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Trump Doubles Down on Tying Warrantless Spying Renewal to GOP Voter Suppression Bill
This is now the second time Trump has derailed renewal of FISA’s Section 702, which US intelligence agencies have widely abused to spy on Americans without a warrant.
Jun 17, 2026
President Donald Trump threw a wrench into bipartisan efforts to renew the federal government's widely abused warrantless spying powers on Wednesday by demanding it be paired with the passage of Republicans' voter suppression legislation.
In a Truth Social post, Trump announced that he would not approve the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) "without THE SAVE AMERICA ACT going along with it," a reference to Republican-backed legislation that would create nationwide voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements.
Passing the SAVE America Act, which critics have warned could be used to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, would require scrapping the filibuster in the US Senate, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has said that there are not enough votes in his caucus to make this happen.
This is now the second time Trump has derailed renewal of FISA's Section 702, which allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens located outside the US. Intelligence agencies have routinely used the authority, which lapsed over the weekend, to collect Americans’ data without a warrant.
Earlier this month, Trump appointed Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte to be his acting director of national intelligence (DNI). Many critics expressed horror at Pulte's appointment, given that he has no experience working in intelligence and has been instrumental in pushing the US Department of Justice to prosecute the president's political enemies.
This led many Senate Democrats, including Senate Intelligence Committee vice-chairperson Mark Warner (D-Va.), to withdraw their support for a FISA extension until the president nominated a more acceptable permanent replacement for outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
FISA renewal appeared to be back on track last week after Trump nominated Jay Clayton, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to be DNI.
However, in the same Truth Social post where Trump announced his intent to veto a FISA extension without the SAVE America Act, the president said that he was "canceling" Clayton's scheduled Wednesday Senate hearing.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) announced shortly after Trump's post that the hearing for Clayton would still take place unless the president formally pulled the nominee.
"Jay Clayton is a pending nominee before the Intelligence Committee," Cotton wrote in a social media post. "We will proceed with his hearing as scheduled unless the president directs him not to appear or withdraws his nomination."
According to The New York Times, the latest chaos and drama caused by Trump "all but guarantee that Mr. Pulte... would take the job at the end of this week as the acting director of national intelligence."
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‘Beyond the Pale’: General Says US Military Will Create a ‘Camp’ at Gitmo to ‘Deal With’ Cubans Fleeing Trump Blockade
One foreign policy expert noted that fears of a "mass exodus" of refugees come "as the US starves Cuba of energy and food."
Mar 20, 2026
As the Trump administration sows chaos with a crushing fuel blockade of Cuba, a general told Congress that the military will "set up a camp" at Guantánamo Bay to detain those who try to flee the humanitarian crisis inflicted by the United States.
The phrase "humanitarian crisis" was used by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to describe the situation in Cuba during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, as he questioned US Marine Corps Gen. Francis Donovan, the commander of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).
Donovan, a 37-year Marine veteran, took command of SOUTHCOM in February after being tapped by President Donald Trump. His predecessor, Adm. Alvin Holsey, abruptly resigned in December reportedly after he'd raised concerns about the Trump administration's bombings of alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, which have been widely described as illegal under international law.
On Thursday, Cotton asked Donovan, "Are we prepared for any kind of humanitarian crisis in Cuba—the possible flow of refugees, other civil disorder that may threaten our interests, especially if the decrepit, corrupt Castro regime finally falls or flees?"
"Senator, yes we are," Donovan responded. "SOUTHCOM... We have an [executive] order to be prepared to support [the Department of Homeland Security] (DHS) in a mass migration event. They would take the lead, we would follow."
Donovan said this would include using the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, "where we would set up a camp to deal with those migrants or any overflow from any situation in Cuba itself."
Trump signed an executive order during his first month in office last year directing DHS and the Pentagon to “expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay to full capacity," which the administration said meant scaling the facility up to more than 30,000 beds.
The base, which houses a prison infamous for the extrajudicial torture of detainees during the global War on Terror, was designated under Trump's order to hold "high‑priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
But Donovan suggested it may now be used to hold Cubans fleeing chaos and deprivation following Trump's own acts of economic warfare.
Cotton's question followed a warning that same day from Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of a "possible mass exodus out of Cuba," which experienced an island-wide electricity blackout earlier this week following the Trump administration's blockade of fuel entering the island, which a group of UN rapporteurs said in January was “a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order.”
DeSantis, whose state is home to about 1.6 million Cuban-Americans, said, "[W]e don’t want to see a massive armada of people showing up on the shores of the Florida Keys."
He said he believed the Trump administration "would rather see people in Florida go help… hopefully get a new government going" in Cuba, possibly referring to the long-held hope of some right-wing Cuban exiles to take over the island.
Following more than 60 years of an embargo that has strangled Cuba's economic development, the Trump administration tightened the noose even more in January, signing an executive order that would slap harsh tariffs on any country that provides oil to Cuba.
