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'Words Are Not Enough': Senate Democrats Say Trump Must Take Action to Prevent More Mass Atrocities in Sudan
The US, said a group of senators led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, must suspend weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates, which arms the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.
Aug 04, 2026
Writing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Monday led 20 members of the Democratic Caucus in demanding that the Trump administration go beyond simply denouncing the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group in Sudan that has been accused of war crimes in the country's civil war, and take "concrete action" to stop more mass atrocities as the group encircles the city of El Obeid.
"These actions should include ceasing certain US arms sales to external actors that are fueling this war, including the United Arab Emirates, which continues to arm the RSF," wrote the senators, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
The lawmakers wrote to Rubio as an estimated 500,000 civilians were at risk in El Obeid, where many people have sought safety following RSF attacks across the Kordofan region.
The letter came as the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said civilians are facing drone attacks in El Obeid, with humanitarian assistance also put at risk by the assault.
A number of the signatories, including Van Hollen and Sanders, have previously called on the Trump administration to end its complicity in RSF attacks like those that occurred in El Fasher last October, which United Nations investigators said bore the "hallmarks of genocide" after the group killed more than 6,000 civilians in the first three days of its offensive in the besieged city.
The senators described attacks like those on El-Saudi Hospital in El Fasher, where RSF forces "proceeded to search the wards and killing those they found, including patients, accompanying persons and medical personnel," killing an estimated 460 people before pursuing civilians who tried to escape.
Reports described "the perpetrators chasing people in open fields, firing at them with automatic rifles and mounted submachine guns, and running over fleeing persons with vehicles, causing mass casualties," the senators wrote.
More than 14 million people have also been forcibly displaced by the civil war.
But the scale of atrocities would likely not have been possible without the RSF's support from the UAE, for which the Trump administration fast-tracked a weapons sale in May after having provided the country with $7 billion in weapons just two months earlier.
Also in May, said the senators, Human Rights Watch released a report showing that the UAE trained hundreds of Colombian mercenaries who then took part in the atrocities in El Fasher and trained RSF recruits, including child soldiers.
Now, they wrote, the RSF's "encirclement and systematic crippling of resources in El Obeid increasingly parallels El Fasher, and this administration must use its leverage and influence to prevent a repeat of El Fasher’s horrors in El Obeid before it is too late."
They pointed out that the administration has acknowledged that further "mass atrocities could be imminent” in Sudan, as a State Department spokesperson said on June 22. In November 2025, Rubio himself said that the RSF was "clearly receiving assistance from outside" and that “something needs to be done to cut off the weapons and the support the RSF is getting as they continue their advances.”
Despite those acknowledgments, said the senators, the Trump administration has shown a "grave failure to act despite the chorus of alarm bells."
"What occurred in El Fasher is a stark warning of what could unfold in El Obeid and across Sudan if this administration—and the international community—continues this current pattern of inaction," wrote Van Hollen and his colleagues.
"While we welcome the State Department’s expression of concern about the escalating situation in El Obeid, words are not enough," they said. "The United States must use the leverage and influence at our disposal to prevent further atrocities in El Obeid and help bring this brutal war in Sudan to an end."
The senators called for a response to their letter by August 17, urging the administration to provide "an update on what other actions the administration is taking, beyond just words, to prevent mass atrocities in El Obeid."
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A Question I'd Ask Jalen Brunson About the Patch on His Jersey
If I had the good fortune of meeting Jalen Brunson, I would urge him to learn about what the UAE is doing in Sudan, to educate others about it, and to ask the Knicks owner, James Dolan, to end the UAE deal.
Jul 21, 2026
A funny thing happened on the way to the NBA Championship Finals this season. Despite being die-hard Celtics fans, my six-year-old son and I fell in love with Jalen Brunson of the rival New York Knicks. We’ve risked excommunication from Celtics Nation for this sacrilege.
But let me state our case. First, and obviously, Brunson is one of the most fearless basketball players to have ever played the game. Driving the lane repeatedly in the face of Victor Wembanyama, the 7’4” consensus NBA defensive player of the year, was a wonder to behold. The guy has ice in his veins.
Second, we love the kind of humble teammate Brunson is: deflecting praise, not spending his time on social media battling critics like a certain ex-Celtic, being forever encouraging of his teammates, and living out his faith in God.
Third, perhaps strangely, we love Brunson’s dietary habits. My son is a carb and treat monster (wonder where he got that from?), but when we learned about Brunson’s incredibly healthy meals, we both got on board. Even Celtics like John Havlicek and Paul Silas couldn’t do that for me as a kid.
Fourth, since I’m always drilling my son to share his toys and be generous with those less fortunate, we were inspired to learn that Brunson took a pay cut so that there would be more money to—wait for it—win a championship.
Fifth and relatedly, Brunson has used his wealth to better the lives of others through his Second Round Foundation. He received an NBA Cares award for his community work, something we have prioritized with our son from a very early age.
Sixth, as on-and-off New York residents ourselves, Brunson is quintessential New York City. The comebacks, the underdog, the grit, the discounted. For all those who are doubted and dismissed, he is the patron saint.
