"This case will expose the scheme that sought to criminalize the Palestine solidarity movement in the US." |
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A lawsuit filed by former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil wasn’t his first legal challenge stemming from his arrest last year for his Palestinian rights advocacy, but he emphasized that his decision to take members of the Trump administration and private pro-Israel organizations to court was “about far more than what was done to” him when he was detained for 104 days.
“This case will expose the scheme that sought to criminalize the Palestine solidarity movement in the US,” said Khalil in a statement. “It is about a coordinated, ongoing plot to punish, silence, and intimidate everyone who dares to dissent and speak out for Palestinian liberation. We will hold them accountable.”
Represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the law firm Beldock Levine & Hoffman, Khalil sued the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, Betar, Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, his predecessor Kristi Noem, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and John Armstrong, an official at the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs.
The lawsuit was filed under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was passed to stop efforts by vigilante groups like the KKK to coordinate with the government to strip individuals of their constitutional rights.
“Mahmoud is now using this statute to affirmatively challenge the illegal, anti-Palestinian, and anti-democratic public-private conspiracy to harass, intimidate, and punish Palestinians and their allies,” said CCR.
As the Trump administration continues its efforts to deport Khalil, the lawsuit traces the alleged public-private conspiracy against pro-Palestinian organizers to October 2023, when Miller “vowed to punish Palestinians and their supporters through arrest and deportation.”
A year later, the Heritage Foundation published Project Esther, which conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism, claimed all pro-Palestinian organizers were Hamas supporters, and pledged to execute a plan to deport foreign protesters “when a willing administration occupies the White House.”
The Heritage Foundation said a “public-private partnership” would be required to carry out Project Esther. The lawsuit alleges that Canary Mission, an anonymously run Israeli surveillance and doxing organization, and Betar, a self-described vigilante group with a history of surveilling and harassing supporters of Palestinian rights, provided that partnership.
“Between March and May 2025, Miller, Rubio, Noem, and Armstrong used ICE to arrest or to try to arrest at least nine students or scholars pre-selected by the private groups,” said CCR. “The federal defendants continue to seek Mr. Khalil’s deportation and pursue the conspiracy through sham, corrupted immigration proceedings under their control. Working together, the government and private co-conspirators sought to deny Palestinians and their supporters their constitutional rights: to equal protection, to freedom of speech and travel, to freedom from punitive detention, and, ultimately, to exist in this country.”
As The New York Times reported, former Heritage Foundation national security director Robert Greenway said two months after Khalil was arrested that it was “no coincidence that we called for a series of actions to take place privately and publicly, and they are now happening.”
CCR pointed to a “range of harms” Khalil has suffered as the result of being targeted by the Trump administration, starting when he was arrested in March 2025. During three months in detention, he was sent to Jena, Louisiana—nearly 1,300 miles away from his family and lawyers—and was forced to miss the birth of his first child. He also faces “an ongoing threat to his lawful immigration status in the United States,” with his attorneys preparing to appeal his deportation case to the US Supreme Court.
Baher Azmy, legal director for CCR, said that “the brazenness of this conspiratorial plan is matched only by the exquisitely detailed and shamelessly public record the conspirators produced of a collaborative plan to silence the growing student movement protesting US support for Israel’s genocidal campaign,” referring to the country’s assault on Gaza that began in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
“The conspirators acted through forms of state repression and arbitrary detention that numerous courts have found are blatantly unconstitutional,” said Azmy. “They targeted Mr. Khalil, smeared him, and subjected him to the torment of detention for nothing other than being Palestinian and supporting Palestinian rights in order to send a message of terror across the student movement for Palestine.”
“The KKK Act was designed to prevent conspiracies to stifle advocacy for political freedom,” he added, “and together we are demanding accountability for this outrageous injustice.”
"The scale of the outbreak is at least two to four times the number of cases that we have found," said WHO emergencies director Chikwe Ihekweazu. |
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The Ebola outbreak sweeping the Democratic Republic of Congo is the fastest-growing ever, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday, as a shortage of funding, strained health infrastructure, and a strike by frontline medical workers threaten efforts to contain the deadly virus.