As a result of the blockade, explained Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, "people don’t have reliable access to drinking water, hospitals can’t operate safely, basic goods are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, and garbage is piling up in the streets.”
Trump first described his blockade as part of an effort to carry out regime change against Cuba's Communist Party leadership, but this week, he made the imperialist declaration that he may seek to outright "take" the island and that he could "do anything I want" with the "weakened nation."
Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, emphasized that the possible "mass migration event" described by Donovan was only coming "as the US starves Cuba of energy and food."
"Trump and [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio are to blame for any refugee crisis from Cuba, as the US intentionally harms civilians with an oil blockade," said Just Foreign Policy in a social media post responding to Republican warnings of Cuban mass migration. "US sanctions and meddling in Latin America have always been a leading cause of migrant flows."
Immigration journalist Arturo Dominguez explained that "What [Donovan] essentially said was, 'We're ready to accommodate the flow of refugees by putting them in camps.'" He added that "the way these military goons jump right in to 'accommodate' atrocity is beyond the pale."
Trump's blockade of Cuba is unpopular with the American public, according to a YouGov poll released earlier this week. Just 28% of adult US citizens said they approved of the US blocking oil shipments to the country, while 46% said they opposed it. The same survey found that just 13% want the US to use military force to attack Cuba, while 61% would oppose it.
Just Foreign Policy said, "The American people do not want their government to starve Cubans and cause a 'mass migration event.'"
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Push Back Against Sen. Cotton’s McCarthyite Lies About CODEPINK: Women for Peace
Sen. Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends, and family.
Mar 27, 2025
On Tuesday, in the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.
During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to U.S. national security and yelled, “Stop Funding Israel,” since neither Intelligence Committee Chair Cotton nor Vice Chair Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) had mentioned Israel in their opening statement, nor had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.
As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the Communist Party of China.” Cotton then said if anyone had something to say to do so.
CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Sen. Cotton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2014.
Refusing to buckle or be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and yelled, “I’m a retired Army colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK, and it is not funded by Communist China.” I too was hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol police and arrested.
After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his McCarthyite lie: “The fact that Communist China funds CODEPINK, which interrupts a hearing about Israel, illustrates Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are working together in greater concert than they ever had before.”
Sen. Cotton does not appreciate the responsibility he has in his one-month-old elevation to the chair of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends, and family. In today’s polarized political environment, we know that the words of senior leaders can rile supporters into frenzies as we saw on January 6, 2021, with President Donald Trump’s loyal supporters injuring many Capitol police and destroying parts of the nation’s Capitol building in their attempt to stop the presidential election proceedings.
CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Sen. Cotton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2014. We have been in the U.S. Senate offices and halls twice as long as he has. We have nonviolently protested the war policies of former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, Joe Biden, and now Trump again.
After getting out of the Capitol Hill police station, a CODEPINK delegation went to Sen. Cotton’s office in the Russell Senate Office building and made a complaint to his office staff.
We are also submitting a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee over the untrue and libelous statements Sen. Cotton made in the hearing.
The abduction and deportation of international students who joined protests against U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the scathing treatment of visitors who have wanted to enter our country, and now the McCarthyite intimidating tactics used by Sen. Cotton in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing of telling lies about individuals and organizations that challenge the policies of the U.S. government, particularly its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza, must be called out and pushed back against.
And we must push back against U.S. senators who actually receive funding from front groups for other countries. Sen. Cotton has received $1,197,989 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to advocate for the genocidal policies of the State of Israel.
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Once Again, Tom Cotton Blocks Bill to Shield Journalists From Betraying Sources
Responding to the GOP senator's latest thwarting of the PRESS Act, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden vowed to "keep trying to get this bill across the finish line" before Republicans take control of the Senate next month.
Dec 10, 2024
Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas on Tuesday again blocked the passage of House-approved bipartisan legislation meant to shield journalists and telecommunications companies from being compelled to disclose sources and other information to federal authorities.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) brought the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act—which would prohibit the federal government from forcing journalists and telecom companies to disclose certain information, with exceptions for terroristic or violent threats—for a unanimous consent vote.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) argued Tuesday that passing the PRESS Act is "more important now than ever before when we've heard some in the previous administration talk about going after the press in one way or another," a reference to Republican President-elect Donald Trump's threats to jail journalists who refuse to reveal the sources of leaks. Trump, who has referred to the press as the "enemy of the people," repeatedly urged Senate Republicans to "kill this bill."
Cotton, who blocked a vote on the legislation in December 2022, again objected to the bill, a move that thwarted its speedy passage. The Republican called the legislation a "threat to national security" and "the biggest giveaway to the liberal press in American history."
The advocacy group Defending Rights and Dissent lamented that "Congress has abdicated their responsibility to take substantive steps to protect the constitutional right to a free press."
However, Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, noted ways in which Senate Democrats can still pass the PRESS Act before Republicans gain control of the upper chamber next month:
Senate Democrats had all year to move this bipartisan bill and now time is running out. Leader Schumer needs to get the PRESS Act into law—whether by attaching it to a year-end legislative package or bringing it to the floor on its own—even if it means shortening lawmakers' holiday break. Hopefully, today was a preview of more meaningful action to come.