Seventh, by every account, Brunson is an amazing father to his daughter Jordyn, a devoted husband to his wife Ali, and a loving son to his mom Sandra and dad Rick.
I could go on. The guy is the real deal, the kind of role model the sports world—and frankly, this country—needs right now for so many reasons.
But there is one problem, one outlier in this litany of goodness. It isn’t his fault by any stretch, but just maybe he could do something about it.
If I ever met Brunson, after telling him how much my son and I have admired and been inspired by him, I would raise this one uncomfortable truth with him: Right above his heart on his and his teammates’ Knicks jerseys is a patch with the words “Experience Abu Dhabi.” The New York Knicks have a marketing deal worth $30 million with Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. It is one of the most expensive uniform patches in the NBA.
Seems innocuous enough. There are lots of these kinds of ads all over uniforms and arenas throughout the sporting world globally. But this ad carries enormous baggage, and it’s unlikely that Brunson and most people even know why. Through this marketing deal, the Knicks are connected to the people of Sudan. But the Sudanese are not experiencing Abu Dhabi in the same way the tourists the UAE is wooing might be. The people of Sudan are experiencing Abu Dhabi through the killer drones the UAE government has been delivering to a deadly militia amid one of the most destructive wars globally this century. The United Nations and the US government have said the militia that the UAE supports is committing genocide, which is the deliberate killing of people on the basis of their identity, in this case, racial and ethnic.
If I had the good fortune of meeting Jalen Brunson, I would urge him to learn about what the UAE is doing in Sudan, to educate others about it, and to ask the Knicks owner, James Dolan, to end the UAE deal. The Knicks and Brunson have been the good news story of the sports world this year. Imagine the good news and hope the team could bring to the suffering people of Sudan if the team cut its connection to such horrific violence.
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Sanders Says US Must End Support for UAE—’One of Trump’s Closest Allies’—as It Fuels Genocide in Sudan
"Trump’s good friend and staunch US ally, the United Arab Emirates dictatorship, run by one of the wealthiest families in the world—has financed and enabled this genocide for years."
Jul 14, 2026
As the world fears another massacre by the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, Sen. Bernie Sanders emphasized that the rebel group’s string of atrocities is being funded by a nation with deep financial ties to President Donald Trump—the United Arab Emirates—and urged an end to US military support.
"In the midst of the wars in Gaza and Iran, we cannot forget the atrocities in Sudan," Sanders (I-Vt.) said Monday in a post to social media. "As many as 150,000 killed since 2023, 14 million driven from their homes, 30 million need humanitarian aid."
"All of this is fueled by the UAE—one of Trump's closest allies," the senator continued. "We cannot be complicit in genocide."
The warning came as RSF encircles El Obeid, a city of half a million people, including hundreds of thousands who have been displaced.
For weeks, the RSF has launched drone attacks that have killed dozens of civilians and damaged critical infrastructure including water facilities, markets, and hospitals. Food, water, and fuel supplies have been disrupted. Some civilians have begun to flee as many entry points to the city have been cut off.
The United Nations Security Council warned last month that there was an "imminent risk of mass atrocities" and demanded that the RSF halt its assault.
Human Rights Chief Volker Türk stressed that the siege tactics followed a familiar "playbook" to the RSF's October attack on El-Fasher in which at least 6,000 people were killed in just three days as part of a campaign that UN human rights experts said bore the "hallmarks of genocide," including ethnically targeted killings and sexual violence.
While the US State Department and other governments have similarly warned that the RSF could be on the verge of committing atrocities, Nicholas Kristof argued in a New York Times column this weekend that "officials won’t say openly... that the power behind the RSF is the United Arab Emirates."
Despite denials from Abu Dhabi, the UAE has been extensively documented as supporting the RSF through weapons shipments routed via Chad, financing the militia, and recruiting, training, and transporting mercenaries to fight alongside the group.
Kristof pointed out that the UAE "has particularly close financial ties to the Trump family," most notably the $2 billion investment by an Emirati firm last year that benefited his family's cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial (WLF), which has been a major source for the unprecedented growth of the president's wealth during his second term.
Recent financial disclosures reported this month by the Wall Street Journal show that Trump received $263 million from selling half his stake in WLF to a fund backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, one of the UAE's most powerful royals and the brother of its president.
During his second term, Trump has rewarded the UAE with more than a billion dollars in weapons sales that were fast-tracked to get around holds imposed by Congress, and made an agreement giving the Emirates unprecedented access to hundreds of thousands of advanced computer chips per year.
“Trump’s good friend and staunch US ally, the United Arab Emirates dictatorship, run by one of the wealthiest families in the world—has financed and enabled this genocide for years,” Sanders said in a statement last week. "And why is this happening? Billions of dollars of looted gold from Sudan is flowing straight into the pockets of Emirati oligarchs—making a multibillionaire family even richer."He added that "Congress must demand that the UAE cease its military support for the RSF and work with the international community and the Sudanese people to bring an end to this horrific conflict and provide the humanitarian aid that is desperately needed there."
