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"Drunk on impunity," Israel has grandiosely labeled its latest genocidal move "Operation Gideon's Chariots" wherein, moving from siege to seizure, it plans the bloody conquest, ethnic cleansing, and permanent recolonization of Gaza, using the rhetoric of holy war to justify unholy mass destruction - this, even as many of the Palestinian children who've somehow survived their savage 18 months of carnage now slowly starve to death. "We are complicit," says one angry, grieving doctor. "It is an abomination."
Having gotten away with so many atrocities while the international community looks away, Israel just unveiled the latest escalation of its illegal collective punishment of Gazans by finally declaring out loud, "We are occupying Gaza to stay." Unanimously approved by Netanyahu's far-right Security Cabinet, the new "conquering of Gaza" formalizes Israel's plan for the indefinite occupation, forced expulsion and incorporation into "sanitized" Israeli zones of an already long-besieged civilian population "for its own protection." The expansion of an onslaught that has left more than 185,000 Gazans dead, wounded, or missing and millions homeless, hungry, maimed and traumatized is being ludicrously framed as a final mission to dismantle Hamas and retrieve hostages, even though Israel repeatedly failed at each before breaking a ceasefire that would have accomplished both.
"Gideon’s Chariots will begin with great force and will not end until all its objectives are achieved," Israel thundered, again virtually ignoring the fact that permanent occupation, forced displacement and ethnic cleansing violate international law. "No more going in and out - this is a war for victory," said apartheid Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who urged Israelis embrace, not fear the word "occupation...A people that wants to live must occupy its land." But the name Gideon's Chariots, Merkavot Gideon, invoking the righteous Biblical warrior who led a chosen few to annihilate an ancient Arab people, "layers this symbolism with menace," blending the concepts of divine vengeance with state-sanctioned ethnic violence, the "mythic instruments of war (with) the Israeli Merkava tanks that have long razed homes and lives in Gaza and the West Bank."
Sicker, darker undercurrents reportedly surfaced during a Cabinet meeting rife with genocidal banter. After a minister leered that Gazans should "die with the Philistines," Gaza's ancient inhabitants, Netanyahu refuted the idea with, "No. We don’t want to die with them. We want them to die alone." Ominously, the proposal also calls for (now-banned) international aid groups to be replaced with private U.S. military contractors, aka mercenaries, distributing aid at Israeli-designated relief "hubs," which critics call "not an aid plan but an aid denial plan" that flagrantly violates international principles that prohibit an occupier from exploiting humanitarian needs to achieve military or political objectives. Gazan officials angrily rejected the idea as "perpetuation of a malicious policy of siege and starvation...The Occupation cannot be a humanitarian mediator (when) it is the source and instrument of the tragedy."
Any illusion of Israel abruptly becoming a merciful presence in Palestinian lives was shattered Tuesday when far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich proclaimed at a West Bank conference, “Gaza will be entirely destroyed." He added Gazan civilians "will start to leave in great numbers (to) third countries," with hopes the territory would be formally annexed "during the current government’s term." He did not mention such annexation or any acquisition of land by military force is forbidden as a founding principle of international law, including the UN charter. Citing a 2024 report by Amnesty International titled You Feel You Are Subhuman, Dalal Yassine writes that Gaza most bitterly represents the end of humanitarian law: "The past 19 months of genocide have not only demonstrated the double standard imposed on Palestinians in Gaza, but also that there is no standard at all."
And as it's been all along, the U.S. remains complicit. Israel will not act until after an upcoming trip by Trump, who's voiced no objections - his gold-plated hotel beckons - and as usual gets it all wrong, blaming Hamas for treating Gazans "badly." "People are starving, and we’re going to help them get food," he yammered. "Hamas is making it impossible (by) taking everything that’s brought in." This week, our complicity came into harsher, shocking focus when nine former Biden officials admitted its months-long claims of "working tirelessly" for a ceasefire - a phrase used by Biden, Harris, even AOC, and derided by skeptics as "not a thing" - were all a lie. No demands were made - a moral and political crime re-enforced by a 2024 memo finding "insufficient evidence" linking U.S. arms to rights violations or Israel to blocked aid. One critic: "The lack of concern about Palestinian lives is palpable."
Still, the killing goes on, with about half the dead women and children. Implausibly, Israeli forces grow ever more savage: Drones often fire on civil defense teams trying to retrieve the wounded under debris, soldiers just executed 15 Palestine Red Crescent workers, their hands and feet bound, before burying them and their ambulances in the sand; hundreds of doctors, aid workers and journalists have been killed. Last month, they included Ahmad Mansour, burned alive in a media tent, and Fatima Hassouna, a "self-made fighter" colleagues called "the Eye of Gaza," for whom the camera was a weapon to "preserve a voice, tell a story." She died with six siblings, just before her wedding, a day after it was announced a film featuring her, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, will screen at the Cannes Film Festival. "If I die, I want a resounding death," she wrote last year. "Fatima planned for joy," said a friend. "Despite the war, she insisted on dreaming."