“We’ve seen the fastest growth in a single month since the outbreak started, and of all the Ebola outbreaks that we have managed,” WHO Health Emergencies Program executive director Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu told reporters in Geneva. “Over the last few days, we’ve seen some of the highest numbers of new infections in a single day.”
“A few days ago, we saw over 80 cases confirmed in a single day,” he added.
Experts are particularly alarmed that the majority of new infections—roughly 80%—are coming from what the WHO called “unknown chains of transmission.”
“You have to imagine that this is a fire,” Ihekweazu said. “There’s something driving the fire in its heart, and it’s also expanding at the same time.”
The WHO said that 95% of all new Ebola cases are in Ituri province, where the outbreak started in May, but the virus is now spreading to two new provinces, Haut-Uele and Tshopo.
The Ebola virus causes widespread and often catastrophic damage to the body’s blood vessels, immune system, and organs and typically kills between 25% and 90% of infected people, depending upon the strain of the virus and quality of available medical care.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government figures show nearly 2,000 confirmed infections and more than 700 deaths, but WHO officials say the true scale could be two to four times higher because many infections and deaths are going undetected.
Wessam Mankoula, an epidemiologist with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Ethiopia, noted during a press briefing last week that 112 healthcare workers have been infected with Ebola in DRC, 32 of whom have died.
There have also been around 20 Ebola infections and at least two deaths during the current outbreak in neighboring Uganda.
“Perhaps the most alarming finding is that many newly reported cases are individuals who died in their communities, without ever reaching a health facility and receiving care,” Ihekweazu said.
There is some good news, with Ihekweazu noting that “treatment capacity now exceeds 700 beds and continues to increase each week; laboratory capacity has expanded dramatically... and contact follow-up rates are approaching 80%.”
However, frontline health workers at an Ebola treatment at Rwampara General Hospital in Ituri province have gone on strike over unpaid salaries and bonuses, poor working conditions, and shortages of protective equipment.
Congolese Health Minister Roger Kamba assured workers that the government has “the means to sort this out.”
Critics say US President Donald Trump’s ideologically driven decision to withdraw the US from the WHO, his administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and reduced funding for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global public health efforts have also adversely affected the response to the current Ebola epidemic, compared with 2014 and 2019 outbreaks.
The current Ebola outbreak comes in a region already ravaged by armed conflict, displacement, and other challenges. Health officials stress that getting a grip on the outbreak will require not only medical intervention but also rebuilding trust with communities rife with fear and misinformation, and ensuring health workers are paid and protected.
“This outbreak requires resources that match the scale of the challenges that we are facing,” Ihekweazu stressed Tuesday. “And this is not a burden DRC can be allowed to carry alone.”
"The high number of head injuries... suggests a pattern of force directed towards the head. Whether intentionally or recklessly, this violates virtually all use-of-force guidelines." |
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Federal, state, and local law enforcement agents’ brutal attacks on protesters across the US have caused blindings, traumatic brain injuries, permanent disabilities, and other maladies, according to a report released Monday by researchers at Physicians for Human Rights and the Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley.
In an examination of actions taken by authorities in response to demonstrations against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions over the span of a year, the report documents 412 instances of misuse of force against protesters, journalists, and bystanders.
Just over half of the misuses of force were directed at demonstrators, while 43% were directed at journalists, the report finds.
This misuse of force led to 203 documented injuries affecting 119 individuals, including 44 incidents of laceration, 19 traumatic brain injuries, 10 ocular injuries, seven permanent disabilities, and one instance each of amputation and hearing loss.
The report adds that the actual number of injuries inflicted upon anti-ICE demonstrators “is likely far greater” given researchers’ limitations in documenting “invisible injuries” such as chronic pain or hearing loss.
What is particularly troubling, the report emphasizes, is the number of injuries impacting people’s heads.
“The high number of head injuries (19 brain, 10 eye, 1 hearing loss) suggests a pattern of force directed towards the head,” the researchers write. “Whether intentionally or recklessly, this violates virtually all use-of-force guidelines and results in significant harm.”