Responding to Tuesday's setback, Wyden vowed, "I'm not taking my foot off the gas."
"I'll keep trying to get this bill across the finish line to write much-needed protections for journalists and their sources into black letter law," he added.
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Republicans Funded by Arms Industry Fume Over Biden Threat to Withhold Bombs From Israel
"What did we do after we were attacked in Pearl Harbor?" asked Sen. Lindsey Graham. "We dropped two nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities."
May 09, 2024
Congressional Republicans funded by the arms industry lashed out Wednesday over U.S. President Joe Biden's belated threat to withhold American weaponry from Israel if it launches a full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza city of Rafah, which is currently facing a humanitarian nightmare.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from pro-Israel interests and the weapons industry during his 2020 reelection campaign, declared that Biden's threat "put our friends in Israel in a box."
"What did we do after we were attacked in Pearl Harbor?" Graham, who previously encouraged Israel to "level" Gaza, said in a Fox News appearance late Wednesday. "We dropped two nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities... What is Joe Biden doing? He's making it impossible for allies throughout the world to trust us, he's making it hard on Israel to win."
Lindsey Graham: What do we do after we were attacked in Pearl Harbor? We dropped nuclear weapons on Japanese cities pic.twitter.com/kh7RU4flDw
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 9, 2024
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) echoed Graham, falsely claiming that Biden has "imposed an arms embargo on Israel" and endorsed "a Hamas victory against Israel." Lockheed Martin, one of the world's biggest weapons manufacturers and a major beneficiary of Israel's war on Gaza, was the fourth-largest contributor to Cotton's campaign committee in 2020, the last time the senator ran for reelection.
The notion that Biden's threat to withhold future weapons deliveries to Israel undercuts the country's ability to assail Gaza was contradicted by a U.S. official who told The Washington Post that "the Israeli military has enough weapons supplied by the U.S. and other partners to conduct the Rafah operation if it chooses to cast aside U.S. objections."
Earlier this week, numerous media outlets reported that the Biden administration opted to delay a shipment of thousands of Boeing-made bombs over concerns about Israel's impending assault on Rafah. On Tuesday, Israeli ground forces entered Rafah and seized control of the city's border crossing with Egypt, imperiling humanitarian aid operations there.
Biden, who has approved more than 100 weapons sales to Israel and billions of dollars in additional aid since the October 7 Hamas-led attack, falsely said Wednesday that Israeli forces "haven't gone in Rafah yet," raising questions over the practical implications of his threat to withhold U.S. weapons in the case of a ground invasion.
But Republicans nevertheless fumed over Biden's approach, showing no concern for the humanitarian catastrophe that Israel's military—armed to the teeth with American weapons—has inflicted on Gaza.
In a letter to the president on Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—both major recipients of arms industry cash throughout their careers—wrote that delaying weapons deliveries "risks emboldening Israel's enemies and undermining the trust that other allies and partners have in the United States."
Johnson and McConnell, along with most congressional Democrats, supported a sprawling foreign aid package last month that authorized around $17 billion in military assistance for Israel. Reuters reported that Lockheed Martin and RTX—formerly Raytheon—both "stand to profit" from the measure.
Raytheon's PAC donated $18,500 to McConnell's 2020 reelection campaign.
Contrary to the position of congressional Republicans, progressive foreign policy analysts and anti-war organizations said Biden would be adhering to U.S. law if he halts weapons deliveries to Israel. Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits U.S. military assistance to any country that is impeding the provision of American humanitarian aid—something Israel has done repeatedly.
"Enforcing our laws and making clear that the U.S. will not transfer offensive weapons to support a disastrous military operation that endangers millions of Palestinians throughout Gaza is vital," Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of Win Without War, said in a statement Wednesday.
"U.S. law gives the president ample power to ensure that no more U.S. arms go to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's brutal war in Gaza," said Haghdoosti. "With a crucial cease-fire deal within reach, added pressure from the Biden administration can help end this war and create a path to a sustainable peace for people in Israel and Palestine. We once again urge the president to use every tool available to him to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of all hostages."
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Tom Cotton: The Nation's Very Worst Veteran
At a time when the United States needs to be careful and clear-headed about how it responds to the Middle East crisis, Cotton’s cheerleading for devastating military action against Iran is deeply unhelpful.
May 08, 2024
The next time you see a politician’s lawn sign or hear a politician’s voice, saying, “Vote for a Vet,” you need to remember two things:
First, there are good veterans and there are bad veterans. The bad ones go all the way back to Benedict Arnold, a Revolutionary War turncoat whose name has become a handy shorthand for traitor. In more modern times, bad vets include Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated John F. Kennedy, preventing the president from pulling American troops out of Vietnam, as he had planned, a murderous act that led to 58,000 American deaths in that war; Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber; and Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibal serial killer. That names a few.