With Israeli power left untethered, Arab nations largely silent and international rules of law ignored, what's left to protect Gazan lives are mere small gestures. Hundreds of Israelis attend silent vigils to hold images of dead Palestinian children; Artists Against Apartheid and other groups protested in D.C. bearing the names of the dead and installing 17,000 pairs of children's shoes as a searing memorial; Swedish Television announced an initiative to convert the late Pope Francis’s car into a mobile clinic for Gazan children, fulfilling his final wish; World Central Kitchen barely manages to keep open its mobile bakery, the last bakery in Gaza: "We are now near (the) limits of what is possible." Still, desperate hunger mounts. Most Gazans face "acute levels of food insecurity," with more and more children dying from "starvation-related complications," a now-common term that should not exist.
Aid officials say close to 300,000 children are on the brink of starvation; about a third of those under two suffer from "acute malnutrition," with the rate swiftly climbing; more than 3,500 under five face imminent death from starvation; at least 27 have died from malnutrition, and at least several more die each day, often newborns of mothers who cannot produce milk. To date, the Israeli onslaught has directly killed over 15,000 children; for every direct death, says The Lancet medical journal, there are up to four indirect deaths from hunger, disease, the collapse of small bodies' immunity and a country's once-flourishing healthcare system. If they can, sunken-cheeked children who've lost half their body weight scavenge in mountains of trash for anything to fill their stomachs alongside their frantic parents: "I don’t want my child to die hungry." One mother: "As people, we are almost dead."
The stories and images horrify: Stick-thin, Auschwitz-like limbs protrude, ribs jut from concave chests, eyes grow wide and glazed. Once vibrant, they lie in bed, skin on bone, too weak to walk, stand, turn, lift their head, eventually breathe. An emaciated six-year-old weighing half what he should writhes on a bed, pleading, "I want to leave." A four-month-old, six-pound girl died of malnutrition, blood acidity, liver and kidney failure after her hair and nails fell out. Of newborn twin girls, one died eight days later. A father's father's infant son Abdelaziz died hours after his severely malnourished mother gave birth to him; hospital staff hooked Abdelaziz, premature and gasping, to a ventilator; it stopped a few hours later when the hospital ran out of fuel, and he died "immediately." "I am losing my son before my eyes," says one mother. "In these beds, we are waiting for them to die one by one."
Each day, says Tareq Hailat of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, up to ten sick children in Gaza need urgent medical evacuation, but, "It's just not happening." Each one, he stresses, has a story: "They aren't just a number." Among the handful his group managed to get out was 6-year-old Fadi al-Zant from Gaza City, who had cystic fibrosis; he was also starving. When his mother couldn't find food or medication, Fadi's weight dropped from 66 to 26 pounds and he became too weak to walk, he was miraculously evacuated to first Egypt, then New York. Once the media began following his story, Fadi became "the face of starvation in Gaza." But he was a rare, blessed exception. "We are breaking the bodies and minds of the children of Gaza," says Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO. "We are starving the children of Gaza. We are complicit. As a physician, I am angry. It is an abomination."
There are so many. Drop Site Newsposted video of the distraught mother of four-month-old Yousef al-Najjar as he lay curled on a hospital bed, small fists flailing, suffering from malnutrition and dehydration. He weighed just 3.3 pounds, one fourth of what he should have weighed. His young mother lamented: He has had spasms trying to breathe, his entire ribcage sticks out, she has never experienced this before, she doesn't know each morning if he's survived: "The woman you see before you is begging for money to feed her children." She held him in her arms, then repeatedly lofted him into the unlistening air, arms straight before her, up and down, up and down, almost weightless. "Why is this happening to us?" she cried. "I swear to God, it's wrong what is happening to us." On Monday, Yousef died from malnutrition, and Israel. May his memory be for a blessing.
Update: More horrors: "Absolute savagery."
As planetary heating has fueled increasingly damaging hurricanes, wildfires, and dangerous heatwaves, fossil fuel giants have long been shielded by plausible deniability: Despite scientists' consensus that oil, gas, and coal extraction are polluting the planet and causing global temperatures to rise, they couldn't prove that specific corporations were to blame for worsening climate destruction.
A study published on Wednesday could change that.
Using modeling techniques that have been utilized for more than a decade to explain how climate change is fueling weather disasters, researchers at Dartmouth College estimated that 111 of the world's largest fossil fuel companies have caused $28 trillion in heat-related climate damages so far—slightly less than the value of all goods and services produced in the United States last year.