The report documents 97 incidents of law enforcement officials shooting crowd control projectiles at people’s heads, making it the second-most frequent type of improper force used, following shots taken at close range.
Dr. Rohini Haar, the lead author of the report, said in an interview with The Guardian that she started tracking misuse of force in response to anti-ICE protests after a federal agent shot a pastor in the face at close range during a demonstration in Oakland last year.
“Those weapons can cause harm,” said Haar, who for years has been researching the health impacts of crowd control weapons. “It’s just when they’re used, how they’re used, and if they’re used.”
Tactics used by ICE and other law enforcement agencies have come back into focus over the last week after the fatal ICE shootings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine over the span of less than a week.
Salgado Araujo, 52, was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who had lived in the US for more than three decades and ran a small construction business. Sebastian Guerrero, 26, was a Colombian national who was authorized to work in the US and was shot and killed by ICE in front of his three-year-old daughter.
"The one thing I know is they don't want us coming together to stop this bullshit, and that is what we have to do." |
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Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson was among the Mainers and progressives nationwide placing blame on Republican Sen. Susan Collins after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement shot and killed a 26-year-old Colombian man in the small southern Maine city of Biddeford Monday morning.
“Enough is enough. Susan Collins voted to send $70 billion dollars to ICE with no reforms. I’d abolish it altogether,” Jackson said on social media Monday, sharing footage of the ICE Out rally in Biddeford after the fatal shooting of Joan Sebastian Guerrero.
A former candidate for governor and Maine state Senate president, Jackson is among several Democrats vying to replace primary winner Graham Platner on the November ballot and unseat Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee. Maine residents descended on her office in Biddeford after the shooting.
“Susan Collins must be held accountable for funding this terror,” Jackson reiterated Tuesday, sharing his remarks from Monday night’s rally in Portland, about 18 miles northeast of where Guerrero—who was authorized to work in the United States and had a Social Security number, according to locate advocates—was gunned down by ICE agents reportedly looking for another man.
“This has got to end, and we have to abolish ICE,” the Democratic candidate said. “And as sad as I am, I’m also very angry... I’m angry that Mr. Guerrero’s not coming home tonight. I’m angry that he has a wife and a kid that will never see him again.”
“I truly, truly believe in power of solidarity—and we have to stand together,” he continued. “It is tough. It’s hard, I know it. They want to make it hard. But the one thing I know is they don’t want us coming together to stop this bullshit, and that is what we have to do. We have to remain vigilant. We have to stand up. We have to push back. We have to protect each other so that no more of these things happen.”
“I don’t want to see this happen again, and the only way we can do that is by pushing back and making sure that we don’t have any more rallies like this, because it’s damn depressing, it’s damn heartbreaking, and it pisses me off to no end that we have to be in a world like this, but we can change it by standing together,” Jackson added, also urging donations to the Maine Solidarity Fund to help Guerrero’s family.
Collins on Monday called for “a full and impartial investigation” into Guerrero’s killing and shared that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told her that “the Boston office of the DHS inspector general has taken over the investigation of the Biddeford shooting in cooperation with the FBI.”
In addition to Jackson, various critics in Maine and across the country—including Nirav Shah and Jordan Wood, other Democrats running to replace Platner—have responded to the shooting by called out Collins for helping the GOP give ICE billions more in funding without reforms.
The fatal shooting has also spurred fresh calls from across the country to abolish ICE, which has injured and killed a growing number of US citizens and immigrants during President Donald Trump’s mass detention and deportation campaign.
New York City’s democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said late Monday: “This morning in Biddeford, Maine, a 26-year-old man said goodbye to his wife and daughter and left for work. Moments later he was dead, shot in the head by ICE agents, the second man ICE has killed in six days. ICE is killing our neighbors. ICE cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE.”
Guerrero’s killing came after ICE fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas last week. The 52-year-old was from Mexico. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday that her government is seeking criminal charges in his and other deaths.
When asked about the recent killings in Texas and Maine on Monday, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)—a progressive facing some pressure to run for the Senate or even president in future cycles—pointed to Republican funding for ICE.