Second, remember this: Probably the worst, most dangerous vet currently occupying a seat in the United States Congress is Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas. His latest bit of warmongering is a threat to the International Criminal Court, which has been investigating the way Israel is pursuing its war in Gaza. "Target Israel and we will target you," reads the letter, leaving zero doubt that he would love to make life difficult for the Court. Cotton not only signed it, but led in putting that threatening letter together, signed by 11 other senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
At a time when calmer voices are expressing something approaching alarm about the dangers of a possible wider war in the Middle East... Cotton has predictably thrown caution to the winds.
And this wasn't the first time that Cotton has led senators far senior to himself in seeking confrontation. Years ago, when President Barack Obama was negotiating a deal with Iran about nuclear weapons, Cotton intervened by putting together a letter to the Iranian mullahs, essentially warning them off the deal. In the Senate, an institution where seniority is everything, how did the youngest senator—at age 37 and with only two months of seniority—manage to persuade 46 other senators, with a total of 4,775 months of seniority (390 years), to join him in this bold venture? Was it the power of his intellect and his Harvard degrees? Was it his status as a combat veteran? Or was it the incipient aura of some future presidential candidacy?
None of this should come as a surprise, because Cotton clearly announced his fierce ideology in his maiden speech in the Senate. Cotton’s intense demeanor and appearance, right out of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (“Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look”) was fully on display from that moment on. He delivered that maiden speech on March 15, 2015—a date that brings to mind another Julius Caesar reference, “Beware the Ides of March.” It was a grim piece of our-enemies-are-coming-for-us rhetoric, painting a dark picture of America’s “retreat” and declining status in the world, raising concern about increasing threats from Russia and China and a list of other nations. To react to those threats, Cotton set out national goals of “global military dominance” and “hegemonic strength,” and he made absolutely clear where he stood on defense spending: America needs more—a lot more.
Cotton built the career leading to that speech with an impeccable academic and military resume. He earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard University, followed by a law degree from Harvard Law School. He has also checked the warrior box: After 9/11, he left the practice of law and spent nearly five years as an infantry officer, including deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. His time in combat boots does not appear to have soured him on war. That consistent bellicosity, plus his proven knack for making headlines, makes him especially scary. “He is my least favorite congressional veteran, maybe in history,” said Danny Sjursen, a former army major who also saw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, taught history at West Point, and became as staunchly antiwar as Cotton is pro-war. “I mean, he’s that bad.”
As his leadership in that letter to Iran's mullahs demonstrates, the Arkansas Republican has had a fixation on Iran from his first moments in the Senate. Now, at a time when calmer voices are expressing something approaching alarm about the dangers of a possible wider war in the Middle East, and Iran gets mentioned often as a backer of terrorists, Cotton has predictably thrown caution to the winds. He has fired volleys of criticism at President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for being soft on Iran. Soft, of course, is a beloved word of Republican politicians. They emerge from the birth canal yelling, “You’re soft on national security,” or “You’re soft on crime.” Cotton is no exception.
The Iran letter was not the only time Cotton made headlines. In 2020, after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck until he died, protests broke out around the nation and the world. To Cotton and others, the sporadic violence arising from those protests was serious business. Cotton had long ago made clear his views on the issue of race relations. During his Harvard days, he had written a review of a book about race for the conservative Harvard Salient. Cotton claimed to have seen real progress on the issue of race, and all America really needed to do was to just quit talking about it so much. “If race relations are better now than at any time in our history and would almost certainly improve if we stopped emphasizing race in our public life, what would the self-appointed ‘civil rights leaders’ have to do with themselves? For this reason, they continue to make hysterical and wholly unsubstantiated claims that inflame public opinion and create a gnawing cynicism in the American people.”
His attack on the International Criminal Court, which is trying to investigate whether Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, is terrifying.
Suddenly, in 2020, that progress seemed to have ground to a halt with the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing protests. So Cotton weighed in loudly with an immediately controversial op-ed in the New York Times about the looting and violence that had broken out at a limited number of the protests. “A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants,” Cotton wrote. “But the rioting has nothing to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence. On the contrary, nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.” His solution: Invoke the Insurrection Act and call in the military.
Cotton’s op-ed, under the headline that the Times chose, “Send in the Troops,” caused an immediate uproar inside the Times. Dozens of staffers complained, many of them tweeting this line: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.” It didn’t take long for the paper’s leadership to issue an unusually earnest apology for not vetting the piece more carefully: “After publication, this essay met strong criticism from many readers (and many Times colleagues), prompting editors to review the piece and the editing process. Based on that review, we have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.” In the uproar, the paper’s opinion editor, James Bennet, acknowledged that he had not even read Cotton’s op-ed during the editing process and admitted that it was the Times that had invited the senator to write the piece. A few days after the op-ed ran, Bennet resigned from his senior position at perhaps the most powerful newspaper in the country. Cotton clearly has the power to shake things up.