As warnings about a brutal new RSF offensive have piled up, there has been a push in Congress led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) for restrictions on the United States' ability to provide weapons to the UAE.
Last month, with help from some Democrats, the GOP-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee blocked two amendments aimed at halting US weapons shipments to the UAE unless it stops supporting the RSF.
The committee has passed a weaker bill that allows the president to impose optional sanctions on individuals who supply weapons to Sudan's armed factions, which now awaits a full Senate vote. But the committee rejected Van Hollen's amendment prohibiting arms sales to the UAE.
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From Darfur to Gracie Mansion: Genocide and the NBA
Companies, sports teams, and elected officials should stop partnering with the UAE or wearing Emirates-emblazoned swag until the country stops arming genocide in Sudan.
Jun 10, 2026
While little is reported about the role of the United Arab Emirates in provoking and supporting genocide in Sudan, the sheikdom is being celebrated at major sporting events here and abroad. I was reminded of this watching an interview with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani about the Knicks in the Athletic The New York Times sports website. During the interview I was alarmed to see he was wearing a sweater emblazoned with “Fly Emirates.”
I'm rooting for the Knicks and am a huge Mamdani fan, not only of the mayor but of his parents for many decades before Zohran caught my attention. It turns out that the sweater he was wearing is one a several outfits he wears in support of Arsenal, his favorite English Premier soccer team. During an Eid al-Adha celebration in the Bronx, he wore a kurta in the team’s blue and black colors. On it inscribed in large letters was “ Emirates—Fly Better.”
Emirates, the airline of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has its major hub in Dubai linking a vast network of connections to Asia and Africa from Europe and the USA. The NBA and Emirates entered into a multiyear global marketing agreement. It is the official airline and a major sponsor of the NBA. The league’s annual in-season tournament is now called the Emirates NBA Cup and referees at NBA games wear EMIRATES on the back of their uniforms.
Numerous international organizations and media have identified the UAE (aka The Emirates) as a major supplier of arms, training, mercenaries, and material support for the Rapid Support Forces. The New York Times stated that, “under the guise of saving refugees, the United Arab Emirates is running an elaborate covert operation to back one side in Sudan’s spiraling war—supplying powerful weapons and drones, treating injured fighters, and airlifting the most serious cases to one of its military hospitals, according to a dozen current and former officials from the United States, Europe and several African countries.”
Refugees International wants prominent companies and organizations like the NBA, Disney, and Warner Brothers to suspend their partnerships with the UAE until it has ended its armed support for the RSF.
Mayor Mandani while condemning Israeli genocide in Palestine wears apparel endorsing the foremost sponsor of genocide in Darfur. The UAE supplies arms, equipment, and finances for the Rapid Support Forces who have committed countless acts of brutality including genocide and systematic rape. United Nations’ Secretary General António Guterres described the Sudan civil war as a “crisis of staggering scale and brutality.” He told world leaders that “the external support and flow of weapons must end.”
US-based Refugees International “calls for immediate accountability for the United Arab Emirates as new evidence emerges that it continues to fuel genocide in Sudan.” The Conflict Insights Group (CIG) report, “BLOOD MONEY: How UAE Support and Foreign Mercenaries Enabled the Fall of El Fasher,” uncovers the extent of Emirati operational involvement in the war.
The investigation documented “how a UAE-backed network of Colombian mercenaries provided critical military support to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), enabling the October 2025 capture of El Fasher, North Darfur. Colombian mercenaries flew drones, trained soldiers, and were present during the RSF’s takeover of El Fasher, where the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has concluded that war crimes and crimes against humanity took place.” The report states that these mercenaries were associated with Global Security Services Group, a UAE company with documented ties to senior Emirati government officials, including links to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Donald Trump hosted a dinner for Sheikh Tahnoon on March 18, 2025. The sheikh met with the head of the CIA, various cabinet members, and CEOs including Jeff Bezos. The New York Times reported that leaked information indicated that Tahnoon sought Trump’s support “to shield the UAE from potential international sanctions and an ICJ (International Court of Justice) investigation into its alleged support for the RSF militia in Sudan.”
Ironically, on November 14, 2025, the BBC reported that “US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for international action to cut off the supply of weapons to Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who are accused of mass killings in el-Fasher. At the end of a G7 foreign ministers meeting in Canada, Rubio said the RSF had committed systematic atrocities, including murder, rape and sexual violence against civilians.”
Refugees International wants prominent companies and organizations like the NBA, Disney, and Warner Brothers to suspend their partnerships with the UAE until it has ended its armed support for the RSF. Hopefully, in that spirit, Mayor Mandani will denounce the UAE and offer a mea culpa for wearing genocidal swag.
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Trump Reigniting Iran War Proves It Was Failure From the Start
As Tehran believes Trump intends to prosecute the next war with far greater ferocity, Iranian planners are preparing a far more expansive and punishing retaliatory campaign. It doesn't have to be this way.