While Mullin supposedly told Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) that Guerrero had “weaponized” a car he was driving—similar to DHS claims after previous shootings that were ultimately discredited by video footage—in this case, the department said on social media that “the vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”
Multiple critics read the DHS statement as “a murder confession.”
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) responded that “ICE murdered a 26-year-old in front of his wife and daughter. It’s just pure evil. This statement makes clear there was no threat whatsoever. Our taxpayer dollars are funding a fascist murder machine. Abolish ICE, and prosecute anyone who carried out, ordered, or enabled crimes.”
Collins announced Tuesday morning that “while the investigation of the Biddeford shooting is not yet complete, it raises sufficient critical questions that I spoke with DHS Secretary Mullin last night and urged him to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”
Amid reporting that the Trump administration has given that order to ICE, Shah quickly fired back: “Sen. Collins voted to fully fund ICE without any guardrails. A single late-night phone call isn’t going to cut it.”
"Simply throwing more money at an out-of-control military operation is not strategy," said Sen. Tammy Duckworth.Senate Democrats appeared set to block President Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s sprawling, $1.15 trillion annual military policy bill in a procedural vote scheduled for Tuesday after the White House formally notified lawmakers of an extension of its illegal Iran war. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she would oppose advancing the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) unless lawmakers agree to attach her amendment prohibiting any of the bill’s funds from going toward the war on Iran. Duckworth said in a statement that “simply throwing more money at an out-of-control military operation is not strategy. It’s a recipe for a forever war.” “The Senate cannot authorize $1.14 trillion in defense spending—the largest defense budget ever proposed in our nation’s history—for Donald Trump to continue his illegal and disastrous war that Americans do not want,” Duckworth added. “The stakes couldn’t be higher, and I cannot support a defense authorization bill that doesn’t include my amendment to end this illegal war.” The procedural vote on the NDAA is scheduled for 2:40 pm ET, and it needs 60 votes to advance—requiring the support of some Senate Democrats. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who spearheaded earlier efforts to halt Trump’s Iran war using the War Powers Act, told reporters on Monday that “it’ll probably be hard to get there this week,” referring to the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the NDAA. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who is seen as a critical swing vote, said Monday that she’s “undecided” on the legislation. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he would vote no, calling the NDAA “essentially an Iran war authorization bill.” “A totally unprecedented 50% increase in spending to fund the war without any meaningful restraints,” Murphy wrote on social media. Just Foreign Policy, an anti-war advocacy organization, said Monday that no senator who has supported legislative efforts to end the Iran war should back additional funding for the military as long as the illegal conflict continues. “The ceasefire has collapsed, US bombs are falling on Iran again, and oil prices are climbing... all after Americans were told this war was over,” the group wrote in a new petition urging lawmakers to “defend the Constitution, stop the Iran war, and vote NO on the NDAA.” “Congress has additional leverage to force compliance: the power of the purse,” the petition continued. “If members block the NDAA... and reject any Iran war supplemental—Trump cannot ignore them.” In addition to the $1.15 trillion NDAA, the Trump administration is pushing for at least $67 billion in supplemental Pentagon funding to “address urgent needs related to” the Iran war, which is now in its fourth month despite the president’s insistence in late March that it would be over “within two to three weeks.” Late last week, Trump formally notified Congress of new “strikes against targets within Iran,” insisting the attacks were “consistent with” the War Powers Act. Critics accused the president, who has never sought congressional authorization for the war, of cynically trying to restart the 1973 law’s 60-day clock after declaring the ceasefire with Iran “over.” The War Powers Act requires “automatic termination of the use of US forces engaged in hostilities 60 days after the president has reported (or was required to report) on the use of force.” “Any assertion by the Trump administration that he gets 60 more days to act without Congress has no foundation in law,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who on Monday unveiled a new war powers resolution aimed at ending the president’s assault on Iran. “By forcing a new vote to end this war, we make it clear that Congress insists on the removal of troops from the region barring an authorization of force accompanied by a truly viable strategy—both of which have been lacking,” Schiff added.
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