"The global economy would be $28 trillion richer," reads the study, "were it not for the extreme heat caused by the emissions from the 111 carbon majors considered here."
The study, published in Nature, found that more than half of that amount—which doesn't include damages from hurricanes and other extreme climate events—could be attributed to just 10 oil, coal, and gas companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Russia's state-owned Gazprom, and Saudi Aramco.
"Everybody's asking the same question: What can we actually claim about who has caused this?" Dartmouth climate scientist Justin Mankin, co-author of the study, told Euronews.
The researchers pursued that question as climate advocates pushed policymakers to adopt the "polluters pay principle": the idea that companies that produce pollution should pay for the damages it causes. Earlier this year, a California Democratic lawmaker introduced legislation that would allow homeowners and businesses to recoup losses caused by climate disasters like the wildfires that devastated parts of the Los Angeles area.
"The global economy would be $28 trillion richer were it not for the extreme heat caused by the emissions from the 111 carbon majors considered here."
New York and Vermont have enacted laws that would hold fossil fuel companies accountable for greenhouse gas emissions and require them to pay for climate damages and adaptation, and other states are considering similar proposals—with oil and gas companies fighting back in court.
Mankin told Euronews that Dartmouth's new research shows that "the veil of plausible deniability doesn't exist anymore scientifically."
In the past, he said, carbon emitters could ask, "Who's to say that it's my molecule of CO2 that's contributed to these damages versus any other one?"
"We can actually trace harms back to major emitters," he said.
The research team examined the final emissions of the products produced by the 111 largest fossil fuel giants and used 1,000 distinct computer simulations to determine how those emissions impacted changes in the Earth's global average surface temperature, comparing the results to a simulation in which each company's emissions did not exist.
Epidemiologist Ali Khan said the method represented "great improvements in attribution" as at least 68 lawsuits have been filed globally demanding that polluters pay for damages. About half of those lawsuits have been filed in the United States.
"So far, attorneys and litigants have often named defendants as part of the initial legal process, under the assumption that knowing a defendant's emissions is sufficient to make a claim," reads the study. "Science can help claimants assess potential defendants in a transparent and low-cost way."
The researchers determined that Chevron's oil and gas extraction has raised the Earth's temperature by 0.025°C. The company is to blame for an estimated $1.98 trillion in climate damage, behind only Saudi Aramco, which is liable for an estimated $2.05 trillion, and Gazprom, which is responsible for $2 trillion.
Kevin Reed, a professor at Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, toldThe Washington Post that Dartmouth's research into climate damage attribution is "the real deal."
"This is the first time I've seen this done in a really comprehensive way that isn't just for one specific event," Reed said.
The European Green Party cataloged a number of steps that policymakers could take if $28 trillion had been saved by forcing companies to end their climate-wrecking emissions.
Financing 100% renewable energy would cost just $4 trillion, while guaranteeing universal housing and energy efficiency would cost $3 trillion, said the political party.
"Polluters," said the European Greens, "need to start paying for the damage they are causing to our planet."
The United States economy decelerated during the first quarter of 2025, as businesses braced for sweeping tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a Wednesday "advance estimate" from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis—marking the first contraction of the country's real gross domestic product since 2022.
Real GDP declined at an annual rate of 0.3% in January, February, and March of 2025, according to the report. That headline figure is a dramatic turn around from the final quarter of 2024, when real GDP increased 2.4%.
According to the report, "the decrease in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an increase in imports... and a decrease in government spending." When calculating GDP, imports are subtracted, meaning more imports will yield a lower number.
A number of outlets have cautioned that the 0.3% contraction figure is somewhat misleading. Axiospointed to solid business investment and consumer spending data in the report as evidence "signaling at least some underlying momentum in the economy—at least once volatile measures like trade are stripped out." The New York Timesoffered similar analysis.
But even with this caveat, the economic picture is less than rosy. "Maybe some of this negativity is due to a rush to bring in imports before the tariffs go up, but there is simply no way for policy advisors to sugar-coat this. Growth has simply vanished," said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.
Several observers were quick to point the finger at the Trump administration.
"Our economy is crumbling under President Trump's mismanagement, and today's falling GDP data confirms our slide toward a recession," said Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the progressive group Groundwork Collaborative. "Trump is creating the conditions for a particularly brutal recession."
"It turns out that when you launch a trade war with blanket tariffs, layoff federal workers en masse, cancel federal contracts, and reduce skilled immigration, you will have negative GDP growth," wrote Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on X.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said that "Trump's chaos is clearly and significantly raising the risk of a recession, and the economic warning lights are all flashing red."
In response to the release, markets slipped on Wednesday.