At a time when the United States needs to be careful and clear-headed about how it responds to the Middle East crisis, Cotton’s cheerleading for devastating military action against Iran is deeply unhelpful. His attack on the International Criminal Court, which is trying to investigate whether Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, is terrifying. He is someone to be watched carefully, as Julius Caesar felt about Cassius. “He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.”
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GOP Senators Threaten ICC: 'Target Israel and We Will Target You'
"You have been warned," wrote 12 Republican lawmakers led by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
May 06, 2024
Just over a week before the International Criminal Court issued a statement condemning threats against the institution, a dozen Republicans in the U.S. Senate sent a letter to the ICC's prosecutor warning him against pursuing charges against Israeli officials over war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip.
The letter, dated April 24 and reported exclusively by Zeteo on Monday, explicitly threatens U.S. retaliation against the ICC if it issues arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top Israeli officials.
"Target Israel and we will target you," reads the letter, which was led by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a notorious war hawk, and signed by 11 others, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
The letter specifically threatens to sanction ICC employees and associates and bar them and their families from entering the United States, which is not a party to the ICC.
"You have been warned," states the letter, which invokes the American Service-Members’ Protection Act—a 2002 law informally known as "The Hague Invasion Act."
As Zeteo explained, the law "authorizes the U.S. president 'to use all means necessary and appropriate' to bring about the release not just of U.S. persons but also allies who are imprisoned or detained by the ICC."
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), who delivered the infamous GOP response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address earlier this year, told Zeteo that the letter is "not a threat," but "a promise."
Read the letter from 12 Republican senators threatening ICC chief prosecutor @KarimKhanQC with "severe" consequences for him, his family & staff if he goes ahead with an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. "You have been warned."
Oh and subscribe to Zeteo too: https://t.co/pVvXi4IB6C pic.twitter.com/aXfKH03T16
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) May 6, 2024
The 12 Republicans sent their letter days before the office of ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan released a statement warning that its "independence and impartiality are undermined... when individuals threaten to retaliate against the court or against court personnel" as they conduct their investigations.
"Such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offense against the administration of justice under [Article] 70 of the Rome Statute," the statement added. "The office insists that all attempts to impede, intimidate, or improperly influence its officials cease immediately."
While the ICC statement did not mention any individuals or governments by name, it is apparent that its message was directed at least in part at Republican lawmakers in the U.S.
The Biden White House and Netanyahu have also spoken out against the ICC amid reports that it is considering arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and other senior officials.
"We've been really clear about the ICC investigation," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters late last month. "We do not support it. We don't believe that they have the jurisdiction. And I'm just gonna leave it there for now."
Since October 7, Israeli forces have killed more than 34,600 people in Gaza—a death toll that could surge if Israel moves ahead with its planned ground invasion of Rafah. Women and children account for up to 70% of those killed by Israel's military thus far.
Like the U.S., Israel is not a party to the ICC, but the court says it has jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territories. In 2021, the ICC launched a probe into alleged war crimes in the territories, including Gaza.
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The Bullying of Adeel Manji Tells Muslim Americans They Are 2nd Class Citizens
The treatment of the first Muslim federal appellate nominee sends a message to people of Muslim faith with aspirations for the federal bench: don’t bother, unless you, too, want to be branded as a terrorist-sympathizer.
Apr 10, 2024
President Joe Biden’s recent nomination of a Harvard-educated litigation partner from a white-shoe law firm to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit should have been pretty run of the mill, as far as judicial confirmation processes go.
But one aspect of the nominee’s bio has contorted what would likely otherwise have been an uneventful confirmation process into a grotesque spectacle: The nominee, Adeel Mangi, is a Muslim American of Pakistani descent. If confirmed, he would be the first Muslim federal appellate judge in the country.
No non-Muslim judicial nominee has been asked whether they condemn the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel, accused of celebrating 9/11, or asked to confirm that they condemn genocide.
It started at his confirmation hearings in December 2023, which his young children attended.
“Do you condemn the atrocities of the Hamas terrorists?” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked. “Is there any justification for those atrocities?”
“Do you believe that Zionist settler colonialism was a provocation that justified Hamas’ atrocity against Jews in Israel?” demanded Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) insinuated that Mangi “celebrate[s] 9/11,” rattling off a list of speakers invited to an event organized by Rutgers Law School’s Center for Security, Race, and Rights to commemorate the 2001 attacks—which Mangi did not attend, had no apparent role in organizing, and, he said, of which he was not even aware. Mangi had been a member of the center’s advisory board.
When Democrats had the floor, they revisited the topic to give Mangi an opportunity to denounce terrorism and genocide—which he did, repeatedly and unequivocally. But even in their friendly form, the questions left an impression that religious and racial stereotypes had hijacked the hearings.
“Is there any hesitation on your part to condemn genocide?" Peter Welch (D-Vt.) asked. “Is there any hesitation on your part to condemn any person who commits terrorist activities in violence toward innocent people?”
As the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, Sheila Katz, put it: “It was a heartbreaking scene for the first Muslim American federal circuit judicial nominee to face relentless questioning on Israel, terrorism including September 11, and the Holocaust.”
