Within hours after the San Francisco Chronicle dropped a story Friday that accused Swalwell of sexually assaulting a former staffer, over a dozen Democrats had pulled their endorsements of the then-frontrunner for governor of California. CNN followed that evening with a story labeling the former staffer’s accusations as rape and revealing that three additional women were accusing Swalwell of sexual misconduct. He suspended his campaign for governor Sunday, and on Monday, he announced his resignation from Congress. He was out Tuesday at 2 p.m. ET.

The outcry made sense, in part, because of the severity of the allegations: The ex-staffer said Swalwell left her vaginally bruised and bleeding; another woman alleged Tuesday that he had drugged her in order to rape her. But the fact that Swalwell, who has denied the allegations, did not remain in Congress while under investigation suggests that American politicians are sensitive to concerns over sexual abuse and misconduct — particularly as the midterms approach against the backdrop of the Epstein files, and Democrats position themselves as defenders of victims as they head into November.

“It’s hypocrisy if they don’t” speak out, said Nina Smith, a Democratic communications strategist and former senior adviser to former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams. 

Smith said that the advocacy from Epstein’s survivors, as well as the people who’ve been speaking out online about Swalwell, helped force lawmakers to take a stand on this issue.

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“It has created this watershed moment on the Democrats’ part to address this issue quickly,” she told The Intercept. “Both parties are recognizing that accountability is something that is at the forefront of a lot of voters’ minds.”

In a February poll from Reuters/Ipsos, 69 percent of respondents said the statement that the Epstein files “show that powerful people in the U.S are rarely held accountable for their actions” represented their views “very well” or “extremely well.”

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., said that Democrats have to demonstrate “accountability” even when allegations come up against one of their own.

“Our job is to center the people who were harmed, to take allegations seriously, and to make sure there are real systems for justice,” Lee wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “The work and bravery of Epstein’s survivors helped further expose just how deeply these systems are failing us — all while protecting perpetrators with money, connections, or status. That legacy demands more from all of us right now.”

Still, it’s too soon for Democratic leadership “to be patting themselves on the back,” about Swalwell’s swift rebuke, said Michael Ceraso, a Democratic communications strategist who worked on Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. He pointed to the level of detail and corroboration in the stories that CNN and the SF Chronicle published, arguing the careful reporting “made it fail-safe for political leaders to do the right thing.” 

And that doesn’t excuse the people who had heard the rumors and continued to support Swalwell until the allegations were in a newspaper, Ceraso added. “I would call bullshit on people” within his proximity who are “claiming they didn’t know this,” he said.

There’s been heavy attention on Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., who was long known to be a close friend of Swalwell’s. Gallego claimed Tuesday that Swalwell had “lied to” him — but admitted to hearing that his close friend and colleague was “flirty.”

“I definitely look at the world a different way now,” Gallego told reporters. “I certainly am going to make sure that I’m going to take, you know, personal steps and office steps to make sure that we don’t even get close to a gray line.” 

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown also alluded to other members of Congress being aware of Swalwell’s actions. “I’m not surprised frankly, because there have been rumors after rumors after rumors, his colleague in Washington pretty much said that. That’s what Adam Schiff said, that’s what Nancy Pelosi said,” Brown told ABC 7. 

The Democrats, Lee added, cannot ask voters to trust them on this issue if they fail to hold their members accountable when they engage in abusive behaviors.

“Accountability has to mean something, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it is one of your own, and even when power is involved,” she wrote. “No one and no party should ask for the public’s trust if it is unwilling to hold itself to the same standard.”

The Intercept has not independently verified the allegations against Swalwell. In a statement posted Tuesday, Sara Azari, a criminal defense attorney representing Swalwell, wrote that the former congressman “categorically and unequivocally denies each and every allegation of sexual misconduct and assault that has been leveled against him,” calling the accusations “a ruthless and shameless attempt to smear Congressman Swalwell.”

The Intercept reached out to Swalwell’s communications staff for comment; a reporter for The Hill wrote Tuesday that the relevant staff members no longer work for him. Azari did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

Smith, who spoke out in 2018 about being sexually harassed and assaulted while working in the Maryland state legislature, said she believes that these abuses will continue to happen wherever disparities in power exist. But she was heartened to see how quickly Democrats called out Swalwell, which she said means that survivors have moved the needle on this issue.

“Survivors have been the most powerful piece of holding elected officials and officials accountable. … They are the ones who have continued to fight in a way that has made all of this possible,” said Smith. “Ten years ago, we really just talked about this behind closed doors.”