May 18, 2026
The Middle East is once again teetering on the brink as Trump appears poised to reignite war with Iran. Press reports indicate he will convene military advisers on Tuesday, though my understanding is that both the meeting and the decision are likely to come sooner. Over the past several hours, Trump has flooded Truth Social with a barrage of incendiary threats. While some of this may be theatrical brinkmanship designed to force Tehran into submission, sources in the Iranian capital tell me they expect the United States to resume hostilities within the next 48 hours.
We should first recognize that restarting the war amounts to an admission that Trump’s previous escalatory gambit — the blockade of the blockade — has failed. That, in turn, was itself an admission that the war had failed. Which was an admission that the threats of war in January had failed. As I have argued before on my Substack, this relentless search for an escalatory silver bullet capable of bringing Iran to its knees is not unique to Trump; it has become a defining pathology of American Iran policy for decades.
Although negotiators have made meaningful progress on several fronts, talks have thus far failed to produce an agreement, largely because of irreconcilable differences over Tehran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile. And as Washington has come to realize that the blockade is backfiring, a new and dangerous dynamic has emerged: both sides now believe another round of fighting will strengthen their hand in the negotiations that follow.
As I argued in numerous interviews in January, Trump dramatically underestimated Iran’s strength, while hard-liners in Tehran believed war would strengthen Iran’s leverage by exposing the illusion of Iranian weakness. In their view, the outcome of the conflict vindicated that assessment, leaving them increasingly confident — even emboldened — about what a second round of war could yield. I am told the new Supreme Leader belongs to this camp.
Moreover, just as Tehran believes Trump intends to prosecute the next war with far greater ferocity, Iranian planners are preparing a far more expansive and punishing retaliatory campaign, complete with new strategic objectives and targets.
First, Iranian officials increasingly describe the next war as an opportunity to inflict maximum strategic damage on the United Arab Emirates, citing Abu Dhabi’s active role in the previous conflict, its deepening and increasingly overt partnership with Israel, and its role in urging Trump to resume hostilities.
Tehran is likely to target American data centers in the UAE, a move that serves multiple purposes. Iranian officials argue that these American technology firms have already become participants in the conflict through their support for the Pentagon. At the same time, Tehran sees an opportunity to cripple the UAE’s ambitions to become a global artificial intelligence hub — and, in doing so, potentially undermine Washington’s AI competition with China.
This points to a second defining feature of Iran’s strategy in a future war. Tehran believes Trump and his family hold financial stakes in many of these same technology ventures. Targeting Trump’s personal business interests is a lever Iran conspicuously avoided pulling during the first conflict but now appears increasingly willing to use. The logic is straightforward: Trump may tolerate damage to American strategic interests, but he is acutely sensitive to threats against his own financial empire. Raise the personal cost to Trump himself, the reasoning goes, and he may prove more willing to adopt a realistic negotiating position.
Third, Tehran is likely to show far less restraint if evidence emerges that other Gulf Cooperation Council states permit the United States or Israel to use their territory or airspace in a renewed conflict. The result would be broader and far more perilous horizontal escalation, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the global economy should critical energy infrastructure come under attack.
Fourth, the Red Sea is now in play. That would dramatically widen the geographic scope of the conflict while placing even greater upward pressure on already volatile oil prices.
Finally, Tehran is increasingly examining the possibility of severing the major submarine fiber-optic cable networks running beneath the Persian Gulf — arteries through which most GCC internet traffic flows, including billions of dollars in financial transactions. Iranian officials increasingly view this as a potential second Strait of Hormuz: a powerful new point of leverage capable of disrupting the global economy at enormous scale.
Renewed war is not inevitable. But when both sides convince themselves that another round of fighting will strengthen their negotiating position, the gravitational pull toward conflict becomes dangerously strong — however irrational the logic may ultimately be.
This article was republished with permission from Trita Parsi's newsletter
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Trump Says US Fighting Iran War ‘To Help Israel... Saudi Arabia... Qatar... UAE... Kuwait’—China Too
"Trump again says the quiet part out loud—America entered the Iran war to support a genocidal ethno-state and brutal absolute autocracies, all of whom are his political and commercial financiers."
May 15, 2026
During his campaign for reelection, one of President Donald Trump's central pitches was that the US needed to stay out of foreign wars in order to prioritize "America first."
But his decision to join Israel and launch a massive war with Iran, which has caused turmoil across the American economy, has left many voters rather skeptical of these motivations, believing the war benefits other nations—particularly Israel—more than the US.
That perception has not been assuaged by statements from officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who acknowledged in the early days of the war that a so-called "imminent threat" to the US only existed because Israel had planned to attack, or by the president's recent comment that he doesn't "think about Americans' financial situation" regarding the war.
In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday, Trump appeared to further affirm that the Iran invasion's impact on his own country is far from top-of-mind.
Trump was asked by Hannity about his weekslong effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran closed in response to the war's launch, causing a spike in global oil prices that has hit the US. Reopening the strait has become one of Trump's main demands as he pushes for a deal with Iran, even though it was open before the war began.
But Trump said on Thursday that other countries "need the strait more than we need it open." He cited his administration's aggressive expansion of oil drilling, which he has claimed would make the US more resilient to the oil shock, although it hasn't been enough to stop gas prices from soaring above $4.50/gallon on average.