This treatment is far outside the norm for nominees to the bench. No non-Muslim judicial nominee has been asked whether they condemn the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel, accused of celebrating 9/11, or asked to confirm that they condemn genocide.
Islamophobic questioning is not the only way Mangi’s treatment has departed from the average confirmation process. Republican senators have also given inordinate attention to Mangi’s record of pro bono service. He represented the family of an incarcerated man murdered by a correctional officer and is on the advisory board of Alliance of Families for Justice, a nonprofit that supports families impacted by mass incarceration that has advocated for the release of aging prisoners, including people convicted of killing police officers. The senators used this to say that he has “sympathy for, and association with, some of the most radical elements in society,” including, as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) put it, “those who support cop killers.”
This twisting of Mangi’s pro bono record to paint him as criminal-adjacent is shocking but not surprising. Diverse nominees—including people of color and women—are routinely grilled on their positions on civil rights and criminal justice more intensively than white men nominated to the bench. One study found that nominees of color like Mangi get more than twice as many questions on criminal justice as white nominees. And nominees with experience in public defense—an essential role in our legal system—face particularly brutal questioning. In recent history, these inquiries have increasingly sounded less like questioning and more like badgering of women and people of color about their public interest work, heavy with insinuation that representing marginalized people makes one unfit for the bench.
This is illustrated in the case of Arianna Freeman, a Biden nominee who became the first Black woman to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Referring to her 12 years as a public defender, Cruz told her that she had “devoted [her] entire professional career to representing murderers, to representing rapists, representing child molesters.” He branded her a “zealot” for defending a man on death row—whose sentence the Supreme Court later overturned.
And during confirmation hearings for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said that she had a “long record” of letting child pornography offenders “off the hook,” referring to sentences that experts called mainstream. Republicans also criticized Jackson for representing Guantánamo Bay detainees, referring to her “advocacy for these terrorists.”
With Mangi’s hearings, then, senators are yet again issuing bad faith characterizations of the public interest work of a nominee who would increase the diversity of the federal bench. At this point, even if Mangi’s confirmation goes through—which is increasingly doubtful, as three Democrats have announced in recent weeks that they no longer support him—damage will have been done.
Most fundamentally, the bullying of a prominent Muslim American on the national stage tells all our Muslim friends and neighbors that they are second-class citizens. And it comes at a time when hatred is surging: reports of Islamophobia have doubled in recent months, antisemitism incidents have skyrocketed, and hate crimes in general have surged. So it is more important than ever that we take a strong stand against bias and othering of underrepresented groups.
More specifically, Mangi’s treatment sends a message to people of Muslim faith with aspirations for the federal bench: don’t bother, unless you, too, want to be branded as a terrorist-sympathizer—in front of the world and, as in Mangi’s case, your young children. The potential chilling effect on Muslim Americans vying for federal judgeships undermines the legitimacy and effectiveness of the judiciary.
As my colleagues have previously noted, a diverse bench leads to richer jurisprudence. That’s because judges with underrepresented personal and professional experiences bring important and relevant perspectives to the problems in front of them and push back on assumptions that a homogeneous panel might hold. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor put it, working with Justice Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights lawyer and the first Black justice, sometimes “change[d] the way [she saw] the world.”
On a more basic level, underrepresented communities are more likely to trust a diverse judiciary. This is important because courts derive their legitimacy from the public’s trust in them. “How can the public have confidence and trust in such an institution if it is segregated—if the communities it is supposed to protect are excluded from its ranks?” federal district court Judge Edward Chen once pondered.
Finally, the negative focus on Mangi’s pro bono record—especially on the heels of other hearings in which nominees have been disparaged for public interest work—casts that work in exactly the wrong light. Pro bono work should not be a political liability. To the contrary, it is the ethical obligation of every attorney to provide legal services to those who cannot afford them. And justice depends on it.
When someone loses a lawsuit, it is frequently not because their claim was meritless, but simply because they did not have a lawyer. In immigration removal hearings, for example, unaccompanied children without lawyers prevail only 15% of the time. By contrast, 73% of unaccompanied children with representation are allowed to remain in this country.
But, according to one study, in a whopping 92% of civil matters—from eviction to police brutality to discrimination—low-income Americans could not find legal representation. Pro bono practice by corporate lawyers like Mangi is crucial to filling the access to justice gap. We should be encouraging pro bono work, not giving talented young attorneys who dream of becoming judges a reason to avoid it.
Mangi’s confirmation process has been a blueprint for how not to treat a nominee for the federal bench. His hearing—and the subsequent campaign against him—has undermined our shared values of equality, inclusivity, and justice. We must do better.
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Refuting Jurists, Lloyd Austin Says US Has No Evidence of Gaza Genocide
The U.S. defense secretary's remarks came after Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other law experts around the world asserted that Israel's Gaza onslaught meets the legal definition of genocide.
