French, Opinion Columnist, June 5, 2025
Illustration by George Douglas; source photographs by Heritage Images, Glowimages and imagenavi/Getty Images
When Christianity goes wrong, it goes wrong in a familiar way.
Last Friday, at a town hall meeting in Butler County, Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst delivered a grim message to her constituents. In the midst of an exchange over Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” someone in the crowd shouted at Ernst, “People are going to die!”
Ernst’s immediate response was bizarre. “Well, we all are going to die,” she said.
True enough, but that’s irrelevant to the question at hand. Yes, we’re all going to die, but it matters a great deal when, how and why. There’s a tremendous difference between dying after living a long and full life that’s enabled at least in part by access to decent health care, and dying a premature and perhaps needlessly painful death because you can’t afford the care you need.
All of this should be too obvious to explain, and it would cost Ernst — who occupies a relatively safe seat in an increasingly red state — virtually nothing to apologize and move on. In fact, just after her flippant comment, she did emphasize that she wanted to protect vulnerable people. The full answer was more complicated than the headline-generating quip.
By the standards of 2025, Ernst’s comment would have been little more than a micro-scandal, gone by the end of the day. And if we lived even in the relatively recent past, demonstrating humility could have worked to her benefit. It can be inspiring to watch a person genuinely apologize.
When Christianity goes wrong, it goes wrong in a familiar way.
Last Friday, at a town hall meeting in Butler County, Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst delivered a grim message to her constituents. In the midst of an exchange over Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” someone in the crowd shouted at Ernst, “People are going to die!”
Ernst’s immediate response was bizarre. “Well, we all are going to die,” she said.
True enough, but that’s irrelevant to the question at hand. Yes, we’re all going to die, but it matters a great deal when, how and why. There’s a tremendous difference between dying after living a long and full life that’s enabled at least in part by access to decent health care, and dying a premature and perhaps needlessly painful death because you can’t afford the care you need.
All of this should be too obvious to explain, and it would cost Ernst — who occupies a relatively safe seat in an increasingly red state — virtually nothing to apologize and move on. In fact, just after her flippant comment, she did emphasize that she wanted to protect vulnerable people. The full answer was more complicated than the headline-generating quip.
By the standards of 2025, Ernst’s comment would have been little more than a micro-scandal, gone by the end of the day. And if we lived even in the relatively recent past, demonstrating humility could have worked to her benefit. It can be inspiring to watch a person genuinely apologize.
But we’re in a new normal now.
That means no apologies. That means doubling down. And that can also mean tying your cruelty to the Christian cross.
And so, the next day Ernst posted an apology video — filmed, incredibly enough, in what appears to be a cemetery. It began well. “I would like to take this opportunity,” she said, “to sincerely apologize for a statement I made yesterday at my town hall.” But her statement devolved from there.
“I made an incorrect assumption,” she continued, “that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth.”
She didn’t stop there. “I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I’d encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”
Remember, this was not a snarky, impulsive rejoinder. It was a considered response. She decided to film the statement and release it. There is no ambiguity — the video delivered exactly the message she wanted to send.
The fact that a sitting United States senator was that callous — and then tried to twist her cruelty into a bizarro version of the Christian gospel — is worth highlighting on its own as another instance of the pervasive “own the libs” ethos of the Republican Party. But Ernst’s fake apology was something different — and worse — than simple trolling. It exemplified the contortions of American Christianity in the Trump era.
Americans are now quite familiar with the “no apologies” ethos of the Trumpist right. They’re familiar with Trumpist trolling and with MAGA politicians and MAGA influencers doubling and tripling down on their mistakes. My former Times colleague Jane Coaston has even popularized a term — “vice signaling” — to describe MAGA’s performative transgressiveness. Trumpists think it’s good to be bad.
But why bring Jesus into it?
America has always been a country with lots of Christian citizens, but it has not always behaved like a Christian country, and for reasons that resonate again today. An old error is new. Too many Christians are transforming Christianity into a vertical faith, one that focuses on your personal relationship with God at the expense of the horizontal relationship you have with your neighbors.
