Monday, January 6, 2025
■ Today's Top News
"Hunger and starvation are spreading because of the decisions being made each day to continue to prosecute this war, irrespective of the civilian cost," said one U.N. expert.
By Eloise Goldsmith
Multiple U.N. leaders addressing the United Nations Security Council on Monday urged action to tackle the spiraling humanitarian crisis unfolding in war-torn Sudan, which has contributed to roughly half of the country facing acute food insecurity.
Sudan has been racked by violence since fighting erupted between the between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF)—the nation's official military—and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023. The civil war has also led to widespread hunger in the country.
Edem Wosornu, director of operations and advocacy at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, toldthe Security Council that "Sudan remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions."
"More than 11.5 million people are now estimated to be internally displaced, of whom nearly 8.8 million people have been uprooted since April 2023," she said.
Wosornu spoke about the findings of the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report from late December, which stated that there was famine—or an IPC phase 5—in in Zamzam, Abu Shouk, and Al Salam camps, as well as in the Western Nuba Mountains, affecting both residents and internally displaced people between October and November 2024. The report noted that between December 2024 and May 2025, famine is projected to continue in the same areas and expand in the North Darfur localities of Um Kadadah, Melit, El Fasher, At Tawisha, and Al Lait.
"The main drivers of famine risk remain the armed conflict and forced displacement," according to the report.
The famine declaration for Zamzam camp, which houses hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons in North Darfur, came in August.
On the eve of the IPC's December report, the Sudanese government suspended cooperation with a global hunger monitor.
Wosornu in her remarks also lamented the death of three World Food Program staff members, who were killed when the agency's field office in Yabus was hit by an "aerial bombardment," according to the United Nations.
"Hunger and starvation are spreading because of the decisions being made each day to continue to prosecute this war, irrespective of the civilian cost," she added.
Beth Bechdol, deputy director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, also provided a Monday briefing to the Security Council, saying that "the latest reports on food security are the worst in the country's history."
"Let me remind council members that over the last 15 years, only four famines have been confirmed: Somalia in 2011; South Sudan in 2017 and 2020; and now Sudan in 2024," she said.
Bechdol highlighted a number of actions that the Security Council should aid, including using "political leverage to end hostilities and to bring relief to the people of the Sudan."
She also called on the body to support "immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access" and delivery of "multi-sectoral humanitarian assistance," saying that "while scaling up food, water, and cash assistance is vital, this alone cannot address the full scope of the hunger crisis."
Wosornu added that the Security Council should help "press the [warring] parties to comply with international humanitarian law," and mobilize international funding to address the "unprecedented scale of the needs in Sudan."
This comes a week after U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) and two of her colleagues pressed President Joe Biden to do more to help the people of Sudan, including requesting an increase in U.S. humanitarian aid, specifically that a portion of that funding go toward supporting Sudanese organizations and entities that are aiding civilians on the ground.
"The Biden administration is ending its tenure as it has acted throughout it," said A New Policy co-founder Josh Paul, "with a complete disregard for Palestinian humanity, American laws, and American interests."
By Jessica Corbett
Human rights advocates in the United States and around the world on Monday condemned outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden for continuing to fuel Israel's genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip with a pending $8 billion weapons package.
Since Axois revealed late Friday that his administration had notified Congress of the deal, Biden has faced a fresh flood of outrage, with critics calling the president "morally bankrupt" and his decision to keep arming Israel "willful madness."
"Too many kids still alive in Gaza for Joe Biden's liking," Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian American political analyst, said on social media. "This is an administration of cowards and criminals and will go down as a historic worst."
Two men who resigned from the Biden administration over U.S. support for Israel's assault on Gaza—which has killed at least 45,854 Palestinians and led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice—shared sharp critiques on Monday.
"The Biden administration is ending its tenure as it has acted throughout it," said ex-U.S. State Department official Josh Paul, "with a complete disregard for Palestinian humanity, American laws, and American interests."