"We don't need it at all," Trump said, to which Hannity responded incredulously, "We don't need it at all?"
"We don't need it at all," Trump reiterated. “I mean, you could make the case, you know, like why are we even, we’re doing it to help Israel, and to help Saudi Arabia, and to help Qatar and [the United Arab Emirates] and, you know, Kuwait and other countries, Bahrain—”
Hannity interjected: "It also helps China."
Speaking of his summit this week with Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, Trump said: "Actually, I told him today, I said, 'You know, we're helping you, and we're helping you in another way,' because I don't think they want, I don't think China wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon either.'"
Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in a written statement to Congress in March that Iran had not tried to rebuild its nuclear enrichment capability after earlier US and Israeli attacks last June, which undercut one of the administration's primary rationales for war.
Trump's former National Counterterrorism Center director, Joe Kent, said last week that the US intelligence community agreed in the days leading up to the war that "Iran wasn’t developing a nuclear weapon,” but said that these assessments were undermined by persuasion from "a foreign government—Israel," which "won the argument and forced us into this war."
Many of the US's Persian Gulf allies have publicly tried to distance themselves from the war, especially in the face of retaliation from Iran. But The Associated Press has reported that countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain have pushed Trump behind the scenes to continue escalating the war in an effort to weaken Iran militarily and force more permanent changes to the regime.
Some have noted the Trump family’s close personal ties to the Gulf regimes—from his family’s cryptocurrency venture which is buoyed by a $500 million investment from a powerful member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family; to his son in law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, which has received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund; to his real estate empire which has lucrative Trump-branded properties popping up across the region.
Independent journalist Borzou Daragahi said that with his latest comments, "Trump again says the quiet part out loud—America entered the Iran war to support a genocidal ethno-state and brutal absolute autocracies, all of whom are his political and commercial financiers."
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The NBA's Other Human Rights Quagmire
The league must rethink its commercial partnership with Rwanda, whose army and senior officials the US government recently sanctioned for backing a deadly armed group that is committing “horrific human rights abuses.”
May 10, 2026
As an iconic sports league with a deep historic commitment to social justice, two of the National Basketball Association’s commercial branding relationships contradict the league’s values.
Questions are being raised about the branding deal the NBA struck with the United Arab Emirates, ignoring the killer drones and other support it is sending to a militia which the United Nations found to be committing genocide in Sudan.
Much less critical attention has been paid to the NBA’s commercial partnership with Rwanda, whose army and senior officials the US government recently sanctioned for backing a deadly armed group that is committing “horrific human rights abuses.” Rwanda has been a central partner in the Basketball Africa League (BAL), the NBA’s first professional basketball league outside North America. The Rwandan government pays the NBA between $6 million and $7 million annually to be a sponsor and to host some of the BAL playoffs. And Rwanda’s national airline is the official travel partner for the BAL.
The Los Angeles Clippers signed their own sponsorship deal with Rwanda last year. “Visit Rwanda” is their official jersey patch sponsor, so it appears on all uniforms. There is “Visit Rwanda” branding in the Clippers’ arena, and it is the official coffee sponsor for the team.
The NBA and the Clippers have some uncomfortable decisions to make. Should they continue to accept money from a government that is in large part responsible for one of the largest humanitarian emergencies in the world?
The uncomfortable truth for the NBA and the Clippers is that Rwanda invaded eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2022 and dramatically escalated its invasion last year, deploying up to 12,000 troops and backing a very violent proxy rebel group known as the M23. Under Rwandan command and control, the M23 has committed extensive human rights abuses, including mass killings targeted at certain ethnic groups, torture, and forced deportations. Over 5 million people in DRC are now displaced from their homes due to the conflict, and 10 million people are now at risk of starvation, as M23 “has driven farmers from their land… and blocked food imports.”
NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum responded to a bipartisan letter from US senators in September 2024, "If American policies were to change regarding business activities in and relating to Rwanda or any other BAL market, our actions would, of course, change accordingly."
Therein lies the rub. US policy on Rwanda has changed suddenly and significantly over the last two months, with major implications for the NBA’s close involvement with Rwanda. Just days following the signing of a peace accord between Rwanda and DRC brokered by the US and overseen by President Donald Trump last December, Rwanda and its proxy force launched a new, bloody offensive that left 200,000 more civilians displaced. Instead of pulling back to make peace, Rwanda doubled down on war right after telling the White House it would do the opposite.
The breach of the peace agreement has since led to a major shift in long-standing US policy on Rwanda. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated in December that “Rwanda’s actions are… a clear violation of the Washington Accords…, and the United States will take action to ensure promises made to the President are kept.” US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz then argued that “Rwanda is leading the region… toward more war.”
The US government has followed up with a series of actions, including placing sanctions on the entire Rwandan army, visa restrictions on senior Rwandan officials, suspending a US-Rwanda health agreement, and canceling an investment conference and negotiations with Rwanda over a new development finance project.
