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The Empathist-In Chief: "This says everything."
Further

Winning Blind Cruel Inept Nationalism, Also Cultism

Hoo boy. The stupid and evil, somehow accelerating, burn. America's so-called leader, the "Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath," manifests ever more cognitive dissonance on steroids. Absurd, addled, vindictive, looming above "a circus of death and chaos," he commits war crimes, guts voting rights, plots devastation, abases decency, murders mercy, yet whines about mean jokes. But as America reels, Banksy, Bruce, Platner and others increasingly declare, "We are not fucking doing this anymore."

Amidst what the head of Amnesty International calls "the year of the predators," humanity itself is under attack, most notably by our ludicrous narcissist and his "casual, bewildering cruelty." Despite his foolishness, Nesrine Malik writes, "This is what evil looks like": See history's portrayals of Hitler - "the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog" - and Mussolini, "that funny man, that consummate buffoon." Trump's "farcical puniness," Malik notes, is "a projection onto the world, not of large intent, but of smallness and fear...The consequences of his violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it (to) erase his terror of humiliation (and) feed his sociopathic appetite for escalation." Thus can deeply silly still equal dangerous.

Daily, the large and small atrocities are both, albeit without the resonance of the label "fascist" only because he lacks the wit, intent and coherence it requires. The war in Iran veers on: "Another day, another pivot. Trump flails." It's won, not, won but not by enough, it's not a war, we made a deal, we don't want a deal, talks are going well, we don't wanna talk, Iran struck a school full of young girls, or if we did it's Obama's fault. Give me ballroom or give me death: The solution to gun violence that kills 12 children a day, wounds 32 more and has affected over 390,000 kids since Columbine - is to build one rich white guy who's never expressed any grief over any of them a gilded bunker of his own. The way to keep more people safe is to kill as many as possible, including by firing squad.

Also, Bill Maher, Hakeem Jeffries, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are low IQ losers, James Comey tried to kill and "inflict bodily harm on" him with "aggravated beachy seashell pictures," he's so "young, vital, vibrant" he could've joined the Artemis II astronauts easy like he aced his three screening tests for dementia - "A lion, a giraffe, a bear, and a shark. Which one is the bear?" - which the Villages audience def couldn't do, ditto sketchy Harvard Law graduate Hussein Obama. America's response to his musing what we'd do if a con man moron turned up - "How do you get to be president and you're stupid?": "That would suck - we'd probably have unprovoked wars, high gas prices and all our allies would hate us," "He's so close to getting it," "The Irony Meter is dead after spontaneously combusting," and "You're a fucking moron." Also, so grotesquely weird.

Latest bonkers Jesus/doctor/imbecile post Latest bonkers Jesus/doctor post with an umbilical-cord-eating eagle. Nothing to see here.Image from Truth Social

Meanwhile, the Orwellian rules for what you can/can’t see/say keep spooling out, lies sold as half-truths to justify a brazen, racist, whitewashing of both present and past under the shameless moniker of content “inappropriately disparaging Americans past or living,” but always white. Among dozens of changes at our National Parks, gone are signs about the contributions of Native Americans and women, warnings about climate change "not grounded in real science," evidence of Founding Fathers owning slaves and explorers' atrocities against Native tribes. But you do get Trump's loathsome mug plastered on park passes, like on our money, buildings, passports ad nauseum. Happily, fighting back for years have been patriots like the Resistance Rangers, the Alt National Park Service and whatever genius slapped these "Sex Offender" flyers across D.C.'s parks.

Hence incrementally, far too slowly but feeding vital hope and our frayed spirits, the flip side of our grim absurdist timeline begins to emerge as Trump and his monstrous clowns flail, fail, dig their own dank holes. So many horrors should have sparked it -Gaza, ICE, USAID, the boundless greed, cruelty, stupidity. Instead, prices did it, a non-stop, staggering incompetence that saw people being screwed once too often and lied to about one too many senseless wars. Last week, Banksy registered his own anti-imperialist protest in a middle-of-the-night dropping into the heart of ceremonial London a large statue mocking such Blind Patriotism. Mirroring the classical style of surrounding monuments celebrating the British Empire's inglorious colonial past, he presents a suited man, his flag flying into his face, one foot poised to step off into his own demise. Much like, you know.