The post Swift Swalwell Fallout Suggests the Democrats Have Finally Learned From Epstein appeared first on The Intercept.

In a letter shared exclusively with The Intercept, Safora Yousufzai calls on President Donald Trump to release her son, 60-year-old Mohammad Rahim, citing his poor health and “advanced age” and arguing that “his prolonged detention has significantly affected both his physical and psychological well-being.”

Yousufzai points out that Afghanistan’s government released 64-year-old linguistics researcher Dennis Walter Coyle last month, after he spent over a year in captivity. His family had urged the Taliban to “look upon him with leniency” in a letter, which Afghanistan’s foreign ministry cited in their announcement of his release.

The Trump administration claimed credit for negotiating Coyle’s return — and proclaimed its commitment to “ending unjust detentions overseas.”

Now, Yousufzai is hoping to hold the administration to that promise.

“In light of recent humanitarian actions undertaken in comparable circumstances — such as the release and repatriation of detainee Dennis Coyle to his family, I respectfully express my hope that similar consideration may be extended in my son’s case,” wrote Yousufzai. “Such actions reflect not only legal discretion but also a broader commitment to human dignity and humanitarian values.” 

U.S. forces detained Rahim in Pakistan in 2007 and transferred him to the notorious military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 2008. The U.S. government accused the Afghan national of being an interpreter and courier for Osama Bin Laden in Al Qaeda, but he was never charged or tried for any crimes.

The Biden administration reportedly offered to release Rahim in exchange for a prisoner swap including Mahmood Habibi, a U.S. citizen who was reportedly arrested in Afghanistan in 2022, after the U.S. killed Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. That deal never went through, and the Taliban has reportedly continued to request Rahim’s release. The Taliban publicly denies holding Habibi, who is still in custody, saying that they are unaware of his whereabouts. 

The White House and State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

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The CIA tortured Rahim while he was in its custody, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s use of torture. Rahim was subjected to “extensive use of the CIA’s enhanced-interrogation techniques,” the 2014 Senate report reads. According to their records, he was subjected to facial slaps, diet manipulation, and eight sleep deprivation sessions. During one of the sessions, he was kept awake for six straight days. Not sleeping for even three days can have lasting and profound negative impacts on cognitive health.

While he was being intentionally deprived of sleep, he was “usually shackled in a standing position, wearing a diaper and a pair of shorts,” the report adds. While in custody in 2007, he was provided a diet that “was almost entirely limited to water and liquid Ensure meals.” 

Administration officials have not spoken publicly about whether they would consider releasing Rahim. However, according to the New York Times, a senior U.S. official said that Rahim would not be a part of future deals with the Taliban. 

“At a minimum,” his mother wrote to Trump, “universally recognized human rights principles and norms call for a careful reassessment of his situation, with due consideration given to his age, health, and length of detention.” 

In her letter, Yousufzai also pleaded with the Trump administration to think of Rahim’s daughter, who she said has “been deprived for years of the care, affection, and guidance of her father.” 

Yousufzai, who is elderly herself, wrote that she hopes the Trump administration will allow her to see her son at least one last time before her death.

“As I approach the later stages of my life, the opportunity to see my son again remains my most earnest and final hope,” she wrote. “I respectfully urge your administration to take a thoughtful and humane step toward resolving his case, consistent with the values of justice, mercy, and respect for human dignity.” 

The post Mother of the Last Afghan in Guantánamo Bay Begs Trump to Free Her Son appeared first on The Intercept.

In Denver, Sunrise is endorsing Melat Kiros, an anti-war candidate and attorney who was fired for refusing to take down her post on the genocide in Palestine, the group shared exclusively with The Intercept. Kiros is challenging longtime Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. 

“Voters today, they want to see their candidates and their representatives refusing AIPAC money and refusing [military industrial complex] influence,” said Kiros. “They’re seeing how much it has dragged us into these endless wars, and how much it is dragging our taxpayer dollars into funding this violence as well.”

Kiros is among a growing list of insurgent candidates — including William Lawrence in Michigan and Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, also both Sunrise-endorsed — who are taking Democrats to task on their complicity in the endless wars in the Middle East.

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Sunrise’s endorsement is part of a broader strategy shift in which the activist group, founded in 2017 to fight climate change in particular, pivots to fighting authoritarianism more broadly. 

“There’s just no winning on climate unless we address how absolutely broken our political system is,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement. Focusing on corporate PAC money and the wars it fuels abroad is an essential part of the organization’s broader mission, she added. “The path towards winning climate legislation lies towards having a functional democracy, and that includes having a democracy that doesn’t prioritize endless wars abroad over the very real constraints of people right here.”