M23 forces continue to occupy nearly all strategic areas of eastern DRC, Rwanda maintains 7,000 troops there, and the conflict is deepening. Notably, the DRC government is also responsible for many human rights abuses, and it must halt its partnerships with deadly armed groups.
Rwanda is also profiting from the deadly trade in illicit gold and other minerals from eastern DRC, minerals that provide fuel for the conflict. Rwanda-backed M23 occupies key gold and critical minerals mines and exports the minerals to Rwanda. Despite having no major domestic gold mines, Rwanda is estimated to have skyrocketed its gold exports to $2 billion in 2025, a more than five-fold increase from four years ago. Ironically, most of their smuggled gold exports go to the UAE, the other major NBA partner.
Because of Rwanda’s heinous behavior in eastern DRC, several major sports teams have recently halted their partnerships with the Rwandan government following campaigns from human rights groups. The English soccer club Arsenal ended its commercial branding deal with Rwanda following a campaign by the group Gunners for Peace, as did German soccer giant Bayern Munich.
The NBA’s main defense of its commercial partnership with Rwanda has been that its dealings have been consistent with US policy. That policy has now changed in response to Rwanda’s unwillingness to end its greed-fueled military intervention in DRC.
The NBA and the Clippers have some uncomfortable decisions to make. Should they continue to accept money from a government that is in large part responsible for one of the largest humanitarian emergencies in the world? Should they continue to be part of Rwanda’s strategy of “sportswashing” its image? Can they follow in the footsteps of Arsenal and Bayern Munich and drop Rwanda’s commercial branding sponsorship? These questions won’t garner the same attention as gambling players and tanking teams, but the stakes for millions of Congolese lives couldn’t be greater.
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Trump Rebuked for Bypassing Congress With $8.6 Billion Weapons Sale to Israel and Gulf Allies
"The vaults are open and the arms trade is thriving before the war and after it," said one Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
May 03, 2026
As the US voting public continues to express its discontent over the disastrous war of choice against Iran that US President Donald Trump launched just over two months ago, fresh criticism followed after weekend reporting revealed the administration skirted congressional review to approve an $8.6 billion weapons deal with the United Arab Emirates and other allies in the Middle East.
Announced Friday night quietly by the US State Department, as the New York Times reports, the "sales would entail the transfer of rockets to Israel, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates and air-defense equipment to Qatar and Kuwait."
According to the Times:
Under the terms of the deal with Qatar, the Gulf country would pay more than $4 billion for American-made Patriot missile interceptors — global stockpiles of which have dwindled during the war with Iran.
Israel, the Emirates and Qatar would receive an Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, which fires laser-guided rockets. Kuwait also purchased an advanced aerial defense system for about $2.5 billion.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio expedited the deals under an emergency provision allowing the “immediate sale” of the weapons, the State Department said, bypassing standard congressional review and prompting criticism from Democratic lawmakers. This is the third time the second Trump administration has invoked an emergency authorization during the Iran war to bypass Congress on arms sales.
"No comment," said Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in an eye-rolling response to the news on social media.
After a commenter suggested that "America opened the door to war for [the countries taking part in the sale] so they would open their treasuries and the Israeli-American arms trade would boom after a slump," ElBaradei seemed to agree.
"The vaults are open, and the arms trade is thriving before the war and after it," he said.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor at Princeton University, said: "Trump is bypassing Congress to fast-track arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, apparently without receiving any promise that the UAE would stop arming the genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan."
The RSF has been accused of atrocities in the ongoing Sudanese civil war, and the backing it has received from the US, with the UAE as its closely allied proxy, has been the source of outrage and criticism.
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As Left-Wing Opposition Banned, Ecuador Court Rejects Terrible UAE Treaty
The decision blocks the right-wing president's unconstitutional attempt to bypass the National Assembly. Still, this is just one step in Ecuador's continued fight for its Constitution and its democracy.
Mar 13, 2026
In a major rebuke to President Daniel Noboa, Ecuador's Constitutional Court ruled unanimously on March 9 that his controversial Bilateral Investment Treaty with the United Arab Emirates cannot be fast-tracked and must be approved by the National Assembly.
The decision blocks the right-wing president's unconstitutional attempt to bypass the National Assembly. Still, this is just one step in Ecuador's continued fight for its Constitution and its democracy.
This treaty is the test case for a far broader corporate coup, one that aims to resurrect a legal weapon Ecuador’s people have repeatedly rejected: Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS).
The treaty, signed in a rushed ceremony in December 2025, was littered with errors, referencing the non-existent "United Arab States" and citing provisions that aren't there. When Ecuador’s pro-corporate Constitutional Court rightly demanded a corrected text, it asked for an English version, a bizarre move in a Spanish-speaking republic.
“We are witnessing a government ignoring its own Constitution and the will of its people to serve the interests of transnational capital."
In response, Noboa issued an extraordinary decree authorizing Ecuador’s ambassador to unilaterally correct the text, bypassing normal diplomatic and legal channels.
The court has now sided with Ecuador’s progressive Constitution. However, that is not where this fight ends; instead, the treaty will have to be taken through a two-stage review process, unless Noboa decides to ignore the court altogether—a move that would be unsurprising given the young autocrat’s continued destruction and dismissal of Ecuador’s other branches of government.