Banksy's new Blind Nationalism art work amidst London's colonial monuments Banksy's new Blind Nationalism art work amidst London's colonial monumentsImage from Banksy Instagram page

Kicking off his Land of Hope and Dreams American tour several weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen offered his own fiery rebuttal to "a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration," which drew roars from a huge first night crowd in Minneapolis. Equal parts celebration and call to action, The Boss insisted, "This is still America, and - shades of the Big Lebowski, "this will not stand." Summoning "the righteous power of art, music and rock and roll in dangerous times," he asked the crowd to "join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over....(lights come up to segue into) "WAR! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!" complete with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello shredding a solo. A righteous, dynamic pair.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

In contrast, standing grotesque and slumped-shouldered in a dingy, empty corner, is the small, mad man-child who spent Monday bellowing to a weary world that Iran will be "blown off the face of the Earth" if it targets U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which his inane recklessness closed in the first place. Online, in "the most desperate shit" to ever make its demonic way from the White House, a juvenile lackey posted him saying, "Winning it" on a loop for over 60 minutes, which still didn't make it so. The text read, "Can't stop, won't stop." Please fucking do. A horrified America: "This is a real tweet from a real account about a real man who leads a real country." Kyle Kulinski, on "the war criminal of all war criminals" who makes genocidal threats and bleats about insults: “We are not fucking doing this anymore. You don't get to say shit."

Still, one Tom Wellborn says it best in, “A Eulogy for the Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath,” subtitled “Being a Complete and Unflinching Account of the Most Loathsome Specimen Ever to Consume Resources, Occupy Space, and Insult the Patience of a Universe That Deserved So Much Better." "There are villains, and then there are monsters, and then there are creatures so cosmically, transcendently... terrible that language itself recoils," he begins. "Grammar buckles. Syntax weeps...He is this thing. He is the thing past the thing past the thing. He is the sub-basement of the human condition, the moldy crawlspace beneath that sub-basement, and the writhing centipede beneath that."

"He has no morals. Not a single one. Not even the bad morals that at least imply a moral framework: the corrupt cop who loves his dog, the mob boss who goes to church. No. He exists in a morality vacuum so total that ethicists have proposed naming it after him...A being entirely without moral content. Not evil, because evil requires intention. Simply absent of the entire apparatus...A moral negative space shaped vaguely like a man...He has no empathy....like a raisin...He is incapable of the most basic social theater that even sociopaths manage....He takes without asking. He takes everything without asking. He takes things that aren’t takeable...The principle being: I can....He is stupid in a way that is almost majestic...His stupidity (is) total. Unified....He has been wrong about everything, always, without exception..."

"He is callous the way concrete is callous: not through malice, not through choice, but through an utter material inability to register (another) person’s pain...You could show him the face of grief, and he would wonder aloud if there was parking nearby...He is vicious the way a blunt instrument is vicious: through sheer, undirected force, through the momentum of his own awfulness...He is smelted fury with no purpose, unforged, unbent, uselessly molten....(He is) a statistical outlier so extreme that evolution seems to be embarrassed by him, a glitch in the long project of civilization...And the most horrifying part...He will never know any of this. He will never know what he is." Name it, damn it, take it down. Maine's Graham Platner hopes to help do that. We wish him well.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

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COLOMBIA-ENERGY-CONFERENCE
News

'Only the Beginning': Santa Marta Summit Heralded as New Dawn in Fight to End Fossil Fuel Era

Environmental activists are hopeful after a six-day climate summit in Colombia resulted in a coalition of more than 50 countries agreeing to start developing plans to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels. But they say action must now follow talk.

In marked contrast to the annual United Nations climate summits, which have been routinely overrun by oil and gas industry lobbyists and concluded with agreements that largely ignore the imperative to divest from fossil fuels, Shiva Gounden, the head of Greenpeace's delegation this week in Santa Marta, said the conference that concluded Wednesday "was a breath of fresh air, a real sign that the wind is finally shifting."