Trump, for his part, took to his social media site Truth Social on Wednesday to say that "This is Biden's Stock Market, not Trump's." He added that "tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers … This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other."
Economists say they think Wednesday's numbers are related to tariffs. According to reporting from the Times, the main takeaway from the report is that consumers and businesses started to modify their behavior even prior to Trumps "Liberation Day" tariffs on April 2, which rattled markets.
A surge in the trade deficit edged GDP into negative territory, said Dean Baker, senior economist for the left-leaning economic think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in a statement on Wednesday. "This was due to massive stockpiling of inventories and purchases of durable goods in anticipation of tariffs."
"The negative GDP number could also mean the end of the big upswing in productivity growth under Biden. This is bad news for both real wage growth and inflation," continued Baker.
"No surprise that GDP took a hit in the first quarter, mainly because the balance of trade blew up as companies imported goods like crazy to front-run tariffs. The more telling number for the future of the expansion was consumer spending, and it grew, but at a relatively weak pace," said Robert Frick, corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union, according to CNBC.
Wednesday's report also registered increased inflation. The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve's favored inflation gauge, registered a 3.6% gain for Q1, up from 2.4% in the final quarter of last year.
The numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis come a day after reports of consumer confidence in April dipping to lows not seen since early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
There is still major economic data set to be released this week. On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its jobs report for the month of April.
This article was updated with a comment from Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).
Elon Musk, the world's richest person and de facto head of the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, "has had a direct business interest in over 70% of the agencies and departments targeted by DOGE since its inception," according to an analysis published Thursday by a leading U.S. consumer advocacy group.
The Public Citizen report, titled Duplicitous Oligarchy Grifting Endlessly, "maps out the entities DOGE has targeted and identifies which ones carry a known conflict of interest for Elon Musk's business entanglements" as the executive office leads the Trump administration's purge of federal agencies.
"The wealthiest man in the world is working to dismantle the very same federal departments and agencies tasked with overseeing and placing checks on his businesses," the report states. "He also now is adjacent to and could potentially access sensitive and potentially proprietary information from his biggest competitors in the various industries that have made him wealthy. He also has personal business interests that could shape what his DOGE project considers ripe for cuts."
Elon Musk's DOGE has spent the last several months dismantling the departments & agencies that regulate HIS businesses. Our report found that Musk has a direct business interest in over 70% of the agencies & departments DOGE targeted. The conflicts of interest are endless.
— Public Citizen (@publiccitizen.bsky.social) May 8, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Elizabeth Beavers, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch, said in a statement that "it should alarm every American that the wealthiest man in the world has spent the last several months dismantling the same departments and agencies tasked with regulating his businesses."
"Musk's role as the most powerful person in government makes it highly unlikely that any regulator will crack down on his corporations and surely will make agency leaders look more favorably at Musk companies as potential government contractors," Beavers added.
The report considers Musk—who has signaled he will leave DOGE—to have a conflict of interest with a federal agency when one of his companies has received contracts or grants from the department, has an interest in its proprietary data, and is subject to its regulation or enforcement regime.
Public Citizen's analysis highlights interests with federal agencies including:
Musk—whose companies have tens of billions of dollars worth of government contracts—also has conflicts of interest with the departments of Defense, Agriculture, and Energy. SpaceX, for example, holds Pentagon contracts worth around $8 billion, including nearly $6 billion for the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 program.
Critics have laughed off the White House's assertion that Musk would self-police his conflicts of interest by recusing himself when DOGE and his business interests overlap.
"The report's findings make clear that this approach is deeply and incurably flawed—and that urgent action by Congress is required to safeguard the government from Musk's self-dealing and grift," Public Citizen said.
Jewish students and academics for Palestinian rights and free speech on Wednesday condemned a congressional hearing in which House Republicans repeatedly conflated opposition to Zionism and Israeli crimes against Palestine with antisemitism, while Democratic lawmakers warned against the weaponization of civil rights to suppress dissent.
The House Education and Workforce Committee held the hearing—titled "Beyond the Ivy League: Stopping the Spread of Antisemitism on American Campuses"—which followed last year's panel on antisemitism, both real and contrived, at Columbia University.
This time, the presidents of Haverford College, DePaul University, and California Polytechnic State University were grilled by lawmakers including committee Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who said that Israel should deal with Gaza "like Nagasaki and Hiroshima" and was a manager at the Moody Bible Institute, which according to a memo from a group of mostly Jewish Haverford professors, "trains students to convert Jewish people to Christianity."
The memo notes that committee member Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) once said Jews and Muslims will never know "peace in their soul" until they renounce their religions and accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. Another committee member, Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), said that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was "right" about political movements' need to capture youth support, before later apologizing.