To understand what I mean, let’s turn to a much darker time in American history, when Christianity and slavery existed side-by-side in the American South. In 1970, Wendell Berry published “The Hidden Wound,” a book-length essay about the profound damage that racism had inflicted on us all.
Reflecting on the Christianity of the slave-owning South, Berry wrote this passage, which is worth quoting at some length:
“First, consider the moral predicament of the master who sat in church with his slaves, thus attesting his belief in the immortality of the souls of people whose bodies he owned and used. He thus placed his body, if not his mind, at the very crux of the deepest contradiction of his life. How could he presume to own the body of a man whose soul he considered as worthy of salvation as his own? To keep this question from articulating itself in his thoughts and demanding an answer, he had to perfect an empty space in his mind, a silence, between heavenly concerns and earthly concerns, between body and spirit. If there had ever opened a conscious connection between the two claims, if the two sides of his mind had ever touched, it would have been like building a fire in a house full of gunpowder.”
The master hardened his heart to the plight of the slave by fundamentally rejecting the idea that his vertical faith in God carried with it a series of horizontal earthly obligations to love your neighbor as yourself, to do justice to the oppressed and to care for the vulnerable.
So long as the vertical relationship between God and man was secure, the horizontal relationship between men was of secondary importance, to the extent that it mattered at all. Why would this fleeting life matter when eternity was at stake?
Thankfully, we don’t live in such extreme times. We’re far from the dreadful days of slavery, and we’ve left Jim Crow behind, but I’m noticing a morphing of American evangelicalism back to the vertical, away from the horizontal, and that change is turning our gaze inward, to our own well-being above all, sometimes even to the exclusion of caring about the fate of others.
Let’s look at a different, more contemporary, example.
In April, I wrote about Paula White, one of Trump’s principal faith advisers, and her Easter offer of “seven supernatural blessings” in exchange for a suggested offering of $1,000. My piece was focused on the cohort of pastors and their Christian followers who behave more like Trump than like Jesus.
But I could have just as easily focused on the sheer selfishness of her message as well. Look again at the gifts White offered to her flock: “God will assign an angel to you, he’ll be an enemy to your enemies, he’ll give you prosperity, he’ll take sickness away from you, he will give you long life, he’ll bring increase in inheritance, and he’ll bring a special year of blessing.”
The emphasis is clear — look at what God will do for you. It’s all vertical. Honor God (by giving White a pile of cash), and he’ll make you healthy, wealthy and strong.
Consider also the evangelical turn against empathy. There are now Christian writers and theologians who are mounting a frontal attack against the very value that allows us to understand our neighbors, that places us in their shoes and asks what we would want and need if we were in their place.
But Christianity is a cross-shaped faith. The vertical relationship creates horizontal obligations. While Christians can certainly differ, for example, on the best way to provide health care to our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, it’s hard to see how we can disagree on the need to care for the poor.
Put another way, when the sick and lame approached Jesus, he did not say, “Depart from me, for thou shalt die anyway.” He healed the sick and fed the hungry and told his followers to do the same.
Or, as the Book of James declares, “If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,’ but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?”
Again, these passages do not dictate any particular policy, but they do tell us that we must try to meet the physical needs of the poor — here, on this earth — even if our souls are far more durable than our bodies.
People often ask me if I think the evangelical church has changed during the age of Trump or if its true nature is being revealed. There is not a neat yes or no answer. Certainly Trump’s rise has revealed the extent to which the will to power has always lurked in Christian hearts. When faced with a conflict between their stated principles and their access to power, millions of Republican Christians chose power over principle — and they are continuing to do so every day.
At the same time, some things have changed. An evangelical community that once celebrated, for example, George W. Bush’s PEPFAR program — the AIDS initiative that has saved an estimated 26 million lives — has now either applauded or stood by passively as Trump has decimated American foreign aid and damaged a program that was one of America’s greatest humanitarian accomplishments.
Ernst isn’t the chief offender here by any means. Nor do I think that she’s consciously trying to narrow Christian doctrine to the kind of purely vertical relationship that enables so much injustice. Senators aren’t theologians, and neither are columnists.