The 59 nations that attended the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels did not ultimately end with a binding agreement to transition away from fossil fuels within a specific timeframe, which activists say is urgently necessary as global heating rapidly approaches 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

Many of the world's biggest polluters—including the United States, China, and India, as well as petrostates like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—were also absent.

However, the summit did end with attendees, nearly half of whom are fossil fuel producers and who represent more than half of global gross domestic product, agreeing to form tangible "frameworks" for how they plan to transition away from a fossil-fueled model of capitalism that Colombian President Gustavo Petro decried as "suicidal."

Perhaps the single biggest breakthrough at the conference was France's unveiling of a national roadmap to phase out fossil fuels in the coming decades. It became the first developed nation to lay out such a plan, with the goals of removing coal from its national grid by 2027, phasing out oil by 2045, and fossil gas by 2050.

The French climate envoy, Benoit Faraco, described it not only as an obligation but an opportunity: “This process has made us realise we want to be an electro-superpower,” he said, according to The Guardian. “We want to be the electricity Saudi Arabia of Europe, selling green electrons to the UK, Ireland, Germany, and other countries.”

Many attendees also agreed that any collective movement away from fossil fuels would require addressing the debt crisis in the Global South, which many countries—especially those in Africa, where national debts have doubled in the past five years—have found themselves cranking up fossil fuel production to cope with.

While the conference concluded without any binding plan for debt forgiveness, which many delegates from developing countries had proposed, the participants agreed that poorer countries would need support to move out of debt and finance a green transition.

"Fossil fuel dependency deepens economic instability, fuels conflict, and traps countries in cycles of debt," said Bronwen Tucker, public finance lead for Oil Change International. "As long as Global South countries remain locked in this system, while Global North governments write the financial rules, public resources will continue to flow away from people and toward the systems driving crisis."

Laura Caicedo, the campaigns coordinator at Greenpeace Colombia, described the conference as "an important space to put the just energy transition on the agenda ahead of the Climate COP," which will take place in Turkey this coming November.

"There is willingness and a sense of fresh momentum that is worth celebrating," she said. "But this is only the beginning: more time is needed for this process to mature into a true platform for dialogue that can inform decision-making in this and other cooperation spaces on key energy issues."

The next conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels is set to occur early next year in Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific island nation that is at risk of becoming uninhabitable within decades due to sea-level rise.

While climate activists were heartened by the progress made in Santa Marta, Gounden said countries need to come to Tuvalu with concrete plans.

“When we get to Tuvalu, the conversation has to change," she said. "We can’t just bring more ambition; we have to bring proof of implementation."

This week's conference took place against the backdrop of the US and Israel's war in Iran, where US President Donald Trump has suggested a key goal is to "take the oil" controlled by Iran. The obstruction of oil shipments has become a critical piece of strategic and economic leverage and simultaneously inflicted chaos upon the global economy, disrupting humanitarian aid for some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.

"Amid a tense geopolitical context and worsening climate extremes," said Rodrigo Estrada, Greenpeace International's senior climate adviser, "Santa Marta helped spark a feeling of renewed energy, but delegates must now follow through to deliver action, not just words."

While the war has sent energy companies' profits soaring, the climate advocacy group 350.org estimated this week that the continued blockade of the Strait of Hormuz could cost households and businesses an additional $600 billion to $1 trillion.

"It’s never been clearer that fossil fuel phase-out is imperative for stability and peace," Tucker said. "Every step away from fossil fuels weakens the outsized power and wealth that allows the US to wage illegal wars in the name of energy dominance."

At the next conference, she added, "The richest polluting countries must show they are serious. Canada, Norway, the UK, and the EU must make real plans to accelerate their fossil fuel phaseout at home and come to the table with real economic collaboration."

Mariana Paoli, the climate policy lead for Oxfam, said the lack of action by rich countries was "disappointing" and needed to change.