Yet these and other Republican lawmakers on the panel pressured the three university presidents to crack down on constitutionally protected speech, while conflating support for Palestine and criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
"Haverford employs faculty members who engage in blatant antisemitism with no apparent consequences," said Walberg. "For example, one professor declared online that Zionism is Nazism."
Asked by Walberg if the phrase "long live the intifada"—an affirmation of Palestinians' legal right to armed resistance against Israeli oppression—is "protected speech at Haverford's campus," college president Wendy Raymond incorrectly said, "That is an antisemitic form of speech."
Walberg also falsely called the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel "unprovoked" and singled out students and faculty who praised Palestinians who resist Israel—which is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and whose prime minister and former defense minister are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, where they are wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination and forced starvation, in Gaza.
DePaul University president Robert Manuel said he was "deeply sorry" for "mistakes" made at the Chicago school, where two Jewish students were brutally attacked last November in what prosecutors have charged as a hate crime, while touting the banning of pro-Palestine groups including Students for Justice in Palestine from campus.
While noting that the Constitution "doesn't protect antisemitic violence, true threats of violence, or certain kinds of speech that may properly be labeled 'harassment,'" Georgetown University Law Center professor and former ACLU national legal director David Cole told the committee that the First Amendment "protects speech many of us find wrongheaded or deeply offensive, including anti-Israel advocacy and even antisemitic advocacy."
Cole accused the committee of making "broad-based charges of antisemitism without any factual predicate."
"To be honest, and with all due respect, the hearings this committee held on this same subject last year are reminiscent not of a fair trial of any sort, but of the kind of hearings the House Committee on Un-American Activities used to hold," Cole contended. "And I think we can all agree that the HUAC hearings were both a big mistake and a major intrusion on the First Amendment rights of Americans."
Cole also took aim at U.S. President Donald Trump's weaponization of antisemitism to threaten and defund colleges and universities that don't crack down on Palestine defenders, stressing that "the government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing such viewpoints."
Dozens of Jewish Haverford students signed an open letter to members of the House Education Committee ahead of Wednesday's hearing stating that "we are all deeply concerned by how you are weaponizing our pain and anguish for your own purposes."
Letter to the Editor: Jewish Haverford Students Reject Congress’ Weaponization of Antisemitism haverfordclerk.com/letter-to-th...
[image or embed]
— Karen Masters ( @karenlmasters.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 12:15 PM
"It is clear to us that these hearings will not, and have no desire to, protect us or combat antisemitism," the letter says. "Instead, this congressional hearing weaponizes antisemitism to target freedom of speech on college campuses, silences political dissidents, and attacks students who speak out in solidarity with Palestine. It is a blatant assault on our Black, brown, transgender, queer, noncitizen, and Palestinian peers."
A day before the hearing, the group Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVPA)—which called the panel a "kangaroo hearing"— brought nine Columbia University and affiliated students to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress and "speak about their experiences as Jewish students who have been steadfastly committed to advocating for the safety and freedom of the Palestinian people."
Columbia junior Shay Orentlicher said that "I'm here asking my representatives to call for the release of my friend Mahmoud Khalil and to put real pressure on the Trump regime," referring to the permanent U.S. resident facing deportation after helping to lead pro-Palestine protests at the New York City university.
"I cannot stand to see the Trump administration smear Mahmoud as an antisemite when it could not be further than the truth," Orentlicher added.
Tali Beckwith-Cohen, a Jewish senior at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College, argued: "The Trump regime is using false allegations of antisemitism to disappear our friends, punish student protestors, and dismantle higher education. What we are seeing has nothing to do with keeping Jews safe, and everything to do with crushing dissent."
"Thousands of Jews on campuses across the country have spoken out in solidarity with the people of Gaza and we will not be silent," Beckwith-Cohen vowed.
JVPA political director Beth Miller contended that "the far-right does not care about Jewish safety."
"Trump and his allies in Congress are platforming neo-Nazis and Christian nationalists, all while pretending to care about antisemitism in order to take a hatchet to our communities and most basic freedoms," Miller added. "This is intended to silence the Palestinian rights movement, sow chaos, and sharpen authoritarian tools that will then be used to dismantle civil liberties and democracy itself."
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Education Committee, pushed back on Republicans' assertions during Wednesday's hearing, noting that "my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not held any hearings on other forms of discrimination and hate, such as racism, Title IX gender violations, Islamophobia, homophobia, or the challenges of meeting the needs of students with disabilities."
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) noted that Trump praised attendees of the deadly 2017 "United the Right" white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia as "very fine people," and that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "spread an antisemitic conspiracy theory that Covid was engineered to target white and Black people but spare Jewish people."
Casar asked committee Republicans to condemn these and other antisemitic incidents by raising their hands. None did.