"The precedent set by the Biden administration will surely haunt our nation for many years to come."
Paul and former Education Department official Tariq Habash launched the lobbying group A New Policy in October. Habash also took aim at Biden's new effort to arm Israel with missiles for fighter jets and attack helicopters, 155 mm artillery shells, small-diameter bombs, 50-pound warheads, bomb fuzes, and kits used to convert "dumb bombs" into precision-guided munitions.
"Americans continue to struggle here at home, so the notion that the Biden administration would push another $8 billion in weapons to Israel on the backs of American [taxpayers] demonstrates how unmoored this administration has become from its values and its commitments to the American people," said Habash. "The precedent set by the Biden administration will surely haunt our nation for many years to come."
Win Without War executive director Sara Haghdoosti also denounced the effort, saying in a Monday statement that "these weapon sales won't bring hostages home and don't get us closer to a viable long-term solution that ensures Israelis and Palestinians can live with dignity without the threat of violence."
"Many of the types of weapons reported to be part of this $8 billion package have been used—or are likely to be used—to kill and wound Palestinian civilians in Gaza, in a war that drags on because the president and his advisers refused to exercise real leverage to end it," she noted. "This new tranche of weapons will surely be used to the same horrific ends."
Haghdoosti highlighted that "President Biden and his senior advisers continue skirting U.S. laws that should prohibit the sale of deadly weapons while Israeli officials restrict humanitarian aid and seek to make Gaza uninhabitable."
Despite attempts by progressives in Congress such as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to block some arms to Israel, Democratic and Republican lawmakers have repeatedly voted to send more—including with the $895 billion National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025 that they sent to Biden's desk last month.
News of the $8 billion package comes just two weeks away from the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Paul said that "there is no need to rush these sales to completion, but it is clear President Biden and his appointees at the State Department do not have confidence in the Trump administration to follow through on their decision to rush arms to Israel with no questions asked, which is why they are pushing through these sales now."
While the current administration is clearly aiming to push the package through ahead of the looming transition of power in the United States, Trump is widely expected to serve as an ally to Israel, as he did in his first term. Haghdoosti sounded the alarm about the Republican's return to the White House with a GOP-controlled Congress.
"These latest sales mark a bleak handoff to the incoming Trump administration, whose senior nominees openly ally with far-right Israeli government ministers who plan to settle Gaza and annex the West Bank, all but guaranteeing another generation of displacement and deprivation that will undermine security for Palestinians and Israelis alike," she said.
Trump and far-right leaders in Israel—including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—"will use these sales to advance that violent project," Haghdoosti added. "It is an utter shame that President Biden has chosen to abet it during his final days in office."
"Hasn't Trump delayed accountability long enough?" asked Norm Eisen of the Brookings Institution.
By Julia Conley
Arguments from lawyers for President-elect Donald Trump in a legal filing made public Monday amounted to "nonsense," said longtime legal analyst Norm Eisen, as the Republican leader attempts to avoid a sentencing that would cement his status later this month as the first convicted felon to serve as president of the United States.
Trump's attorneys filed a "notice of automatic stay" three days after New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan upheld the president-elect's criminal conviction of 34 counts of falsifying business documents. The case—one of four pending criminal cases against Trump while he ran for president last year—pertains to a $130,000 hush-money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just before Trump's 2016 electoral victory.
In upholding the conviction, Merchan rejected Trump's motion to vacate a New York jury's guilty verdict last May and scheduled his sentencing for January 10.
On Monday, lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove—who are also Trump's nominees for deputy attorney general and assistant to the deputy attorney general—claimed the case should be paused because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last summer which gave presidents broad immunity for "official acts" they take.
"I call BS," said Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, explaining on the social media platform X that presidential immunity "does not apply here" because the case pertains to events that took place before Trump was first elected president.
Trump's claim that he should enjoy "sitting-president immunity" is also "nonsense," said Eisen, as he has not been the sitting president since January 2021 and won't be again until January 20, 10 days after the scheduled sentencing.