"Wealthy governments have still not stepped up to provide sufficient climate financing for poorer countries, which face the brunt of the impacts of the climate crisis," she said. "Rich countries hold the historical responsibility for the climate crisis, therefore they must not only move first and faster but also provide finance at scale for others to follow them."

"A just transition," she said, "must make rich polluters pay for the crisis they have caused."

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Billionaire Compares 'Tax the Rich' Calls to Hate Speech as Study Finds Barely Half of Americans Earn Living Wage
News

Billionaire Compares 'Tax the Rich' Calls to Hate Speech as Study Finds Barely Half of Americans Earn Living Wage

A real estate investment tycoon on Tuesday said that calls to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans were akin to "racial slurs."

As reported by The New York Times, Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steven Roth took time during his company's latest earnings call to decry calls from politicians such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to fund public programs by taxing the rich.

“I must say that I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’... when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs," said Roth.

Roth took aim at Mamdani for celebrating a proposed pied-à-terre tax on luxury properties worth more than $5 million whose owners have other primary homes, and was particularly upset that the mayor filmed a video announcing the tax outside a $238 million penthouse owned by Ken Griffin, the CEO of the hedge fund Citadel. He called the announcement “dangerous" and an “ugly, unnecessary video stunt.”

The Vornado CEO went on to say that America's wealthiest individuals deserve the nation's gratitude, not their scorn.

"The rich, whom the politicians are targeting... are the epitome of the American dream,” he said. “They are at the top of the great American economic pyramid for a reason. They should be praised and thanked."

Roth's remarks drew criticism from Douglas Farrar, former director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Federal Trade Commission under President Joe Biden.

"A billionaire real estate CEO compared being asked to pay taxes to a racial slur, then said the top 1% should be 'praised and thanked,'" Farrar wrote in a social media post. "There was a time when the wealthy had the good sense to be quiet about it. Now they demand gratitude on earnings calls."

Activist and healthcare advocate Melanie D'Arrigo noted that Roth build developments in the city after intentionally allowing properties to sit in a state of blight for years, which "gutted Black and brown neighborhoods in exchange for billions in tax breaks."

Roth's lamentations about the treatment of the wealthy in the US came as human resources and software services company Dayforce teamed with the Living Wage Institute to release a new study showing that the percentage of Americans earning a living wage has significantly declined over the last five years, from 55.8% in 2021 to 50.7% in 2025.

The report notes that "job growth has recently slowed, and millions of workers haven’t seen a meaningful improvement in their financial situation," even as "the costs of housing, food, childcare, and other essentials are elevated, energy prices have spiked, and affordability continues to be a major issue for a significant share of the workforce."

The data in the report all came from 2025, before President Donald Trump launched his illegal war with Iran that has sent gas prices soaring above $4.50 per gallon and is threatening to unleash a global food crisis.

US consumer sentiment as measured by the University of Michigan hit a record low last month, and the university found that the effects of the Iran war were the primary drivers of Americans' economic pessimism.

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Georgia Election Officials Continue Ballot Counting
News

Trump DOJ Resorts to 'Harassing' Georgia Election Workers to Advance 2020 Lies

Democracy defenders sounded the alarm just over three months ago, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at a Georgia election hub. They expressed concerns again after a court filing revealed late Monday that President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is demanding the names of Fulton County's 2020 election workers.

For years, the Republican president has "obsessively propagated the debunked conspiracy theory that Fulton County 'stole' the 2020 election from him. And he has made it clear that he seeks retribution against those who refuse to indulge his baseless claims," notes the county's Monday filing aimed at blocking the April 20 grand jury subpoena for election workers' personal data.

The largely Democratic county—which includes most of Atlanta—argued that it should not have to turn over workers' names, home addresses, emails, and telephone numbers due to federal overreach and First Amendment concerns, according to CBS News. It also suggested the subpoena is politically motivated and highlighted the statute of limitations for 2020 election crimes.

"After illegally seizing our election records in January, the federal government once again is attempting to misuse criminal process," Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said in a statement announcing the motion.