Antisemitism is an assault on all of our values. So why would Republicans cut funding to address hate crimes or protect synagogues? Republicans are not trying to keep Jewish students safe. They're trying to keep the Israeli government safe from any form of criticism.
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— Congressman Greg Casar ( @repcasar.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 10:24 AM
"Not a single Republican today has been willing to condemn any of this antisemitism," Casar lamented. "Unfortunately, the party of 'very fine people on both sides' or ' Jewish space lasers' does not give a damn about stopping antisemitism. If my Republican colleagues want to stop the spread of antisemitism, maybe they should stop apologizing for and promoting antisemites."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) argued that "it is abundantly clear that the cynical work of the majority party on this committee is now being expanded and weaponized by the [Trump] administration seeking to squash dissent."
"Political protest, anti-war protest, pro-Palestinian protest—this is all protected speech under the First Amendment, regardless of citizenship status," Omar said after listing a number of Palestine defenders, including green-card holders, targeted for deportation by the Trump administration.
"Using immigration authorities to target, abduct, and detain noncitizens for their activism is a clear violation of their rights and a hallmark of an authoritarian government," she added.
Asserting that "throughout history, college campuses have been the places where worldviews, politics, cultures meet," Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said that "some of the most transformative movements for justice in this country were ignited by students on college campuses."
"We cannot allow them to use efforts to divide our marginalized communities against each other."
"Now, that tradition of protest, academic freedom, and the core principle of free speech is under attack," Lee noted. "Not genuinely in the name of safety and student well-being, but under the guise of control used to suppress the voices of marginalized groups."
Lee said that it's clear that committee Republicans don't care about tackling antisemitism and other forms of bigotry "because they've dismantled and closed regional offices for civil rights... tasked with investigating antisemitism, that they have not spoken out against the Nazi salutes of Elon Musk or the Great Replacement Theory that led to the largest antisemitic massacre in my district."
"They have done nothing about anti-Blackness—I won't hold my breath for a hearing on that," she continued.
"We haven't acknowledged that our safety and our liberation are tied together," Lee added. "We cannot allow them to use efforts to divide our marginalized communities against each other... We are the closest we have ever been—ever been—to losing our civil liberties. We have to fight against it."
A famed 14-year-old singer was among scores of Palestinians killed by Israel Defense Forces airstrikes across the Gaza Strip since Monday as bombing and starvation fueled by Israel's ongoing siege continued to ravage the coastal enclave.
Hassan Ayyad—who was known for his songs about life and death in Gaza during Israel's genocidal assault and siege—was killed in an IDF airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp. Video shared widely on social media showed Ayyad singing in a haunting voice, sometimes accompanied by his father, Alaa Ayyad.
"The child who sang of death has now joined those he mourned."
"Gaza is dying, blind in the eyes of America," Ayyad intones in one clip. "With the warplanes, we tasted the flavor of death, an airstrike from land and sea. They blocked the crossings—people are dying from hunger. Bear witness, world, to what they've done."
Reacting to the boy's killing, Alaa Ayyad told Palestinian journalist Essa Syam that "Hassan was my heat, my soul, my son... my only son."
"What can I tell you about Hassan? Hassan is everything," Ayyad continued. "I ask everyone to pray for mercy for his soul."
Responding to Ayyad's killing, Gaza journalist Mahmoud Bassam wrote Monday on the social media site X that "Hassan was martyred moments ago in an Israeli airstrike, raising the death toll to over 60 since dawn."
"The child who sang of death has now joined those he mourned—his farewell was as noble as his words," Bassam added.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday that at least 22 people including numerous children were killed and more than 50 others wounded when Israeli airstrikes targeted a school-turned-shelter, this one in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
"The Bureij massacre is a heinous war crime that requires the prosecution of the occupation's leaders in international courts as war criminals," Hamas, which rules Gaza and led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, said in a statement.
More than 185,000 Palestinians have been killed, wounded, or left missing by Israel's 578-day assault and siege on Gaza. Most of the territory's more than 2 million inhabitants have also been forcibly displaced, often multiple times, while mass starvation is rampant due to Israel's tightened blockade.
Israeli officials said Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump does not object to Operation Gideon's Chariots, a full-scale invasion, conquest, and ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip that Israel is expected to launch after Trump visits the Middle East later this month.
On Tuesday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he envisions Gaza "entirely destroyed" and ethnically cleansed of its more than 2 million inhabitants.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Monday that Israeli forces have killed at least 16,278 children in Gaza since October 2023—a rate of one child killed every 40 minutes. The ministry said it has recorded 57 children who have died from malnutrition amid Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza, which has fueled mass starvation and illness and is part of an International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel led by South Africa.