Shiney-Ajay said Sunrise Movement organizers are “really excited” about Kiros, 28, because of her moral clarity. “She is really clear about standing up for working people,” she said. “And she’s very clear about not taking corporate PAC money.”

Historically, foreign policy issues have not been top of mind for Democratic primary voters, said Don Haider-Markel, a political science professor at the University of Kansas. But as the Trump administration wages its unpopular war on Iran, he said, “candidates that are able to mesh together affordability and war, and opposition to support for Israel, I think, are gonna be the ones that might be able to break through.”

This argument requires nuance, as most Democrats — at least publicly — oppose the Trump administration’s war with Iran, often citing affordability as a concern. 

“This war is costing at least $1 billion every day,” said DeGette, Kiros’ opponent, in a public statement about her support for a War Powers resolution to block the administration’s violence. “That is billions of dollars that could go towards affordable health care and housing. I refuse to support this war.”

DeGette’s statement “rings hollow,” Kiros told The Intercept. “Democrats like DeGette had the opportunity to cut the military budget by 10 percent for that very reason — especially during Covid, when we needed that money for health care — and still voted no,” she said. 

Kiros blames the “military–industrial complex” and actors like AIPAC for pushing lawmakers to support defense contractor spending and wars that line their pockets.

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“There are corporations that are actively profiting from the war,” she said. “And I think it also has to do with the impact and the influence that we have seen from AIPAC and from Israel.” 

Kiros has criticized DeGette for receiving over $5 million from corporate PACs. The incumbent’s top contributor is the law and lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which is founded and chaired by former AIPAC vice president and board member Norman Brownstein, according to OpenSecrets. “At the end of the day, the people who get you into office are the ones you are going to be accountable to,” said Kiros. 

Nicole Shea Niebler, a Sunrise Movement organizer in Denver, recently confronted DeGette at a meet and greet for declining to support Block The Bombs, a bill that would limit offensive weapons transfers to Israel. Niebler said voters are right to be worried about candidates who take money from the groups pushing for war with Iran. 

“If you’re not willing to say no, what else are you willing to do that is not in the interest of your constituents?” she said.

Niebler sees her organization’s broader shift toward supporting anti-war candidates like Kiros as a moment of “clarity” for the organization, calling the U.S. military “the true number one danger to our environment.”

Sunrise is hoping to reverse its luck in recent races, where two of prominent endorsed anti-war candidates, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam in North Carolina and activist Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois lost their primaries.

Allam, in particular, centered anti-Iran war messaging in her advertisements. “I will never take a dime from defense contractors or the pro-Israel lobby,” Allam said in an ad days ahead of the election earlier this month. “I have opposed these forever wars my entire career.”

Abughazaleh and Allam both lost by relatively narrow margins, which Shiney-Ajay said she doesn’t see as a broader defeat for their cause. 

“We’re up against a really steep battle and … millions and millions of dollars being poured in, and that is causing us to lose several races,” she said. “I do think there’s something happening where the narrative is that AIPAC money is poisonous, that corporate PAC money is poisonous, and that wasn’t true a few years ago.”

It’s challenging to parse out how successful the anti-war messaging was, because there were so many other factors in the races, Haider-Markel noted. “These challenger candidates also tend to be significantly younger and significantly more liberal than the incumbents they’re challenging. So all of those wrapped together,” he said. “It’s hard to distinguish which one actually played a role in some of these early defeats.”

In Denver, Kiros said she sees the anti-war and anti-military–industrial complex movement as a perpetual battle, one that will be fought in this election and others to come.

“The anti-war movement is one that has had to have this fight cyclically,” she said. “And so for me, it’s about understanding the military–industrial complex … and how we have allowed the military–industrial complex to influence our foreign policy, and to not just wait until it’s convenient, and it’s popular among the American people to be anti-war as it is right now.”

The post Sunrise Movement Pushes Anti-War Candidates, Endorsing Melat Kiros in Denver appeared first on The Intercept.

Few appeared more eager than Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a moderate congressman and former presidential candidate with a reputation for bucking party leadership. 

“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone,” Moulton lamented to the paper. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” 

That was over a year ago. Now, Moulton is running to unseat one of the most progressive members of the Senate, in the bluest state in the country, on a platform of generational change. And the anti-trans comments he’d hoped would establish him as a thought leader could help tank his campaign. 