"His claim that sitting-president immunity extends into the transitional period while he is 'president-elect' is nonsense," said Eisen. "There's no such doctrine in American law. He's making this up."
Blanche and Bove demanded that Merchan indicate by 2:00 pm on Monday whether he would block the sentencing.
"Lawyers don't impose deadlines on judges; it's the other way around," said MSNBC legal analyst Kristy Greenberg. "But that didn't stop Trump's lawyers from giving Judge Merchan a deadline of TODAY at 2:00 pm to say whether he'll proceed with 1/10 sentencing, or else they will file an emergency appeal."
A spokesperson for the district attorney's office told The Washington Post that the judge was expected to file a response Monday.
In the filing, Eisen said, "Trump argues that 'further criminal proceedings are automatically stayed by operation of federal constitutional law.'"
"Wrong again!" he wrote. "There is no automatic stay. He's making this shit up as he goes along."
"Hasn't Trump delayed accountability long enough?" said Eisen. "You know if he gets this stay, his sentencing will never occur. I strongly oppose a stay—and so does the interest of justice."
"This unacceptable event is just the latest example of the complex and dangerous working environment that WFP and other agencies are operating in today," said the United Nations agency.
By Jake Johnson
The United Nations World Food Program said Monday that Israeli forces opened fire on one of the organization's aid convoys at a checkpoint in central Gaza over the weekend, an attack that the organization condemned as "horrifying."
"This unacceptable event is just the latest example of the complex and dangerous working environment that WFP and other agencies are operating in today," the organization said in a statement, noting that the convoy was "clearly marked" and that it had "received all of the necessary clearances from Israeli authorities" prior to Sunday's attack.
"Security conditions in Gaza must urgently improve for lifesaving humanitarian assistance to continue," WFP said, urging "all parties to respect international humanitarian law, protect civilian lives, and allow safe passage for humanitarian aid."
At least 16 bullets struck the WFP convoy on Sunday, but none of the eight staffers traveling in the three vehicles that came under Israeli attack on Sunday were killed or wounded, WFP said.
It was nonetheless a "terrifying encounter" that underscored the dangers facing aid workers attempting to deliver food and other necessities to starving and desperate people across the Gaza Strip.
Last year was the deadliest on record for aid workers around the world, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, with Israeli attacks in Gaza fueling a surge in killings.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said in an October speech to the U.N. Security Council that Gaza is "the most dangerous place in the world for aid workers."
Sunday wasn't the first time Israeli forces have fired on a WFP convoy in Gaza during their 15-month assault on the Palestinian enclave. Last August, the WFP was forced to temporarily halt employee movements in Gaza after Israeli soldiers fired on one of the U.N. agency's vehicles.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, said Monday that WFP is "trying to get the answers" from Israeli forces on why they once again fired on an aid convoy, an attack that came as a new round of cease-fire talks began in Doha, brokered by Qatar and Egypt.
"I don't think there's an explanation for shooting at a clearly marked convoy from the World Food Program, whose movements had been completely coordinated with the Israeli security forces," said Dujarric.
The nation's oldest learned society noted Israel's 15-month onslaught has "effectively obliterated" Gaza's education infrastructure and called for its rebuilding and a permanent cease-fire.
By Brett Wilkins
Members of the American Historical Association, the nation's oldest learned society, voted 428-88 Sunday for a resolution condemning scholasticide in Gaza, where Israel's 15-month U.S.-backed onslaught has killed or wounded tens of thousands of Palestinian students and academics and destroyed the embattled enclave's educational infrastructure.
The resolution—which must be approved by the AHA's elected council—states that "beyond causing massive death and injury to Palestinian civilians and the collapse of basic life structures," the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) assault—which is enabled by tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid—"has effectively obliterated Gaza's education system."
"We just won a very basic resolution to oppose scholasticide and 15 months of genocide at the American Historical Association," University of California, Santa Barbara professor and Journal of Palestine Studies editor Sherene Seikaly said following the vote in New York City.