But politicians are weather vanes (as we’re all tempted to be), and there’s a foul wind blowing out of parts of American Christianity. Ernst’s first quip was a gaffe. Her apology video was no such thing. It was a premeditated effort to say exactly what she thinks Republicans want to hear.
Some other things I did
In my Sunday column, I explained why Trump has turned against the Federalist Society and why the judiciary — including Republican-appointed judges — is holding firm to its constitutional principles when the vast majority of Republican politicians have surrendered to Trump:
“Trump and I have something in common. We’ve both been thinking about why the judiciary has held firm when many other American institutions (especially conservative institutions) have collapsed. Why have a vast majority of conservative judges remained faithful to their legal philosophies when we’ve watched a vast majority of Republicans twist themselves into pretzels celebrating Trump for practices and policies they’d condemn in any other person or politician?
“I come from the conservative legal movement, I have friends throughout the conservative legal movement (including many Trump-appointed judges), and I think I know the answer, or at least part of it.
“The immense pressure that Trump puts on his perceived rivals and opponents exposes our core motivations, and the core motivations of federal judges are very different from the core motivations of members of Congress. Think of it as the difference between seeking the judgment of history over the judgment of the electorate, and to the extent that you seek approval, you place a higher priority on the respect of your peers than the applause of the crowd.”
On Monday, we published a conversation between my colleagues Jamelle Bouie, Michelle Cottle and me that tried to explain why politics feel so cruel these days. One reason is quite simple and connects with what I was just talking about — Trump is changing American evangelicalism more than American evangelicalism is changing Trump:
“There’s this very powerful argument that you choose among the lesser evils, especially when people are cynical about politics to begin with. But here’s the thing that’s interesting about human beings: We don’t like to be on Team Lesser Evil. No one’s running around chanting, ‘Lesser evil, lesser evil.’
“We want to be on the side that’s good. And if you can’t make Donald Trump good, you’ll just redefine Donald Trump as good. And this is part of what is all happening. If you can’t change the MAGA culture, they’re redefining the MAGA culture to try to assimilate it within Christianity or to assimilate Christianity into the MAGA culture. And so that’s why I think it’s quite clear to me why these attacks on empathy are now coming up several years into the Trump era. And it’s because it’s this long, slow process of ‘How do we make Trump good?’ Well, you can’t make Trump good, so how do you change our definition of what is good to meet Trump?”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
22) “Antisemitism” The Making of Our Political Panic
By David Theo Goldberg
—CounterPunch, June 4, 2025
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/04/antisemiti
On May 15, 2025, Logan Rozos was the selected student speaker at NYU’s Gallatin School commencement. Briefly addressing the large crowd of faculty, students, their families and friends, Rozos offered brief remarks condemning “the current atrocities currently happening in Gaza” with U.S. financial, political, and military support. Nowhere in the short remarks were Israel or Jews mentioned. The remarks received prolonged applause from the students, followed by some jeers. Immediate social media accusations charged Rozos with “antisemitism” and “Jew hatred.” NYU, the country’s most expensive university, quickly condemned the remarks and withheld Rozos’s diploma as a consequence. A day later, at NYU’s Tisch School commencement, a group of faculty, in full regalia, stood on stage with white gags tied across their mouths, reminiscent of slavery’s muzzles. (Logan Rozos is Black and transgender.) To date, NYU has restrained from disciplining them, concerned perhaps about further inflaming tensions.
The social costs of spiraling inflation place overbearing burdens on the many while proving profitable for the small group well positioned to benefit from rising prices. The latter tend to be those controlling conditions of political economy, the former those lacking such power. Spiraling charges of antisemitism today raise related questions about the consequent social costs of the manufactured political panic in play: undermining the social standing and prospects of Israel’s critics, especially of those younger who have less institutional support or protection; intensification of uncertainty concerning what can be critically uttered and done; heightening of social conflict and the institutional costs from having to manage the impacts and fallout; and ultimately extending political control over institutions of higher education.
Accusations of rampant antisemitism on U.S. college campuses are fueling investigations by the Departments of Education and Justice. The Trump administration and Republican politicians have promoted the charges to assert greater control over prominent universities, private and public, regarding what can be taught as well as to limit critical political activity on campus. The NYU case illustrates larger dynamics in play.