Polls consistently show Moulton trailing his opponent, incumbent Sen. Ed Markey, particularly among younger voters. Despite making a case for a new generation in office, Moulton has a 3 percent favorability rating among likely voters ages 18 to 34, compared to Markey’s 67 percent, according to a February 24 poll from the University of New Hampshire. Only 2 percent of likely Massachusetts primary voters under 34 said they would vote for Moulton if the race were held that day, while 53 percent said they would support Markey.

Though it’s still early — most Massachusetts voters won’t cast their ballots until September 1 — the state of the race suggests that Moulton, while attempting to style himself as the vanguard of a brash new Democratic party, picked up some serious political baggage.

Tatishe M. Nteta, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said Moulton was far from alone in his post-mortem for Kamala Harris. “The problem is, those comments now have defined [Moulton], not just as a national figure who bucked Democratic viewpoints, but now within the state,” he said. “In order for him to win, he’s going to either have to walk it back or justify it.” 

There were warning signs at the time. Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey said the Salem congressman was “playing politics with people,” but Moulton refused to apologize. He argued that the backlash only reinforced his point and accused Democrats of forcing people to “change our values” to meet “the demands of one very small minority group,” by doing things like making them “put pronouns in their email signatures.”

“We were extremely offended by the comments that Seth Moulton made,” David Seaton, a college student at Tufts University and vice president of political affairs for the College Democrats of America, told The Intercept. “While Seth Moulton is running on a platform of generational change, his ideas are from the last generation, and his values are certainly from generations past.”

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Moulton is now stuck in a political quagmire trapping other Democratic pundits and politicians, some with presidential designs, who tripped over themselves to blame Harris’s loss on the party becoming too woke and out of touch. But now, as voters seem more concerned with rising costs, mounting war, and waning access to health care than pronoun usage, those comments seem less like a prediction and more like a political liability. 

“When you look at how much the world has changed since that moment,” said Josie Caballero, director of voting at Advocates for Trans Equality, “it just seems very out of touch with where we are now.”

It might seem obvious that transgender rights aren’t the losing issue that Moulton predicted in deep-blue Massachusetts, where in 2018 residents overwhelmingly voted to keep statewide protections for trans people in place. But Caballero pointed to elections that suggested similar trends in red and purple states like Maine, Texas, and Virginia, where Republican Winsome Earle-Sears’s campaign and affiliated PACs spent millions on anti-transgender attack advertisements targeting her Democratic opponent, now-Gov. Abigail Spanberger. 

The former Virginia congresswoman did not capitulate on her positions regarding trans rights and not only trounced Earle-Sears on Election Day, but a poll of likely voters found they trusted her on “transgender policy” by a margin of 13 points.

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In New York City, Zohran Mamdani won his mayoral election after running an advertisement celebrating trans history and pledging his support to the community, along with a detailed policy agenda. 

Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the Transgender Law Center, said that voters this cycle are looking for candidates who can speak to universal issues like health care and affordability, instead of scapegoating vulnerable groups.

“I think we are living in a time where people are asking for an intersectional approach, where all bodily autonomy is respected, where people’s concerns are heard,” he said.

In Texas, Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico has pivoted toward economic populism when addressing anti-trans attacks. 

“The only minority destroying this country is the billionaires,” Talarico said on TV news, criticizing the media’s fixation on trans athletes. “Trans people are 1 percent of the population. We are focused on the wrong 1 percent.”

Graham Platner, who is running in a competitive primary for the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has similarly addressed the issue of transgender rights.

“An out-of-state billionaire is funding an anti-trans ballot question in Maine — so that we’ll spend our time fighting about trans people instead of raising his taxes,” said Platner in an interview with Slate. 

Still, Chestnut said that while Platner and Talarico’s stances offer a necessary “starting point” for Democrats, they’ll also have to address the topic directly and advocate and explain their beliefs.

“We’re also in a moment where not saying anything proved to also be a losing strategy. Our opposition in the presidential election, on every corner, was blaming transgender people,” he said. “The Democrats’ response was, let’s not say anything and hope it’s just a non-issue. And the reality of it is, it’s an issue.”

In Massachusetts, Moulton’s tone has shifted from his more reactionary rhetoric in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 election, said Caballero.

“We went through the whole gay rights movement. We went through the whole civil rights movement. We never had to say, you know, ‘Seth Moulton: Straight’ or ‘Seth Moulton: White,’” he told WGBH at the time. “And all of a sudden, we have to change all our values to meet the needs or demands of one very small minority group.” 