The Constitutional Court will have 30 days to conduct a second, deeper review of the treaty's content to verify its full conformity with the Constitution. If the treaty survives that scrutiny (or if the court does not respond in 30 days), it will go to the National Assembly, where it requires absolute majority approval. Currently, Noboa’s party only has two-fifths of the total assembly seats, with leftist, pro-Indigenous, and some centrist parties occupying the rest.
The urgency of this corporate agenda explains the government's simultaneous brutal crackdown on democratic opposition. In a move that has drawn international condemnation, an electoral judge, on the request of the Noboa-aligned prosecutor general, suspended the country's largest opposition party, the left-wing Revolución Ciudadana (RC), for nine months.
The RC would not be able to conduct any political activities, or run in the 2027 local elections. The left-wing party, which won 44% of the vote in the last presidential election, controls the country's largest cities, including Quito and Guayaquil.
Interestingly, the right-wing pro-Trump billionaire president has himself been credibly accused of electoral fraud, corruption, and stakes in the drug-trafficking trade.
The case against RC relies on the testimony of an individual awaiting trial for child sexual abuse, who was given preferential treatment in prison in exchange for implicating the party on cooked-up money laundering charges. This follows the February pre-trial detention of Guayaquil's Mayor, Aquiles Alvarez, another opposition leader targeted by the prosecutor general. This thus follows a long pattern of Noboa's crackdown on opposition. The right is also cutting off the opposition's ability to vote against Noboa's measures in the assembly.
The UAE BIT contains ISDS provisions that grant foreign investors the right to sue Ecuador in international tribunals for billions over laws or policies that harm their profits, and those they expect to make in the future, including environmental and health regulations that protect local and marginalized populations. This is explicitly prohibited by Article 422 of Ecuador’s Constitution, a prohibition upheld by the people in national referenda in 2024 and again in 2025.
“This is all very clearly unconstitutional,” says Ladan Mehranvar, a senior legal researcher at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment who focuses on international investment law and human rights. “They are trying to push the BIT through by sidestepping constitutional safeguards, including the requirement of prior approval by the National Assembly,” she added.
“We are witnessing a government ignoring its own Constitution and the will of its people to serve the interests of transnational capital,” said Pedro Labayen Herrera and Mario Osorio, both researchers with the Center for Economic and Political Research (CEPR) in Washington. “They are fast-tracking the UAE treaty by claiming it requires only executive ratification, thus avoiding the scrutiny of the Ecuadorian legislature and the public. That is simply false.”
There are serious concerns about the court’s independence. One justice, Claudia Salgado, nominated by Noboa, comes from a family of legal and arbitration specialists and has previously written on Ecuador’s constitutional ban on ISDS. Her apparent shift, alongside pressure from an executive that has publicly attacked and threatened the Constitutional Court judges, paints a picture of a state institution under siege. “Either the Constitutional Court is captured, or it feels threatened,” Mehranvar noted.
So why such a reckless, rushed push for a treaty with the UAE? Because it is the blueprint and the battering ram for something far more consequential, namely, a Free Trade Agreement with Canada and other pro-corporate actions that would permanently lock in ISDS for the (mostly foreign) mining industry.
There is also significant personal corruption at play. The Noboa family holds a significant stake in Silvercorp, a Canadian mining company, as well as other financial holdings with direct interests in ISDS and the president’s deregulation crusade.
An ISDS chapter in a Canada-Ecuador FTA would directly benefit the president’s own financial interests, allowing corporate actors, potentially including his family’s holdings, to sue the Ecuadorian state. “ISDS is a tool for the Noboa family to protect their own financial interest,” said Herrera and Osorio.
This agenda is being synchronized with a brutal domestic deregulation campaign. In late January, Noboa proposed gutting Ecuador’s Mining Law by replacing the mandatory environmental license with a simplified authorization, which local Indigenous groups say decimates their constitutional right to prior consultation, a key tool they use to oppose harmful extractive projects. Ecuador is one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth; about half of its territory is made up of the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous lands.
Combined with ISDS, this creates a vicious trap—remove environmental safeguards now, deter future governments from reinstating them, and use international tribunals to sue any future government that tries to reinstate them for “indirect expropriation” of future profits.
Companies could do this even without any intent to finish the projects, or invest while knowing that the projects are legally or politically untenable, winning out on billions of dollars in Ecuadorian taxpayer funds, at a time when Ecuador is facing a historic financial, energy, and security crisis, and remains one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the Environment has argued that ISDS has catastrophic consequences for climate action and human rights. Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has even argued ISDS is “litigation terrorism,” while even the libertarian Cato Institute has said the mechanism actually threatens the rule of law, growth, and investment.
This deal and its progenitors represent the fusion of state and corporate power against democracy. It was preceded by the violent crushing of protests against subsidy removals, the criminalization of water defenders, and the continued advancement of mining projects in sensitive ecosystems like the Amazon and near the Yasuní National Park, despite, once again, popular referenda opposing them. The Noboa government has conducted a war against democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.