Key to the Trumpian strategy has been to pit Jewish donors against administrations, faculty and student groups, and administrations, faculty, and students against each other. The aims are twofold. First, universities are being pressured into “deliberalizing” campus thinking, teaching, and culture. And second, Jewish supporters of higher education, traditionally more Democrat leaning, are being pitted against more progressive campus constituencies, further undermining the basis of anti-Republican strength. Inflating “antisemitism” has been key to these ends, encouraged by the current Israeli government and long fueled by Israel’s support groups and organizations in the U.S. and globally.
Central to this strategy is adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA 2016) formulation as the key determinant of what counts as antisemitic. The IHRA account has been adopted by 40 states, including the U.S. State Department, and a host of other institutions, among them universities like Harvard, as their basis for placating the Trump administration by opposing “antisemitism,” to the point of illegalizing it. Congressional Republicans have been pushing the Antisemitism Awareness Act. This would require the Department of Education to deploy the IHRA definition in its attacks on higher education, effectively criminalizing most criticism of Israel. The Act expands antisemitism’s definition to include most anti-Zionist expression for the purposes of civil rights law. It thus seeks to curtail critical political speech. One exception Senate Republicans have introduced reveal the politics in play. The charge that Jews killed Jesus, long a Christian nationalist assertion, would not be considered antisemitic (despite IHRA explicitly formulating it as such). Republicans would protect the claim in the name of advancing First Amendment free speech rights. The outcry has been muted, at most. It seems that not all actual antisemitism is, well, “antisemitism.”
IHRA’s principal author, Kenneth Stern, director of the Center for the Study of Hate at Bard College, has repeatedly emphasized that the “working definition” was never intended as a state or legal principle. Rather, it was provided as a working account to be used especially by European researchers to monitor expressions of antisemitism across the many countries on the continent. Stern is clear: IHRA should not be used to prohibit or restrict non-contemptuous criticism of Israel, or of Zionism, notwithstanding his own disagreements with such criticism.
On its face, the definition IHRA offers appears largely uncontroversial, centering “hatred of Jews.” If one substituted “hatred of Muslims” or “Islam” it could easily serve as a comparable formulation of Islamophobia. But “hatred” reduces more complex considerations to affective criteria, sliding by discriminatory group stereotyping or material dimensions. Following the likes of Charles Murray and Dinesh D’Souza, Christopher Rufo has suggested that group crime rates justify not hiring or admitting Black applicants for some positions. And “positive discrimination” might privilege group members at the expense of non-members. Theodor Herzl, a key founding figure of Zionism, famously offered the Sultan of Turkey free accounting service (“financial regulation”) by Jews in exchange for Palestine as the site for “the Jewish state.” Herzl was trading on the time-worn stereotype that Jews are good money-managers, the world’s Shylock in less flattering terms. Donald Trump has reportedly mimicked the characterization: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” These sorts of gross characterizations reinforce the longstanding antisemitic stereotype of Jews controlling the local or global financial system.
Given antisemitism’s conceptual elasticity, then, it becomes understandable why Stern cautioned against adoption of IHRA as a formal legal account. The more fraught terrain across which both antisemitism and Islamophobia operate suggests turning to an actionable disposition rather than an affective consideration to ground plausibility to charges of antisemitism or Islamophobia. Both are expressive or active antagonisms towards and on the basis of uniquely picking out Jews and Muslims, or their institutions, respectively—for character traits, actions, social standings or roles attributed to the group as such. This would make the definition’s applicability far less nebulous and porous than the claimed basis on hatred. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) offers a more fine-grained account than IHRA’s, one consistent with that I offer here. It parses out antagonisms as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence” directed at “Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish”). Antagonism is a disposition of antipathy, treating Jews (or Muslims in the case of Islamophobia) differently or for pejoratively different reasons than others.
The JDA offers a careful set of guidelines for what counts as antisemitism, most notably regarding criticism of Israel. Tellingly, its definition has received far less uptake, application, or discussion than the more elastic and easily weaponized IHRA formulation. It has been adopted, as far as I can tell, by no states. Like the IHRA definition, though, it explicitly rejects being codified into law.