Last year, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts. This, after the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) called Gaza the "world's most dangerous place to be a child."
A 2024 survey of more than 500 Gazan children conducted by the Gaza-based Community Training Center for Crisis Management and supported by the War Child Alliance
found that nearly all children in the embattled Palestinian enclave believed their death was imminent—and nearly half said they wanted to die.
"Working-class seniors pay into Social Security and Medicare their whole careers so they can enjoy a dignified retirement, but they end up paying a much larger share of their income in taxes than billionaires because the tax code is rigged in favor of the rich."
Social Security and Medicare protect tens of millions of American senior citizens from poverty and medical bankruptcy each year, but economic justice advocates have long said the programs would be strengthened and remain fully solvent for as long as possible if the richest Americans contributed more to them—and on Thursday two Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation to ensure they do.
The bicameral bill, the Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act, was reintroduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), with the aim of requiring people with yearly incomes of more than $400,000 to contribute a fairer share of their wealth to the two programs.
Currently the maximum amount of earnings for which American workers must pay Social Security taxes is just over $176,000.
The bill would lift the Social Security tax cap "to ensure that no matter the source of their income, high-income taxpayers would pay the same tax rate on their income exceeding that threshold," said the lawmakers in a press statement.
It would also increase the Medicare tax rate for income above $400,000 by 1.2% and include a provision ensuring owners of hedge funds and private equity firms can no longer avoid Medicare taxes.
Whitehouse and Boyle introduced the bill as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans work to slash Social Security—confirming Wall Street executive Frank Bisignano, who has backed billionaire Elon Musk's spending cuts at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to run the program this week.
"While Republicans are pushing a $7 trillion tax giveaway to the ultrarich, we're working to protect the benefits that millions of Americans have earned—and we won't let them be stolen to fund another billionaire windfall."
Republicans have also suggested Medicare could be slashed in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and have pushed to expand privatized Medicare Advantage plans.
"Working-class seniors pay into Social Security and Medicare their whole careers so they can enjoy a dignified retirement, but they end up paying a much larger share of their income in taxes than billionaires because the tax code is rigged in favor of the rich," said Whitehouse. "As the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans gear up to deliver budget-busting giveaways for their billionaire donors, I will continue pushing to make our tax code fair and protect these twin pillars of retirement security as far as the eye can see."
Actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Social Security Administration estimated that Whitehouse and Boyle's proposal would extend Social Security and Medicare solvency by at least 75 years.
Without new revenue, the trust funds that finance Medicare and Social Security are projected to be 100% solvent only through 2036 and 2033, respectively.
The legislation is endorsed by groups including Social Security Works, the National Council on Aging, and the Center for Medicare Advocacy.
"From my first day in Congress, I've pledged to protect the long-term stability of Social Security and Medicare—two bedrock promises our country made to seniors, workers, and people with disabilities," said Boyle. "Now, with [President] Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE-fueled billionaires openly attacking these programs, that fight is more urgent than ever."
"While Republicans are pushing a $7 trillion tax giveaway to the ultrarich," he said, "we're working to protect the benefits that millions of Americans have earned—and we won't let them be stolen to fund another billionaire windfall."
The plan "contravenes basic humanitarian principles," said a spokesperson for the United Nation's children's agency.
United Nations aid officials have rejected a U.S. and Israel-backed plan for aid delivery in Gaza that reportedly involves the use of a private foundation and U.S. military security contractors to deliver far less humanitarian assistance than the besieged enclave needs.
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), warned Friday that the agency "will not participate."
"There is no reason to put in place a system that is at odds with the DNA of any principled humanitarian organization," Laerke told the BBC.
Since early March, Israel has blocked aid from entering Gaza, compounding widespread misery and hunger in the besieged enclave as Israel continues to mount a deadly military campaign there. U.N. officials have decried the fact that aid is close at hand but is not being allowed in.
Speaking in Jerusalem on Friday, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said that the plan involves a private U.S.-backed foundation, which will distribute aid from a set number of distribution sites, according to CNN. Huckabee said the idea is to create a system that prevents Hamas from obtaining the aid.
The private entity, called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, would administer those distribution sites using private U.S. military contractors and aid workers, according to CNN.
The plan reportedly entails only allowing 60 aid trucks a day, a sliver of what was allowed to enter the enclave during the two-month cease-fire that Israel ended in March. A document from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation states that there will initially be four distribution sites aimed at providing 1.2 million Palestinians in its first phase, or 60% of Gaza's population.
According to the The New YorkTimes, under the current aid distribution system, the U.N. says there are 400 distribution points.
Huckabee said that Israel would not be involved in delivering aid, but that Israeli forces would handle security around the distribution sites.