Now, Moulton appears to be walking a tighter line without apologizing or qualifying his comments. He has shied away from making additional comments about trans athletes or pronouns in recent interviews and has instead focused on emphasizing his voting record.

“Congressman Moulton is acutely aware of the trauma the transgender community is facing,” wrote a spokesperson for Moulton in a statement to The Intercept, echoing other recent interviews. “He is a career-long ally with a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign for his voting record, and is a member of the Equality Caucus.”

The spokesperson added that Moulton still believes that “Democrats must engage in difficult conversations” in order to keep the transgender community safe.

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The tide has not completely turned. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the current unofficial front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has continued to fan the flames of hysteria over the participation of trans athletes in sports — despite the fact that there were fewer than 10 trans athletes out of some 510,000 in the entire NCAA as of 2024. 

“We just couldn’t figure out how to make this fair,” he told Katie Couric this month, referring to trans girls’ participation in track competitions. 

Rather than assuaging people with questions about transgender issues, these comments from Democrats help Republicans to make trans rights a “wedge issue,” said Chestnut.

Despite his controversies, an Emerson poll in February found that Newsom had a slight lead with likely Democratic voters if the presidential primary were held that day — though there are still more than two years and one midterms cycle to go before voters pick their next president.

For his part, Moulton has denied changing his opinion on transgender rights or his rhetoric. “His position has never changed, and his record reflects this,” wrote a spokesperson for Moulton, emphasizing his support for the Transgender Bill of Rights in 2023, ahead of the 2024 election. He co-sponsored the bill again in 2026.   

But Bailey Kelly, a student at Tufts University and secretary of the College Democrats of Massachusetts, said they view Moulton as a fair weather friend on the issue. 

“We see through that flip-flopping,” said Kelly, who co-runs the College Democrats of Massachusetts’ digital operations in support of Markey, after the senator won their endorsement. “And it’s insulting that he thinks we don’t see it.” 

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Authenticity is key for younger voters, said Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run for Something. “People are allowed to grow and change,” said Litman, “but it has to come from a place of truth by the candidate, or they’re not gonna be able to compellingly sell it. And I think that is the challenge for [Moulton].”

In January, both College Democrats of America and College Democrats of Massachusetts announced they were endorsing Markey after he won their internal vote in a landslide. Seaton said Moulton’s comments were “of the utmost importance” in the group’s decision not to support him. 

Redemption for candidates like Moulton is possible, Chestnut said. “There is nothing more powerful than some humility, and saying ‘you know what, I was wrong.’”

But to date, Moulton has not apologized for his comments, although he has stated that he “may not have used exactly the right words,” in an interview with CNN.

“Clarification is one thing, but walking back is another. And he has not done either up until this point, and Markey is going to seize on this,” said Nteta, the political science professor. “If Moulton is going to win, he is going to have to assuage the concerns of people in the state about how he is going to govern when he gets to the Senate.” 

The post Seth Moulton Saw Trans Rights as a Political Liability. It Could Doom His Senate Campaign. appeared first on The Intercept.

The race had come down to just over 1,000 votes and 1 percentage point as of Thursday morning, with Allam nearly catching up to Foushee in the eleventh hour. After initially saying she would request a recount, Allam conceded to Foushee on Wednesday night, writing on social media that the AI lobby had “bought” the race. Pro-AI groups spent roughly $1.3 million backing Foushee, who is now heavily favored to win the November general election in North Carolina’s Democrat-dominated 4th Congressional District.

In a statement sent to The Intercept, Allam urged her own progressive supporters to hold the incumbent’s feet to the fire. 

“It should not take being challenged in a primary to take bold stances that voters overwhelmingly support,” said Allam, “but I am proud that our movement pushed our incumbent to better reflect our deeply held values and convictions. It’s up to us as an entire district to demand that our Representative deliver on her promises.”

In a victory statement released Wednesday night, Foushee vowed to fight for a slew of marquee progressive causes. She pledged to fight to “stop Trump’s attacks on our democracy, regulate AI, overturn Citizens United, establish a Green New Deal, ensure Medicare for All, pass legislation to block arms sales to Israel, and lower the cost of groceries, housing, and education.”

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Commentators on social media directed frustration over Allam’s loss at key progressive figures Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, both of whom declined to endorse the challenger over the incumbent. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee David Hogg endorsed Allam, as did notable progressive organizations like Justice Democrats, and it’s unclear if input from the New York politicians would have made the difference in the North Carolina race. But with such a tight margin, some argued more forceful rallying from progressive surrogates could have helped Allam. 