The IHRA controversy, however, is made to turn less on its actual definition and more readily on the sorts of examples of antisemitism it offers as heuristics. Pretty much the entire public conversation around adopting the IHRA account slides by the formal definition, leaving it unmentioned. Instead, the examples are taken up as if inevitably instances of antisemitic expression no matter the circumstance and without exception. The examples effectively serve as definitional substitute.
A careful reading of the IHRA document, however, calls for a more nuanced, less definitive analysis of what “might” or “may” or “could” amount to antisemitic expression, depending on “overall context” in specific circumstances. Sloppy readings of provisional considerations of “overall context” nevertheless have opened IHRA applicability to an expansive range of instances, loosening parameters currently in play, while also rendering any specific determination prone to more or less robust contestation. The overwhelming effect has been accusation inflation and expression suppression. Mere accusation has foreclosed analysis, been made guilt-producing. Its political uptake has been designed to produce panic, by individuals and institutions.
The eighth example IHRA offers, arguably the key one, is especially telling here. What counts as antisemitism is “the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity” unless “criticism of Israel [is] similar to that leveled against any other country.” (Five of the eleven examples offered focus on statements about Israel.) The qualification is so central to IHRA that example 8 is repeated verbatim from the claim made in the preamble paragraph to the eleven examples IHRA offers. The conditional is invariably disregarded by those adopting IHRA’s account. The definition is effectively read as “classif[ying] most anti-Zionism as antisemitic.”
Consider this: Were a person—call them X– to say they hate Russia for the way it has treated Ukrainians few if any would so much as blink. But were X to say they hate Israel because of the way it has treated Palestinians, Israel’s supporters would quickly turn them into an antisemite, threatening their career if not life. What’s the difference exactly? The latter would certainly not be transgressing the letter and, for Stern, spirit of the IHRA definition. X would not be saying they hate Jews but criticizing the state of Israel in ways they might reasonably criticize another state, say Russia, as IHRA insists they must if not to qualify as antisemitic.
In response, Israel now declares itself not just a Jewish state but the state of all Jews. For a Jew to say it is not their state is not to declare themselves not Jewish, even if Netanyahu’s state seems to be gesturing to that declaration. It is to say Israel is not the state of this Jew, and a growing number of others like them in this regard. One might say something analogous of Russia, or Ukraine, of most all other states. Ethnicity is not reducible to state belonging. It is not that one would rather not be bound by its laws, culture, or politics. Netanyahu’s belligerent state is ready to radically narrow the range and diversity of Jewishness, effectively reducing official “Jewishness” to a minority of an already distinct global minority. This would make Jewish Israel far less secure and more vulnerable than advancing the longstanding Jewish tradition, traceable to the Torah, of embracing the stranger, and living justly with the neighbor.
A careful reading of this particular IHRA example, then, more generally implies that critics of Israel reasonably objecting to any state defining itself on reductively ethno-religious, -national, or -racial grounds would prima facie not qualify as antisemitic. A critic questioning the Israeli government’s self-characterization in law and policy as “theJewish state” materially and legally privileging Jews while restricting in materially discriminatory ways all who are not would not be questioning only Jewish self-determination or sovereignty. Grounding such criticism on a general theory that any such state ends up invariably precluding those not meeting the (usually shifting) criteria of ethno-religious belonging is not reductively anti-Jewish. States ethno-religiously self-defined (no matter the religion) almost inevitably turn repressive to sustain their ethno-purity. Once embracing secularity, they usually scale back some on state violence or restriction against those of different ethnic or religious background even as the state might retain vestiges of its historical culture usually referenced as its “national character.” The latter might take on pernicious implication at the hands of a nationalist government but, unlike ethno-religious ones, secular states do not invariably end up doing so.