"This is yet another act of outrageous federal overreach designed to intimidate and to chill participation in elections. This harassment should not be allowed, so we have asked the court to act," he continued. "I will always stand up for our elections workers and for the truth. Let me be crystal clear. Fulton County will not be intimidated."

Voting rights advocates echoed the concerns noted by the filing and Pitts. Lauren Groh-Wargo, who leads Fair Fight Action, told The New York Times that election workers across the United States now face heightened threats and harassment.

"Roughly a third of election officials are threatened on the job, and more than half worry it's making it harder to hire and keep election workers," Groh-Wargo said. "They're trying to break our democracy by attacking the infrastructure, but we are fighting back hard."

Trump's DOJ is losing in Fulton County – so they've resorted to harassing election workers. In 2020, workers saw death threats due to false claims.This case was initially rejected by ATL's FBI Chief. It's built on false claims that were investigated and rejected, including by Republican officials.

[image or embed]
— Max Flugrath🗳️ (@maxflugrath.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 8:31 AM

All Voting Is Local Georgia state director Kristin Nabers stressed in a statement that "the conspiracy theories and lies that dictate White House policy have real-world consequences beyond appeasing the president's fragile ego—they are being weaponized to target the people from our communities who run our elections and ensure our votes are counted."

"This is a clear attempt to seize and hold power over our elections by sending a message that any county or state that doesn't vote in favor of the president or his preferred candidates may be subjected to a harassment campaign like that of Fulton County," she continued. "This intimidation tactic is a slap in the face to the millions of county election workers and volunteers around the country who work tirelessly to make sure our elections run smoothly."

Nabers added that "the all-out assault on Fulton County and its poll workers creates a blueprint for the administration to see what it can get away with during the midterm elections when results in key counties and states don't go its way. Election workers in Fulton County and beyond will not be intimidated by this desperate bullying."

The fight in Fulton County—where Trump and others initially faced criminal charges for their effort to overturn his 2020 loss—comes as some primary elections are underway across the country, and amid mounting concerns about what the president may try in November, particularly if the GOP-controlled Congress passes the attack on voting rights that the White House is pushing.

Michael McNulty, policy director of the group Issue One, said Tuesday that "Americans should be furious" about Trump's demands in Georgia, which "are based solely on debunked conspiracy theories from 2020 that courts and post-election audits have repeatedly rejected."

"Targeting these heroic election workers does nothing to strengthen our democracy—it puts ordinary public servants at risk in an attempt to erode trust in elections," he warned. “The Trump administration's goal is to make Americans feel distrust and cynicism about the election process. While the administration is framing its actions using the 2020 elections, it is proceeding with this year's midterms in mind."

As McNulty detailed, Trump's "election takeover playbook" includes:

  • Spreading false claims to undermine confidence in elections;
  • Installing loyalists within the executive branch willing to act on those claims; and
  • Using executive power to pressure and intimidate those who actually run our elections.

"If this playbook is left unchecked, the Trump administration will continue to abuse its power and attempt to meddle in elections like authoritarian leaders in other countries," he said. "Congress must stop this."

"It should use oversight and funding authority to halt the executive branch from weaponizing federal power against the heroes who run our elections," McNulty argued. "Members of Congress swore an oath to the Constitution when they agreed to serve, and now is a test of whether they are willing to live up to that oath and protect the American people."

Some members of Congress joined voting rights advocates in speaking out against the subpoena this week. Sharing the Times report on social media Tuesday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) declared that "Trump's attacks on our free and fair elections won't stop."

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Detainees At Krome Detention Center
News

Trump Admin Shutters DHS Watchdog Amid Rampant and Growing Detainee Abuse

The US Department of Homeland Security is officially closing its watchdog for immigrant detention abuse, even as reports of excessive force, deadly neglect, and other maltreatment by agency personnel soar under the Trump administration.

Citing an internal email, Huffpost's Dave Jamieson reported Monday that DHS is shutting down its Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO), which was established by an act of Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2020 as part the massive federal spending package known as the Consolidated Appropriations Act.

Jamieson added that the communication said that OIDO "is in the process of removing all its public signage and ending its inspection," and that the agency's website was down.