As the race drew to a close, technology and foreign policy dominated the North Carolina primary. Allam repeatedly criticized Foushee as too cozy with corporate and pro-Israel interests, forcing the incumbent to play defense. These divisions intensified after the United States and Israel attacked Iran over the weekend.

Allam released a political advertisement on Monday criticizing her opponent for benefiting from millions in spending from AI-connected super PACs with ties to the United States and Israel’s attacks on Iran. Jobs and Democracy PAC — a super PAC supported by Anthropic, whose AI model Claude was reportedly deployed in the Trump administration’s strike on Iran — spent over $1.3 million in support of Foushee in the North Carolina primary. 

“As election day approaches, you will see nearly $2 million of ads for my opponent, funded by AI-backed super PACs,” Allam said in the ad, “the same AI corporation who powered Trump’s attacks on Iran, while my opponent takes donations from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics.”

But the harsh words weren’t enough to oust Foushee, who also beat Allam by a far larger margin in a 2022 race after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent almost $2.5 million in her favor. While the congresswoman said that she would not accept money from AIPAC this cycle, signaling the megadonors’ unpopularity with Democratic voters, Allam and her supporters continued to hammer home that Foushee was the pick of the pro-Israel foreign policy establishment. 

American Priorities, the anti-AIPAC super PAC looking to counter pro-Israel spending in elections, sunk nearly $1 million into supporting Allam, hoping to use her win as an early example of Democratic primary voters shifting allegiances away from supporting Israel. The PAC, which has endorsed several other progressive challengers, including Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, will get another chance to test its theory in the upcoming months with primary candidates in Tennessee, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.

Allam further connected Foushee and her AI lobby backers to the war in Iran during an interview with former CNN host Don Lemon on Monday. “What I’m seeing is the same thing that my constituents and folks all across the country are seeing, is that they don’t want their taxpayer dollars being used for another endless war,” said Allam. “And unfortunately, this is what the corporate war machines have been lobbying for and spending millions of dollars in elections and millions of dollars lobbying legislators for this outcome.” 

Foushee pushed back against Allam’s characterization of her as a warmonger in the pocket of the AI industry, arguing that she would vote to rein in the administration and regulate the technology. 

“I respect our primary system, but I am grateful that my constituents have rejected the baseless attacks from out-of-state groups that my family and I have had to endure,” Foushee wrote Wednesday.

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The focus on AI also manifested in more concrete issues at home. The district is the potential site of several new data centers, including one proposed center in the town of Apex in Wake County, despite objections from local residents. A poll from Justice Democrats, the national progressive group that backed Allam, found that 63 percent of district residents believed data centers “hurt their community by raising utility costs and harming the environment.”

Chatham County residents in the 4th District recently rejected a proposal to build a data center in their community, voting for a one-year moratorium on any data centers being built in their community. The district also contains the cities of Durham and Chapel Hill, known as relatively progressive areas defined largely by the presence of major universities.

The county commissioner surged ahead in in-person votes in Wake County, the proposed location of another controversial artificial intelligence data center. But Foushee far outperformed Allam in early votes and mail-in ballots — and ultimately the gap was too far to bridge.

Allam has been critical of developing new data centers. The Durham county commissioner signed onto a pledge led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for a nationwide moratorium on the construction of new data centers. Conversely, Foushee serves as co-chair of Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy, which has been widely criticized for its industry ties. 

The post Nida Allam Concedes to Valerie Foushee With Razor-Thin Loss for Progressives in Key Midterm Primary appeared first on The Intercept.

The state’s proposed “trigger laws,” which will be heard in committee on Wednesday, are direct challenges to Plyler v. Doe, a narrowly decided 1982 Supreme Court case that enshrined the right to a free K–12 public education regardless of immigration status. The parallel bills would also likely violate federal statutes that codify the same right. 

The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, has officially called on other states to pass similar laws challenging Plyler, situating Tennessee’s push as among the first in a broader national effort to overturn the decision.

“Illegal aliens should not be eligible for federal, state, or local government benefits, including through their children,” wrote Lora Ries, the director of Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center, in a February 17 post, “because the receipt of such benefits facilitates longer unlawful residence in the United States and takes resources from American citizens and lawful immigrants.”

So far, six states — Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Indiana, New Jersey, and Tennessee — have introduced bills that would violate Plyler. If passed, their implementation could force a challenge at the Supreme Court.