+++
Those inflating political charges of antisemitism have overwhelmingly ignored, if not resisted, more fine-grained analysis of the kind suggested here. President Trump’s commitment to rooting out antisemitism from college campuses, and seeking to deport non-citizen campus critics of Israel, proceeds by reductively collapsing ethnicity with a political state. Stern is right. Most criticisms of Zionism should not be deemed antisemitic, as Israel’s supporters too often charge. Zionism, after all, is a political ideology. It is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for Jewishness. Criticisms of Zionism are not necessarily antisemitic unless linking it perniciously to Jewishness. Those defending against political criticisms of Zionism most often dismissively reduce all anti-Zionism to antisemitism. This mere assertion, nevertheless, does not create the fact of it, nor a shield from the reach of justice.
Harvard’s reports on Antisemitism and on Islamophobia, both released April 29, 2025, reveal the numbers of Harvard Jewish and Muslim constituents expressing fear of antagonism towards them on campus. The data are telling. Well over 2,000 Harvard faculty, staff, and students responded to a survey. Almost half of Muslim (47 percent), 15 percent of Jewish, and 6 percent of Christian respondents felt physically unsafe on campus. Nearly all Muslims (92 percent), 61 percent of Jews, and 51 percent of Christians registered anxiety about expressing their political views. And yet the overwhelming focus–at Harvard, in media reports, by the Trump administration–has been on antisemitism.
Antisemitism no doubt exists on campuses. It tends to be generally reflective of the antisemitism at any point in the culture at large. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the reported numbers have spiked following Israel’s dramatically disproportionate, increasingly genocidal response to the murderous Hamas attacks of October 7. But reports of the robust spike in instances of campus antisemitism require careful disaggregation too. Antisemitic language has been used by some, perhaps especially a small number of students, critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza. Whether such expression is all a product of sustained antisemitic belief, thoughtless insensitivity, or caught up in the emotion of the moment remain open questions. It is not clear to what degree the spike in reports has been inflated by treating most any criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza as antisemitic for making Israel-supporting Jewish students “uncomfortable” or “distressed.” It is also unclear to what degree Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian antagonisms have ramped up: the Harvard reports suggest they have to a significantly greater degree than antisemitism.
Anyone identifying with or expressing support for Israel in the wake of October 7 may well feel discomfort due to even reasonably articulated concerns about genocidal reactions by the Israeli state to the attacks. Jews, as some have pointed out, understandably feel especially sensitive about Israel being charged with genocide. And relatedly, there is great resistance to admitting that Israel’s leaders could be driving one. That campus supporters of Israel tend to report a dramatic spike in antisemitism while Jewish critics of Israel do not suggests that the underlying sensitivities tend often to prompt the charge of antisemitism out of the discomfort.
Discomfort alone, however, doesn’t fit either the IHRA or JDA definitions. The tension between discomfort, sometimes produced by insensitive expression by young students, and students’ like Logan Rozos’s cutting critiques of genocidal destruction will not be resolved by pedagogical institutions turned punishment machines. The Genocide Convention characterizes genocide as intentionally eliminating or harming some (not necessarily all) members of a group by killing or removal. Copious evidence of this exists in Gaza. The notable Haaretz journalist, Gideon Levy, recently indicated that Netanyahu’s current undertaking is to “exterminate” all Palestinians in Gaza. Former Knesset member and now head of a far-right libertarian party, Zehut, Moshe Feiglin, recently declared that “Every child in Gaza is the enemy. . . not a single Gazan child will be left [in Gaza].” Those condemning Israel, both Jewish and not, have been antagonistically targeted by some stridently Israel-supporting faculty and non-campus observers, almost invariably with the prompting or support from Israel-supporting organizations. The latter hardly ever face campus disciplinary action when their accusations against named individuals or groups prove after vigorous campus administrative investigation, including by outside lawyers, to be fabricated at worst or exaggerated at least.
The contrasts in response to Islamophobia or anti-Palestinian and antisemitic antagonisms are telling. There are no accounts of pro-Israel students beaten up by off-campus thugs or police, being picked up by ICE and threatened with deportation without due process, as Palestinian-supporting students and faculty have been. There are very few cases of disciplinary action against Jewish defenders of Israel. Shai Davidai, Israeli faculty member in Columbia’s Business School, was briefly barred from campus in late 2024, whereas Columbia Law School’s Katherine Franke, a vocal critic of Israel, was forced into early retirement. There have been streams of disciplinary action against students, Palestinian or Jewish, critical of Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza, as there have been against those protesting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians well before Oct 7. Palestinian (and indeed Jewish) faculty critical of Israel regularly receive death threats.