The email attributed OIDO's closure to a lack of federal funding in the Homeland Security appropriations package that ended the recent 76-day shutdown affecting the agency.

Largely pushed through by congressional Democrats, OIDO was designed to be independent from both US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Customs and Border Protection. The office was given the power to receive detainee complaints, investigate alleged abuse or misconduct, inspect detention facilities, and report systemic problems to DHS leaders and Congress.

OIDO emerged amid widespread abuse of detained migrants during the first Trump administration, including deaths in custody, family separation, overcrowding, and other mistreatment.

Since returning to office for a second term, Trump has overseen the dismantling of the agency, arguing that it hinders immigration enforcement. The administration's effort to dilute OIDO's power have triggered legal action arguing that, since it was created by Congress, the agency cannot be abolished without congressional consent.

DHS detainees—especially those ICE lockups—report abuses including inadequate or delayed medical care; physical attacks and excessive force; sexual abuse and harassment; solitary confinement misuse; overcrowded and unsanitary conditions; intimidation and retaliation following complaints; abuse of pregnant women and children; denial of access to lawyers; denial of family contact; and denial of food, water, hygiene, or medication.

Last year was the deadliest in ICE detention in about two decades, with more than 30 deaths reported in custody. So far this year, at least 18 more detainees had reportedly died in ICE custody.

18 people have died in ICE detention this year—and the administration is illegally "closing" OIDO, the office that is supposed to monitor detention conditions and help detained people needing medical care or suffering abuse.Its portal, myoido.dhs.gov, is offline.

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— Adam Isacson (@adamisacson.com) May 4, 2026 at 3:19 PM

OIDO isn't the only DHS watchdog under attack by the Trump administration. The Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman have also been targeted.

One former CRCL employee who was placed on administrative leave due to funding cuts said in a recent court filing that the agency is unable to conduct “meaningful investigations” into alleged civil rights and civil liberties violations committed by its personnel. As an example, they noted the accusations of excessive force by the ICE agent who fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good last year.

“In my experience, investigations into systemic issues like these required significant staff resources, which CRCL no longer has to devote to these important issues of civil rights and civil liberties,” the official told Federal News Network earlier this year. “Nor does CRCL have the resources to conduct multidisciplinary onsite investigations at detention facilities, the need for which is greater than it has ever been as both the number of detention facilities and number of people detained has skyrocketed."

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Spanish Prime Minister and Socialist Party leader Pedro
News

'Spain Does Not Look the Other Way': Sánchez Calls on EU to Block Israel-US Sanctions on ICC

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez asked the European Commission on Wednesday to block compliance with US sanctions against the International Criminal Court over its arrest warrants against Israeli leaders accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Last February, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order sanctioning the ICC, citing its warrants in November 2024 for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

The ICC said at the time that the sanctions were meant to "harm its independent and impartial judicial work," potentially restricting officials’ access to US-linked property, services, travel, banking, and financial transactions, as they investigate widespread human rights violations and accusations of genocide during the more than two-year military campaign, which has resulted in the deaths of at least 72,000 Palestinians according to official estimates.

In a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday, Sánchez called for the immediate activation of the European Union's Blocking Statute, which is designed to protect European citizens from the effects of foreign sanctions.

"Spain does not look the other way," Sánchez said in a post to social media. "Sanctioning those who defend international justice puts the entire human rights system at risk."

"The EU cannot remain idle in the face of this persecution," he continued. "That is why, today, we ask the commission to activate the Blocking Statute, to protect the independence of the International Criminal Court and the United Nations, and their actions to end the genocide in Gaza."

In addition to the ICC, Sánchez said that the commission should also shield Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, whom the Trump administration also sanctioned in July, claiming that her stark criticisms of Israel's actions in Gaza helped to "prompt" the ICC investigation.

Following the announcement, Albanese issued a message of thanks to Sánchez over social media.

"Gracias, Presidente Sánchez," she wrote. "For your words, for your principled stance, and for trying to steer Europe away from the abyss."

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