Friday, August 1, 2025
■ Today's Top News
"The bizarre situation is a chilling reminder why it is so dangerous with Trump's finger on the nuclear button," said one nuclear policy expert.
By Stephen Prager
One economist mused that the president's economic advisers could make "a picture book" so they can "explain to Trump how the data are collected."
By Brad Reed
CONCEALING ETHNIC CLEANSING & WAR CRIMES BY CREATING A FICTION!
"The goal is clear—to erase the truth, discredit thousands of recorded videos, and wash away the blood," said one Palestinian photojournalist.
By Brett Wilkins
Palestinians and international humanitarian groups were among those who denounced Friday's highly orchestrated tour of a Gaza aid distribution center run by a U.S.-backed group condemned for its role in Israeli forces' massacres of desperate people seeking food and other lifesaving aid.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and special Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff visited one of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's (GHF) distribution sites near Rafah in southern Gaza, where Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials presented a sanitized version of a reality normally characterized by near-daily massacres of desperate, starving Palestinians clamoring for food and other aid.
"The purpose of the visit was to give [President Donald Trump] a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza," Witkoff wrote on the social media site X.
In recent days, both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have acknowledged that Palestinians are starving, with Vance lamenting that "little kids... are clearly starving to death"—a direct contradiction of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's lie that "there is no starvation in Gaza."
However, unconditional U.S. support for Israel continues unabated and practically unchallenged, save for another failed bid led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to suspend some arms transfers.
Palestinian photojournalist Osama Abu Rabee described Friday's visit as "a blatant theatrical display."
"Secretary Noem's statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population," the judge wrote, stressing that "color is neither a poison nor a crime."
By Jessica Corbett
"The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all plaintiffs seek. Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. The court disagrees."
That's how U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson began a Thursday order postponing recent moves by President Donald Trump's administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for around 60,000 migrants from Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issues TPS designations for countries impacted by war, environmental disasters, or other extraordinary conditions, allowing migrants from those nations to legally live and work in the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced in June and July that the administration would end TPS for people from Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua this summer. The decisions followed similar attempts to terminate those designations during Trump's first term—efforts blocked by U.S. courts and then ended under former President Joe Biden.
"As a TPS holder and mother, this victory means safety, hope, and the chance to keep building our lives here."
When Trump returned to power in January, he issued an executive order titled "Protecting the American People Against Invasion," which was "cited in later decisions vacating or terminating TPS designations," Thompson pointed out. The judge, who was appointed to the Northern District of California by Biden, also highlighted "repeated rhetoric by administration officials that associated immigrants and TPS holders with criminal activity or other undesirable traits."
The 37-page order details some of Noem's comments during her confirmation hearing and news interviews. Thompson wrote that "these statements reflect the secretary's animus against immigrants and the TPS program even though individuals with TPS hold lawful status—a protected status that was expressly conferred by Congress with the purpose of providing humanitarian relief."
"Their presence is not a crime. Rather, TPS holders already live in the United States and have contributed billions to the economy by legally working in jobs, paying taxes, and paying contributions into Medicare and Social Security," she noted. "By stereotyping the TPS program and immigrants as invaders that are criminal, and by highlighting the need for migration management, Secretary Noem's statements perpetuate the discriminatory belief that certain immigrant populations will replace the white population."
"Color is neither a poison nor a crime," stressed the judge, who is Black. She concluded that the various TPS holders who are the plaintiffs provided "sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the secretary's TPS Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua terminations were based on a preordained determination to end the TPS program, rather than an objective review of the country conditions."
Thompson ordered the TPS terminations for the three countries postponed until a November 18 hearing on the merits of the case, at which point her decision will be subject to extension.
"Judge Thompson's decision renews hope for our immigrant communities—especially for the tens of thousands of TPS holders from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal who have lived here for decades and are part of the National TPS Alliance," said Teofilo Martinez, a Honduran TPS holder, plaintiff, and an alliance leader, in a statement.
"This ruling gives us strength, affirms the power of organizing, and reminds us what's at stake: the right to stay in the only home many of us have ever known," Martinez added. "We will keep fighting for permanent protections and to stop the cruel separation of our families."
Sandhya Lama, another plaintiff and TPS holder from Nepal, described the judge's order as "a powerful affirmation of our humanity and our right to live without fear."
"As a TPS holder and mother, this victory means safety, hope, and the chance to keep building our lives here," she said. "We stand united, grateful, and determined to continue the fight for a permanent future in the country we call home."
The plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU Foundations of Northern California and Southern California, Haitian Bridge Alliance, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
"The Trump administration is aggressively, and illegally, seeking to dismantle TPS. But they will not do so without a fight," said ACLU of Northern California attorney Emi MacLean. "Today is a good day. Sixty60,000 long-term residents of the U.S., who have followed all the rules, will be allowed to remain in the U.S. and continue to defend their rights inside and outside of court."
WHAT'S TRUMP HIDING?
The names of other high-profile figures were also redacted, according to Bloomberg.
By Brad Reed
Bloomberg reported on Friday that FBI officials earlier this year redacted the name of U.S. President Donald Trump from the agency's files on late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Three unnamed sources confirmed to Bloomberg that the FBI had redacted the names of Trump and other prominent public figures even before the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last month that "no further disclosure" of the Epstein files "would be appropriate or warranted."
Bloomberg's sources explained that "Trump's name, along with other high-profile individuals, was blacked out because he was a private citizen when the federal investigation of Epstein was launched in 2006."
The reviewers applied two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions to justify their redactions, according to the report: One that "protects individuals against 'a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy'" and another that protects against disclosures that "could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."
Bloomberg noted that there is nothing particularly exceptional about this because these standards have long been employed by the FBI when it comes to redacting FOIA requests, even when it comes to high-profile public figures such as Trump.
The revelations about Trump's name being redacted from the files came on the same day The New York Times reported that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime accomplice who is serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges, was transferred from a federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security women's prison in Texas.
The DOJ's decision to not release the Epstein files ignited a firestorm last month that the president has struggled to contain. At times Trump, who was friends with Epstein for several years, has even chastised his own voters for continuing to ask questions about the files, while at the same time insisting that he had nothing to do with Epstein's sex trafficking ring that involved the sexual abuse of multiple underage girls.
"The U.S. is backing and even funding a deadly mechanism that is resulting in Israeli forces killing starving Palestinian civilians."
By Jake Johnson
Human Rights Watch said in a report released Friday that the U.S.-backed Israeli military's massacres of Palestinians seeking food aid in the besieged Gaza Strip are "serious violations of international law and war crimes."
Since the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating in the strip in May, Israeli forces have gunned down Palestinians in the vicinity of the organization's hubs on a near-daily basis. Between May 27 and July 31, the Israeli military has killed more than 850 Palestinians near GHF sites, according to United Nations figures.
"Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families," said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). "U.S.-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths."
HRW stressed that the U.S. is complicit in Israeli war crimes—including the killings of desperate Palestinians seeking humanitarian assistance—given its continued arming of Israel's military and its support for GHF, which Human Rights Watch noted is "run by two U.S. private subcontracted companies: Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions, in coordination with the Israeli military."
"On June 26, one month after SRS started distributing aid at the sites, the U.S. government announced it was allocating US$30 million to GHF," HRW observed. "The source of funding for GHF's first month of distributions remains unknown; in its letter to Human Rights Watch, counsel for GHF said it 'received $100 million from a government other than the United States or Israel,' without specifying the government."
"The Trump administration sent the allocation by circumventing congressional approvals," the group added. "The United States is complicit in Israeli violations of the laws of war in Gaza, given its provision of substantial military aid despite knowledge of the continuing grave violations."
As part of its report, HRW interviewed people who are or were on the ground in Gaza and directly witnessed the Israeli military's violence near aid sites.
"One Palestinian man told Human Rights Watch that he left his home at about 9 pm, trying to reach a site that was due to open at 9 am the next day," the group said. "On the way, he said, an Israeli tank opened fire on him and others as they were walking towards the site."
HRW also spoke to Anthony Bailey Aguilar, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who worked in Gaza as a security contractor for UG Solutions. Aguilar told the group that he witnessed on "numerous occasions" Israeli officers ordering soldiers to fire on unarmed Palestinians near food distribution sites.
Additionally, Aguilar and Palestinian eyewitnesses told HRW that they saw "armed guards within the GHF sites using live fire and other weapons against civilians during aid distributions."
"It is indefensible that, instead of using its significant leverage to press Israel to end its ongoing acts of genocide, the U.S. is backing and even funding a deadly mechanism that is resulting in Israeli forces killing starving Palestinian civilians as a method of crowd control," Wille said. "States should urgently act to stop the extermination of Palestinians."
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