Government spokespersons, American and Israeli, as well as mainstream media, have instantaneously characterized as “antisemitic” Elias Rodriguez’s chilling murder of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington D.C. The same is true of the awful flame-throwing attacks by Mohamed Soliman on those holding a vigil calling for the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in Boulder this past Sunday. That there is no justification for such violence should not distract from the fact that, to date, there is no evidence either was aimed at Jews as Jews. Both were directed at Israel for its war on Palestinians (and not just on Hamas), by attacking its employees or supporters. In both cases the perpetrators shouted “Free Palestine,” adding no words at the scene or on social media about Jews. The murders and attacks, each conducted by lone men and horrific as both events were, will also likely heighten not dissipate violence against Palestinians. In the ten days between the embassy murders and Boulder attacks, Israel killed well over six hundred Gazans, including many peacefully lining up at a food distribution site after two months of Israel’s preventing any aid reaching Gaza. These killings have received far less media coverage than the two U.S. events. Mainstream reports of the IDF bombings have almost completely maintained anonymity of those killed. No one should be subjected to violent assaults like these, whether conducted by loners or states.
+++
Targeting of Israel’s critics as antisemitic appear to ramp up exactly when Israel’s government makes public and carries out its violent plans in Gaza. Charges of “antisemitism” against critics now represent a textbook case of a politically- and media-inspired moral panic, as theorized in the 1970s by Stanley Cohen and Stuart Hall. Concerns about some incidents become blown up to include an entire population, all members of which then get targeted, further exacerbating the panic about the group. The initial concern, linked to a long historical animosity, becomes ramified into the stereotype. Much as racism historically manifested race, the political panic produces the targeted population, not the reverse.
The strident attacks on Israel’s critics are not happenstance. They are produced by well-funded organizations, some financially supported by Israeli state entities as well as by Jewish American billionaires. StandWithUs, Canary Mission, and Betar have all made it a central cause to use any means available to them to shut down criticism of Israel, including providing the Trump administration with names of Israel’s critics to deport.
“Discomfort” and “distress” are the sort of psychic sensibilities that IHRA’s centering of hate in defining antisemitism has tended to encourage. That these considerations are so subjective render inflationary antisemitism that much easier and politically effective. They silence most public and campus reference to the “hundred’s year war” on Palestinians. In classrooms and forums, accusation and political theatre have substituted for any need to provide arguments to support Israel’s actions. The recourse is mostly to claims of “existential threat.” Quick charges of “existential threat,” while perhaps understandable against the backdrop of mid-twentieth century history, cannot close down debate, let alone criticism.
Despite the accusations, Harvard University is hardly the hotbed of rampant antisemitism, “perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies,” as Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem recently charged. That’s not to say there is no antisemitism at Harvard, nor that there is not more post October 8 than before it. Where Jewish organizations such as Hillel are the objects of Israel-critical protest, these would count as antisemitic only where the campus organization has no record of supporting, embracing, defending, or rationalizing Israel’s devastation of Gaza. Where there is no such record, targeting a Jewish organization or institution—Hillel or a synagogue, say—would be doing so because identified as Jewish. But where the institution’s membership or board as such has supported Israel’s actions in Gaza, criticism becomes legitimate public political expression. Criticizing the ADL for these attacks would not count as antisemitic unless criticisms included evident antisemitic stereotypes or self-evident presuppositions. Concretely, the Anti-Defamation League has attacked critics of Israel’s actions in Gaza. Harvard and other universities like Columbia have too readily ignored these distinctions in the interests of placating the Trump administration only to find out that whatever concessions the university makes never satisfy Trump’s political calculus.
Charges of antisemitism now serve as the dead end (excuse the metaphor) for acknowledging the kind of genocidal action taking place before us. Genocides thankfully have never completed themselves, despite the deadly suffering they produce. But as Jews and Germans today could surely both attest in their own ways, or South Africans for that matter, they leave indelible marks not just on victims and perpetrators but on generations of their offspring alike.