The Times of Israel, citing officials familiar with the plan, reported that the Israeli government and military have been involved in putting the plan together, even if the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is the entity that is slated to distribute the aid.
Reporting from The Washington Postpublished Monday, which cited unnamed Israeli officials and aid workers, framed the emerging plan as an Israeli initiative to take control of aid distribution in Gaza. The Post's reporting also stated that the distribution centers would be all be located in the south of Gaza.
The Post spoke with officials from a dozen international aid groups working in Gaza, who expressed concerns that restricting aid to a few locations would force more displacement and be discriminatory.
James Elder, spokesperson for the U.N.'s children's agency UNICEF, echoed this, according to the BBC, saying on Friday that the proposed plan would lead to more children suffering and that the decision to locate all the distribution centers in the south appeared designed to weaponize aid as "bait" to force Palestinians to be displaced once again.
The plan "contravenes basic humanitarian principles" and appears designed to "reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic," Elder said, according to U.N. News.
"Trump and Greg Abbott are taking law enforcement who should be focused on keeping people safe and are using them to deport citizens. It's wrong, it’s disturbing, and it hurts public safety."
In recent weeks, immigration agents acting on the Trump administration's orders have alarmed rights advocates by deporting multiple U.S. citizen children and entrapping a person marked for deportation by asking him to attend an official immigration-related appointment—and this week, advocacy groups said Thursday, a family in Texas was subjected to both actions once again.
The Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and Grassroots Leadership said they were not able to confirm the whereabouts of three children aged 9, 5, and 4—the youngest two of whom are U.S. citizens born and raised in Austin, Texas—after they were deported to Mexico with their mother, Denisse Parra Vargas.
Parra Vargas and her partner, Omar Gallardo Rodríguez, were stopped on April 30 by the Texas Department of Public Safety in Austin, when authorities saw they were driving a truck with expired license plates. DPS contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when it found the couple did not have legal status in the United States, and Gallardo Rodríguez was deported days later.
Authorities gave Parra Vargas an ankle monitor to wear and told to visit an Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) office to check in with ICE agents.
"ICE has no authority to detain or deport U.S. citizens regardless of the status of their parents."
According to the advocacy groups, ICE told her if she attended all her ISAP appointments she would be eligible for a work permit. Parra Vargas was also told to attend a hearing for Gallardo Rodríguez at an ICE facility on May 6.
"But her partner had no hearing and instead she and her minor children were detained, including two U.S. citizen children," said the groups.
The family was taken to a facility in Laredo before being deported and sent to the border city of Reynosa, Mexico, where they were at a shelter as of Wednesday.
Daniel Hatoum, an attorney with TCRP, told the Austin American-Statesman that in cases like that of Parra Vargas and her children, "they basically tell the family: 'Either take them with you or we're going to separate them quickly from you.' They then claim that's not really a deportation because they were given the option of going. But it certainly is in a colloquial sense."
The advocacy groups said that while ICE may claim it gave Parra Vargas the "choice" to leave her young children in the U.S., the agency "did not allow for communication with nearby family members who were willing to keep the children and instead detained them for 24 hours in secretive locations before deporting the U.S. citizen children to Mexico."
"ICE was informed by the family and legal advocates that the children were U.S. citizens and ICE knowingly deported them anyway in violation of their own policies and laws," said the groups. "ICE has no authority to detain or deport U.S. citizens regardless of the status of their parents."
The organizations said they were not able to communicate with Parra Vargas when she was in detention in order to provide her with legal counsel.
The family's deportation comes weeks after an ICE field office in New Orleans deported three American children—aged 2, 4, and 7—including one who has a rare cancer.
The Department of Homeland Security claimed in a statement to the American-Statesman that "the narrative that DHS is deporting American children is false and irresponsible reporting."
But U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said the facts show that "two children with U.S. citizenship—born and raised in Austin—were just detained and deported to Mexico."
Two children with US citizenship — born and raised in Austin — were just detained and deported to Mexico. Trump and Greg Abbott are taking law enforcement who should be focused on keeping people safe and are using them to deport citizens. It’s wrong, it’s disturbing, and it hurts public safety.
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— Congressman Greg Casar (@repcasar.bsky.social) May 9, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Sulma Franco, who works with Grassroots Leadership, told the American-Statesman that the parents "were people who were doing all that they could to provide for their families, responsibly, without trouble."
Carlos Enrique González Echeverría at the Mexican Consulate in Austin told the newspaper that Parra Vargas had a deportation order from 2019, when she didn't appear at an immigration court hearing. She was denied asylum in 2016 when she applied at the U.S.-Mexico border after traveling to the U.S. to escape her abusive former partner.
TCRP, which is representing the family, said Thursday that "there are no confirmed details about the whereabouts or welfare of her children" following their deportation to Mexico.