"We won it in a landslide," Seikaly added. "And this moment makes me feel like, despite the fact that every single day for the last 15 months I have watched the obliteration of my people, the future is still ours."
The measure notes that United Nations experts last April expressed their "grave concern over the pattern of attacks on schools, universities, teachers, and students in the Gaza Strip," and their "serious alarm over the systemic destruction of the Palestinian education system."
"With more than 80% of schools in Gaza damaged or destroyed, it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as 'scholasticide,'" the U.N. experts said at the time, defining the term as the "systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention, or killing of teachers, students, and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure."
The resolution notes:
- The IDF's destruction of 80% of schools in Gaza, leaving 625,000 children with no educational access;
- The IDF's destruction of all 12 Gaza university campuses;
- The IDF's destruction of Gaza's archives, libraries, cultural centers, museums, and bookstores, including 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques, and three churches;
- The IDF's repeated violent displacements of Gaza's people, leading to the irreplaceable loss of students' and teachers' educational and research materials, which will extinguish the future study of Palestinian history.
"Therefore, be it resolved that the AHA, which supports the right of all peoples to freely teach and learn about their past, condemns the Israeli violence in Gaza that undermines that right," the measure states. "Be it further resolved that the AHA calls for a permanent cease-fire to halt the scholasticide documented above. Finally, be it resolved that the AHA form a committee to assist in rebuilding Gaza's educational infrastructure."
As Inside Higher Ed reported Sunday:
The resolution passed after a boisterous, hourlong, standing-room-only meeting in a hotel ballroom that was so full some attendees couldn't fit inside. Before members voted, they heard a structured debate on the resolution that included five people speaking for the resolution and five people against it. Throughout, there was raucous applause, cheers, and standing ovations for the speakers who advocated for the resolution and more muted claps for opponents.
According to data released by the Gaza Ministry of Education on December 31, at least 12,943 Palestinian students have been killed and 21,681 others wounded by Israeli forces since they launched their response to the devastating Hamas-led attack on Israel. The ministry also said that 630 educators and administrative staff have been killed and 3,865 others injured during that same period.
Overall, the Gaza Health Ministry says Israel's 458-day war on Gaza—which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case—has left at least 165,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in the coastal enclave and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
In an interview with Democracy Now!, Seikaly said: "I really have to give credit where it's due, which is to the Historians for Peace and Democracy, which is a group that actually began in 2003 under the name of Historians Against the War... They were really the spearheads and leaders of this resolution."
"This genocide is really attempting to destroy our capacity to narrate our past and to imagine our future," Seikaly added. "And to be able to articulate a principled but really not that radical of a resolution opposing this, with such a landslide of support, was a turning point for the American Historical Association and, I believe, for the field in this country."
Addressing opposition to the resolution by New School professor Natalia Petrzela—who objected to the lack of mention of the October 7 attack or the hundreds of Israelis and others taken hostage by Hamas and other Palestinian militants—Seikaly told Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman that Petrzela was engaging in "bothsidesism."
"We got this from more than one of the opposing figures, attempting to equate the last 15 months with the incidents of October 7," she said. "And to me, that is really a very clear position of valuing certain lives over others. And this is the kind of hiding of the truth that we have seen."
"We know that today in the Gaza Strip, when there are rumors of humanitarian convoys coming, Israeli soldiers bulldoze corpses to hide the evidence of decomposing bodies," Seikaly added. "And it isn't just these soldiers who are trying to hide the truth. This is also happening in mainstream media, in the courts, as well as in our universities. And I think this equating is really trying to mask that truth that can no longer hide under the rubble."
Musk wants countries including Germany "to be weakened and plunge into chaos," said one critic.
By Julia Conley
French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday was the latest European leader to lambast Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and top adviser to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, for his meddling in political battles in Europe after he exerted enormous influence over the U.S. elections.