+++
Antisemitisms have seen some increase, as I’ve said. The increase in reports and charges is driven in part by concerns for Israel, the heartfelt covering for the politically cynical. Concerns about Jewish student wellbeing are amplified, those for Palestinian or Muslim students relatedly under-emphasized, even ignored. In response to Harvard’s antisemitism report, a Trump administration spokesman declared that “Universities’ violation of federal law, due to their blatant reluctance to protect Jewish students and defend civil rights, is unbecoming of institutions seeking billions in taxpayer funds.” They were deafeningly silent in response to the Harvard report on Islamophobia.
Trump’s vocal stress on college antisemitism (spurred on by the likes of the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther) was fueled initially by Elise Stefanik’s grilling of then Harvard President Claudine Gay in a December 2024 congressional hearing on college antisemitism and the outcry that followed Gay’s floundering. As he assumed power, Trump mobilized antisemitism as a wedge issue to assert increasing control over college constituencies long critical of both him and ultra-right nationalism. This embrace has helped to undermine confidence in university knowledge-making, as much in the natural as human sciences. This, in turn, was meant to politically elevate the claim to deific presidential authority, to fill the vacuity left in the wake of the skepticism.
“Antisemitism” has served politically for the second Trump administration much as the attack on Critical Race Theory did for Republicans from 2020-2022. Looking strong on confronting campus “antisemitism” has helped to cover up some of the administration’s dramatic erosion of civil rights much as the anti-CRT campaigns did in conservative states and the anti-DEI and anti-woke focus more nationally since. In her letter to Harvard purporting to end Harvard’s capacity to admit international students, Director Noem explicitly linked antisemitism to Harvard’s “employ[ing] racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies.” The politics of inflationary antisemitism serves, in short, as heavy artillery in conservativism’s war on woke.
The political roiling of campuses around matters of Israel and Palestine poses a larger question, however. Israel’s supporters, whether governments, institutions, or individuals, are at least implicitly supporting Palestinian removal in Gaza and, through annexation, in the West Bank too. Those more explicit in this commitment characterizePalestinians as “human animals,” to be eliminated by bombing, starvation, or “self-deportation.” Not a condemnatory word has been uttered by those supporting Israel’s crusade against Gaza of Feiglin’s call to “kill all Gazan babies”. Inflationary antisemitism is the rationalizing legitimation of this crusade.
The political panic around antisemitism, then, has exacerbated anxiety of its occurrence. And this heightened anxiety, in turn, tends to find it around every corner, in every critical statement concerning Israel’s actions, in every damnation of its excesses. The panic produces the “proof.”
The larger question, then, concerns the tough work in the face of all this not just of reconciliation but as a stepping-stone to addressing what now seems even more impossible: how to live together, across separation divides such as borders but especially also literally as next-door neighbors, as partners in governing and commerce, even as friends and lovers? What would it take to find or really reparatively make ways of living together side-by-side, on campuses and in classrooms as in cities and countrysides, engaging with each other rather than fenced off by ideological or actual walls? Inflationary antisemitism serves to wall out even thinking this possibility, let alone its realization.
The political panic of “antisemitism” is exemplified by the fact that anything critical of Israel can now be dismissed in its name. Four years ago Christopher Rufo torched Critical Race Theory as a communist plot initiated in the 1960s by four Jewish European philosophers. The charge was repeated ad nauseam by his prominent followers like Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, and Mark Levine despite abundant evidence of its complete historical fabrication. No one registered the slightest concern that the claim represents as classic a trope of Nazi-like antisemitism as one might find.
The political instrumentalization of “antisemitism”—now screeched save when proving all too inconvenient—empties the charge of the necessary power when really needed as a timely weapon to face down deadly attacks on Jews and Palestinians. Frantz Fanon famously declared that when Jews are attacked, Blacks should pay attention as they would be next. We might now say that when Palestinians are attacked, most notably by Israel and its supporters, Jews especially should pay attention. “Antisemitism” today renders more powerless the defense against the much more dangerous antisemitism of the Christian nationalists when tomorrow they no longer find useful the currently convenient embrace of the Judeo- to Christian ascension.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
1.2K