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Educators and immigration advocates told The Intercept that if Tennessee and other states were to get Plyler overturned and enact legislation to track and potentially expel undocumented children from public school, it would “end public education as we know it.” 

“This feels like a credible threat,” said Cassandra Zimmer-Wong, an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center. “The ramifications of this are huge … denying children carte-blanche education would create an uneducated, potentially illiterate underclass of children and then adults in this country.”

Last year, the Tennessee state legislature introduced a bill, H.B. 793, that would allow schools to refuse to enroll students who cannot prove “lawful presence” in the United States or charge them tuition, but it was tabled due to concerns about potential federal funding losses because the law violated federal statutes. The bill would also require schools to report the number of students who enroll without a birth certificate. The Tennessee Senate version would allow schools to choose to deny enrollment to undocumented students only if they are unable to pay. 

Now, the bill is back — and scheduled for a state House Finance, Ways, and Means Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. A companion bill, which would require schools and other entities that receive state funding, like hospitals, to report to the government on recipients’ immigration status, moved out of committee last week. The second bill is also scheduled to be heard by the House State & Local Government Committee on Wednesday. It can only be enacted if H.B. 793 passes and Plyler is overturned.

Sam Singer, a high school teacher who teaches English language learners in Tennessee, said she’s had “numerous students” who’ve heard of the bills ask if they’re still allowed to go to school. 

“They’re questions that no child should ever have to ask, much less come to school and wonder about,” said Singer. “The expectation should be, of course, you’re supposed to be here, you’re a kid. This is where you belong.” 

School should be a “safe space” for children, said Singer, “where you can trust that teachers are here to help you become your best self as you grow into the young adult you want to be.” Instead, the bills would effectively turn school administrators and teachers into immigration agents.

Across the state border in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said that he would seek to overturn Plyler for years. U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican Texas congressman now running for attorney general, has called for the 1982 ruling to be overturned as well. 

“For illegal alien children, the Supreme Court said we have to fund education for them. The fact of the matter is that it is a massive tax burden on the people of Texas,” Roy said in an interview last week. “I don’t believe that the Constitution requires that the state of Texas should fund it, and we should make a new precedent by taking it to court.”

The Texas state legislature previously introduced two bills challenging Plyler. The first bill would allow public schools to charge undocumented children to attend, and the latter bill would require proof of citizenship to enroll in public school. Both of those bills have stalled, but Krystal Gómez, managing attorney for the Texas Immigration Law Council, said she expects more challenges to Plyler in the next legislative session.

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“It used to be that we had a federal government in the Department of Education that didn’t seem interested in it, and was able to sort of put this to kibosh and have like a backstop to states that got a little out of hand in trying to create these chilling effects or overturn Plyler outright,” said Gomez. “We don’t have that now. So it’s sort of the wild, wild West, and whatever sad, terrible thing that a state can dream up, they can probably get away with.”

The Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment. 

In Texas, immigrant student attendance has already declined dramatically since the start of Trump’s immigration enforcement ramp-up. The Houston school district lost nearly 4,000 immigrant students this year, a decline of roughly 22 percent of the school district’s immigrant population. It’s unclear how many of those students left the United States willingly, or were deported, and how many children still living in Houston are simply too afraid to return to classrooms.

The stress of constant raids weighs on many of the immigrant children still attending school, said Klara Aizupitis, 34, a high school English teacher in Terlingua, Texas. 

“You’re living under the constant threat of either being picked up and deported or your parents or your siblings being picked up and deported,” said Aizupitis. “That stress is going to have an impact on, certainly, academic performance, but also your ability to manage your emotions in everyday life.”

Further eroding protections for immigrant students would devastate the border community where Aizupitis teaches. “We do really have a shared culture, on both sides of the [Rio Grande] river,” she said.

The district’s funding is based on average daily attendance, so losing undocumented students would “threaten the existence of our school district,” said Aizupitis. “Moreover, it would threaten the existence of our entire community.” 

An estimate from FWD, a criminal justice and immigration policy organization, found that undocumented students would lose a collective $1 trillion — or 600,000 individually — in lifetime income if they were denied access to public education.

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Heritage frequently suggests that undocumented students represent a substantial burden on taxpayers, arguing in a statement to The Intercept that “unaccompanied alien children sent to states cost them hundreds of millions of dollars for one year of public education.” But according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented people in the U.S. pay nearly $97 billion in federal, state, and local taxes annually. Tax contributions from undocumented people far outweigh the financial burden of K–12 education for undocumented children. 