In a foreign policy speech in Paris, Macron expressed disbelief that Musk, who owns the social media platform X and has used it to boost far-right ideologies in the U.S., would now "support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany."
Displaying an apparent "sense of having the world as his stage," as Jackson James of the German Marshall Fund told The Hill, Musk wrote in an op-ed at the German magazine Welt am Sonntag last week that "as someone who has invested significantly in Germany's industrial and technological landscape, I believe I have earned the right to speak candidly about its political direction."
According to Musk, that direction should move toward Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right party that last year included a candidate who asserted the Nazi paramilitaries were "not all criminals."
The party is virulently ant-immigration and has been designated by the German domestic intelligence service as a "suspected extremist" organization. Authorities also warned last month that other states could attempt to influence the country's snap elections in February through disinformation, cyberattacks, and other means.
As German voters prepare to go to the polls, AfD has about 20% support in recent opinion polls, compared to an alliance between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), whose support stands at 31%. All the country's political parties have said they would not form a coalition with AfD.
In his op-ed Musk invoked the sexual orientation of AfD co-chair Alice Weidel, suggesting the party isn't on the far right.
"The description of AfD as far-right is made obviously false simply by noting that Alice Weidel, the party leader has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka!" wrote Musk. "Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please."
Lars Klingbeil, leader of German Chancellor Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party, compared Musk to Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling Funke media group that "both want to influence our elections and are deliberately supporting the AfD, the enemies of democracy."
"They want Germany to be weakened and plunge into chaos," Klingbeil said.
Musk's commentary on Germany's upcoming elections has tended toward vulgar, with the SpaceX CEO responding to accusations of meddling by calling Scholz "Chancellor Oaf Schitz or whatever his name is."
When a researcher in Finland said on Sunday that Musk is "rapidly becoming the largest spreader of disinformation in human history," the top adviser to the incoming president of the United States replied: "F U retard."
In the United Kingdom—where Musk has significant business interests, as he does in Germany—the entrepreneur last week boosted the far-right Reform Party, adding days later that the organization's leader, Member of Parliament Nigel Farage, "doesn't have what it takes."
Musk met with Farage and Reform treasurer Nick Candy last month at Trump's Florida estate, and Candy told The Financial Times recently that Musk could be a billionaire donor to the party through his electric vehicle company, Tesla, which provides grid batteries in the U.K.
As he's promoted Reform—which opposes "uncontrolled immigration" and would impose drastic cuts to "wasteful government spending"—Musk has taken aim at the center-left Labour Party.
On Sunday Musk took to his social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, to ask whether the U.S. should "liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government."
Musk attacked Jess Phillips, parliamentary undersecretary of state for safeguarding, as a "rape genocide apologist" for denying requests for the Home Office to open an inquiry into child sexual exploitation in the town of Oldham.
Phillips should "be in prison," Musk said—a comment that Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the Labour Party said amounted to the "poison of the far right" and led to serious threats against Phillips.
Musk accused Starmer of being "complicit in the rape of Britain" by allegedly failing to confront a child sexual abuse scandal more than a decade ago in northern England. Starmer defended his record as the former head of the Crown Prosecution Service, as well as Phillips'.
“And those attacking Jess Phillips, whom I'm proud to call a colleague and a friend, on protecting victims—Jess Phillips has done 1,000 times more than they've even dreamt about when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse throughout her entire career," said Starmer on Monday. "And when I was chief prosecutor for five years, I tackled that head-on, because I could see what was happening, and that's why I reopened cases that have been closed and supposedly finished."
The prime minister added that "those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible, they're not interested in victims. They're interested in themselves."
Ed Davey, leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats Party, said Monday that "people have had enough of Elon Musk interfering with our country's democracy when he clearly knows nothing about Britain."
"It's time to summon the U.S. ambassador to ask why an incoming U.S. official is suggesting the U.K. government should be overthrown," said Davey. "This dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric is further proof that the U.K. can't rely on the Trump administration."