If the court and National Assembly allow this breach, the floodgates open for a corporate takeover dressed as trade policy, with only global mining capital standing to gain. Ecuador’s people have resisted corporatocracy many times over. Their government is now trying to force it on them by decree, while suppressing all opposition. At a time when global democracy and rights are falling off a cliff, the world must heed this crucial test.
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UN Experts Find 'Hallmarks of Genocide' in Sudan's War-Torn Darfur
Their report detailed the Rapid Support Forces' "systematic pattern of ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence, destruction, and public statements explicitly calling for the elimination of non-Arab communities."
Feb 19, 2026
Independent United Nations human rights experts released a report Thursday detailing allegedly genocidal crimes committed by Sudanese rebels during an October offensive in Darfur, where thousands of people were killed and others tortured, raped, and starved during the capture of el-Fasher.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan report, titled Hallmarks of Genocide in el-Fasher, found that "genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference that can be drawn" from the Rapid Support Forces' (RSF) "systematic pattern of ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence, destruction, and public statements explicitly calling for the elimination of non-Arab communities, particularly the Zaghawa and Fur."
According to the mission's report, RSF—a United Arab Emirates-backed paramilitary force that originated from the Janjaweed militias used by the Sudanese government during the previous 2003-05 Darfur genocide—committed at least three genocidal acts as defined by the Genocide Convention: “killing members of a protected ethnic group, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part.”
“The scale, coordination, and public endorsement of the operation by senior RSF leadership demonstrate that the crimes committed in and around el-Fasher were not random excesses of war,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, who chaired the expert panel. "They formed part of a planned and organized operation that bears the defining characteristics of genocide.”
A devastating report by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, finding that the 18-month starvation siege & subsequent atrocities during the fall of El-Fasher genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...
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— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum.bsky.social) February 19, 2026 at 7:19 AM
The experts' investigation focused on events in and around el-Fasher—the capital of North Darfur—as RSF militants fought to take the area last October following an 18-month siege that deprived civilians of food, water, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid. The report says the siege “systematically weakened the targeted population through starvation, deprivation, trauma, and confinement."
The RSF captured el-Fasher last October 26. Its fighters ran roughshod over the city and its inhabitants, committing widespread atrocities including mass murder and summary executions, torture, rape, and kidnapping for ransom, according to the UN Human Rights Office, which said that more than 6,000 people were killed over a two-day period.
“We want to eliminate anything Black from Darfur," one RSF fighter allegedly told residents, according to the mission report.
"Is there anyone Zaghawa among you?" one militant is accused of asking. "If we find Zaghawa, we will kill them all."
Another survivor described starvation during the siege: “Life became unbearable. We were eating only... the food for livestock. When there was no more, we ate the skin of the animal. We soaked it in water and ate.”
In one of the worst atrocities of the el-Fasher offensive, RSF fighters massacred more than 460 people at the Saudi Maternity Hospital. One RSF militant recorded himself walking across a floor strewn with dead bodies and gunning down a survivor when they rise up from the pile of corpses.
The UN experts called RSF’s crimes in el-Fasher “an aggravation of earlier patterns” of attacks on other non-Arab communities in Sudan, “but on a far more lethal scale.”
"The body of evidence we collected—including the prolonged siege, starvation, and denial of humanitarian assistance, followed by mass killings, rape, torture and enforced disappearance, systematic humiliation, and perpetrators’ own declarations—leaves only one reasonable inference,” mission member Mona Rishmawi said.
“The RSF acted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Zaghawa and Fur communities in el-Fasher," she added. "These are the hallmarks of genocide."
The Zaghawa and Fur are two of the largest non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur. Both peoples have historically faced rampant discrimination and were targeted during the 2003-05 genocide. Many had already been forcibly displaced multiple times before the renewal of conflict in the spring of 2023.
That's when rival factions of Sudan’s military government—primarily the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their erstwhile RSF allies—began battling, with violence subsequently spreading rapidly throughout the northeastern African nation of 46 million people. The SAF has also been accused of widespread war crimes and has been blamed for famine conditions caused in part by its refusal to allow food aid to enter RSF-controlled areas.
The mission report lamented that "no effective measures were taken by any party to protect the civilian population," despite UN experts sounding the alarm as early as November 2023. US officials during the Biden administration were hesitant to accuse RSF fighters of genocide, reportedly because they thought it would spark criticism of then-President Joe Biden's denial of Israel's genocide in Gaza.
The US ultimately declared genocide in Darfur three weeks before Biden left office in January 2025—a determination affirmed by President Donald Trump's secretary of state, Marco Rubio, during his Senate confirmation process.
A group of US House Democrats led by Reps. Gregory Meeks (NY) and Sara Jacobs (Calif.) have called on the Trump administration to block weapons transfers to the UAE as it arms and finances the RSF and provides diplomatic cover for its atrocities.
Last March, Sudan filed a case in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands accusing the UAE of "complicity in genocide."
Emirati officials strongly deny such allegations.
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