Apr 09, 2024
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday became the latest Biden administration official to deny that Israel's six-month bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza constitute a genocide, a statement that came after Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined a growing number of international jurists asserting that Israeli policies and actions are genocidal under the letter of the law.
After pro-Palestine protesters wearing T-shirts with the message "Austin's Legacy = Genocide" interrupted a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday morning, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked the Pentagon chief if Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
"We don't have any evidence of genocide being created," Austin replied after a short pause.
After telling the defense secretary his response was "better than" the replies from CIA Director William Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines—whom Cotton said "dodged that question" before the committee last month—the senator asked Austin to respond to allegations of "greenlighting genocide" in Gaza.
"From the very beginning, we committed to help assist Israel in defending its territory and its people by providing security assistance, and I would remind everybody, you know, that what happened on October 7 was absolutely horrible," Austin said, referring to the Hamas-led attacks in which more than 1,100 Israelis and others were killed—at least some of them by so-called "friendly fire"—and over 240 others were kidnapped.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, when asked if he believes Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza: "We don't have evidence of that."
So, Israel's killing of more than 33,000 Palestinians—44% of whom are children—in 6 months, after top Israeli officials… pic.twitter.com/50cznisMxn
— Rachel Blevins (@RachBlevins) April 9, 2024
Austin's remarks followed reports that U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told constituents that Israel's war on Gaza—which has killed and wounded more than 116,000 Palestinians including people believed dead and buried beneath rubble while displacing around 90% of the population and causing mass starvation—meets the legal definition of genocide.
"If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they'll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so," Warren—a former law professor with three decades of experience—told an audience Friday at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, Massachusetts.
In January, the International Court of Justice in The Hague
issued a preliminary ruling in a case brought by South Africa and supported by over 30 other nations that found Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza. The ICJ ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts—a directive that numerous international human rights experts say is being ignored.
A March draft report by the United Nations Human Rights Council found "reasonable grounds to believe" Israel is perpetrating genocide against Palestinians.
At least hundreds of legal scholars around the world have accused Israel of genocide. So have some Israelis, including Raz Segal, one of the country's preeminent Holocaust scholars, who in October said that Israel is perpetrating "a textbook case of genocide" in Gaza.
Progressive U.S. lawmakers including Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian American member of Congress—Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have also accused Israel of genocide.
“We have to re-humanise the people whose death has been normalised.”
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discussed her decision to use the term "genocide" in Congress when describing Israel's actions in Gaza during an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert pic.twitter.com/tKAJQTD0XT
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) April 9, 2024
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden and members of his administration have been called genocide deniers for dismissing the assessments of legal experts on the matter, including a federal judge in California who—while absolving the United States of complicity—found that South Africa's ICJ allegations are "plausible."
In late October, Biden publicly cast doubt on Gaza casualty figures provided by Hamas-run agencies, even though Israeli and international media, human rights groups, and his own administration have relied upon those same sources—which have held up under scrutiny—for years.
In February, Austin acknowledged that "over 25,000" Palestinian women and children had been killed by Israeli forces at that point in the war, although the Pentagon subsequently attempted to walk back the defense secretary's remarks.
Biden—who early in the war declared his "unwavering, rock-solid" support for Israel—is seeking an additional $14.3 billion in armed assistance for Israel atop the nearly $4 billion it already receives from Washington. The president has also repeatedly sidestepped Congress in order to fast-track emergency military aid to the key Middle Eastern ally.
The Biden administration has approved more than 100 arms transfers to Israel during the war, including shipments of 2,000-pound bombs that can wipe out entire city blocks and have been used in some of Israel's deadliest strikes, including the October 31 bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp that killed more than 120 civilians.
Biden now wants to sell Israel $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets, even after the president acknowledged Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" of Gaza. In addition to progressive members of Congress—who have long opposed unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel—a growing number of centrist Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who recently called on the FBI to investigate peace activists demanding a Gaza cease-fire, are now urging Biden to halt arms transfers to Israel.
The United States—which committed genocide against the Indigenous peoples of North America—has a long history of supporting genocidal regimes. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has provided military, financial, and diplomatic support for the perpetrators of genocides in Guatemala, Paraguay, Bangladesh, Kurdistan, and East Timor.
The U.S. has also been accused of turning a blind eye to genocides in countries from Nazi Germany to Rwanda, which on Sunday marked the 30th anniversary of the mass murder of around 800,000 people, most of them ethnic Tutsis, in a campaign of state-sanctioned slaughter.
During her speech, Warren said that responses to Gaza should transcend a "labels argument."
"For me, it is far more important to say what Israel is doing is wrong. And it is wrong," she said. "It is wrong to starve children within a civilian population in order to try to bend to your will. It is wrong to drop 2,000-pound bombs in densely populated civilian areas."
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Hey Biden, Give Peace a Chance
Public dissatisfaction with the dictatorial decision-making by the White House and the absence of congressional action is growing rapidly.
Mar 31, 2024
President Joe Biden has long had a problem with PEACE—as in “cease-fires,” “serious peace negotiations,” and conditioning the transfer or sale of major weapons systems as required by five U.S. criminal statutes. From one side of his mouth, Biden urges futilely Israeli compliance with international law while on the other side he supports the daily shipment of weapons of mass destruction to the Israeli government. These weapons are being used in the genocidal killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
A majority in Congress is even more hawkish and lets Biden do whatever he wants in making war abroad. The cornerstone of our Constitution—the separation of powers—has been demolished in area after area. (See, our open letter of November 28, 2023, to the members of the U.S. Congress).
By contrast, American public opinion has turned against U.S. arms shipments to Israel and the annihilation of Palestinian civilians from infants to the elderly. Whole extended families are being wiped out by American-made bombs and missiles. The homeless survivors are injured, starving, and suffering from untold illnesses.
Only the people can recover their sovereign power, under the Constitution, now delegated to a Congress that sells out to the highest corporatist bidders.
The Israeli state terror is producing a Palestinian holocaust. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s violent antisemitism against the Arabs of Palestine is out of control. Many courageous Israeli human rights groups protest, to no avail, (See, the December 13, 2023, open letter to Biden that appeared in The New York Times) as Netanyahu and his extremist coalition reveal their long-time objective of driving millions of Palestinians out of what is left of their Palestine.
As for the Hamas raid on October 7, and the total collapse of the highly touted Israeli border security, a World War II Holocaust survivor told The New York Times, “It should never have happened…” Yet, Netanyahu has blocked an official investigation of this unexplained multi-tiered technological and human intelligence debacle.
Meanwhile, public dissatisfaction with the dictatorial decision-making by the White House and the absence of congressional action is growing rapidly. More and more labor unions are now opposing Biden’s bombings, Jewish Americans working with Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now are brilliantly organizing demonstrations. Veterans for Peace’s 27 chapters around the country are in the streets peacefully demanding a cease-fiire, cessation of weapons shipments, and major increases in humanitarian aid. They are mostly ignored by the corporate media, NPR, and PBS.
Religious groups are beseechingly calling for peace. This week in the latest public letter, 140 global Christian leaders, organized by Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) called on President Biden “…to have the moral courage to end U.S. complicity in the ongoing violence and, instead, do everything in [his] power to…” stop the “death and destruction” in Palestine.
The CMEP receives little or no coverage by the mainstream media even though this organization represents millions of people.
But then look who is not taking a pro-peace stand, staying silent, or actively backing the Israeli war machine. The American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars are on the sidelines. The AFL-CIO Labor Federation finally came out tepidly for a cease-fire but has exerted very little of its muscle on Capitol Hill.
AIPAC, the “pro-Israeli government can do no wrong lobby,” has been cultivating relationships with these U.S. organizations and others like them for decades.
The worst abdications have come from the legal profession in the form of state bar associations and the American Bar Association (ABA)—the largest organization of lawyers in the world. These lawyers are all “officers of the court” instructed to stand for the rule of law. Except for a brief time in 2005-2006, the ABA has idled while presidents regularly have violated our Constitution and all kinds of laws—domestic and international—with impunity, facilitated by a supine Congress.
Bruce Fein and I have asked 50 state bar sssociations to be first responders in challenging the ongoing breakdown of the rule of law due to their professional duties and knowledge. None have responded.
As for the healthcare professionals watching Israel raining death and destruction directly on Gaza’s hospitals and health clinics, inundated with desperate patients, their endangered physicians and assistants without the means to devote their care, the response is overwhelmingly silent. The American Public Health Association and the American Medical Student Association are among the few to have condemned Israel’s atrocities.
Yet, the desperate pleas by their wounded professional colleagues have failed to register with the likes of the American Medical Association, the American College of Surgeons, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and many others. (See the letter of March 1, 2024, which has gone unanswered).
What can turn our country around? An organized citizenry of less than 1% of the voters in congressional districts, giving voice to the voiceless majority, can free Congress from its captivity imposed by the forces of greed, power, and violent empire, draining resources from our dire domestic needs.
As I wrote in the Capitol Hill Citizen (February/March 2024 issue), Congress has become a weapon of mass destruction with multiple warheads. Only the people can recover their sovereign power, under the Constitution, now delegated to a Congress that sells out to the highest corporatist bidders.
On the Israeli slaughter of Gaza’s people, a small but growing number of Democrats in Congress are standing tall. They need your active backing to expand their numbers. (See, Cease-Fire Tracker: https://workingfamilies.org/ceasefire-tracker/).
As for the cruel, vicious, genocidal, maniacal Republicans, they remain disgraced in their full-throttled support for Netanyahu, who is fighting for his job, trying to escape Israeli prosecutors, and is hugely unpopular in Israel.
The GOP position was expressed by Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton—a lawyer no less—who said last October, for posterity’s eternal damnation: “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza.”
This is exactly what the massacring Israeli juggernauts have done with the weapons, taxpayers’ money, and diplomatic cover enabled by corrupt outlaws like Tom Cotton.
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