The Heritage Foundation’s argument, said Zimmer-Wong, “does not hold up to any kind of basic scrutiny.” 

The FWD report found that educating undocumented students provides $633 billion more money in state and local income tax contributions than the cost of their education. The report also found that, if Plyler were overturned, the U.S. workforce would decrease by 450,000 workers in critical jobs that require at least a high school or college education.

None of that accounts for the expense of implementing a widespread immigration surveillance system in schools. “It would be extremely costly,” said Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Votes.

Schools would have to acquire “new software, new computers, new administrative processes and staff” to track and determine the immigration status of the tens of thousands of children within any given school district, not just students who are undocumented, she said. 

“The Heritage Foundation reports notes the burden placed on schools, [from undocumented children],” said Ignacia Rodriguez Kmec, policy council at the National Immigration Law Center, “yet their solution is for school personnel to become essentially DHS and TSA agents, verifying, reviewing documents, and recording immigration status.” 

The Heritage Foundation pushed back on criticism of its plan, telling The Intercept that undocumented children would still have the option to receive an education — if they paid tuition, self-deported, or left the state. 

“These are the consequences for the decision the parent or student made to break our law. American taxpayers should not have to pay for law breaking. Nor can American taxpayers afford it,” Ries wrote in a statement to The Intercept.

Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which originally litigated Plyler, said that he doesn’t believe the Supreme Court will allow these bills to be implemented. Because the bills would violate federal statutes, they would run up against the supremacy clause of the Constitution, Saenz pointed out. 

However, if the courts were to look favorably on a challenge to Plyler and its corresponding federal statutes, Saenz said, the consequences would be devastating. 

“It would have the impact of ending public education as we know it, because when a certain cohort of kids is allowed to be out of school, what happens next is that their siblings and friends don’t go to school,” Saenz said, “and rapidly, no one goes to school.” 

The post Tennessee Wants to Let Schools Ban Immigrant Kids, Threatening to “End Public Education as We Know It”  appeared first on The Intercept.

Amandla Thomas-Johnson had attended a protest targeting companies that supplied weapons to Israel at a Cornell University job fair in 2024 for all of five minutes, but the action got him banned from campus. When President Donald Trump assumed office and issued a series of executive orders targeting students who protested in support of Palestinians, Thomas-Johnson and his friend Momodou Taal went into hiding.

Google informed Thomas-Johnson via a brief email in April that it had already shared his metadata with the Department of Homeland Security, as The Intercept previously reported. But the full extent of the information the agency sought — including usernames, addresses, itemized list of services, including any IP masking services, telephone or instrument numbers, subscriber numbers or identities, and credit card and bank account numbers — was not previously known.

“I’d already seen the subpoena request that Google and Meta had sent to Momodou [Taal], and I knew that he had gotten in touch with a lawyer and the lawyer successfully challenged that,” Thomas-Johnson said. “I was quite surprised to see that I didn’t have that opportunity.”

The subpoena provides no justification for why ICE is asking for this information, except that it’s required “in connection with an investigation or inquiry relating to the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.” In the subpoena, ICE requests that Google not “disclose the existence of this summons for indefinite period of time.”

Thomas-Johnson, who is British, believes that ICE requested that information to track and eventually detain him — but he had already fled to Geneva, Switzerland, and is now in Dakar, Senegal. 

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing Thomas-Johnson, and the ACLU of Northern California sent a letter to Google, Amazon, Apple, Discord, Meta, Microsoft, and Reddit last week calling on tech companies to resist similar subpoenas in the future from DHS without court intervention. The letter asks the companies to provide users with as much notice as possible before complying with a subpoena to give them the opportunity to fight it, and to resist gag orders that would prevent the tech companies from informing targets that a subpoena was issued.

“Your promises to protect the privacy of users are being tested right now. As part of the federal government’s unprecedented campaign to target critics of its conduct and policies, agencies like DHS have repeatedly demanded access to the identities and information of people on your services,” the letter reads. “Based on our own contact with targeted users, we are deeply concerned your companies are failing to challenge unlawful surveillance and defend user privacy and speech.”

In addition to Thomas-Johnson’s case, the letter refers to other instances in which technology companies provided user data to DHS, including a subpoena sent to Meta to “unmask” the identities of users who documented immigration raids in California. Unlike Thomas-Johnson, users in that case were given the chance to fight the subpoena because they were made aware of it before Meta complied.

“Google has already fulfilled this subpoena,” an attorney for Google told Thomas-Johnson’s lawyer, as The Intercept previously reported. “Production consisted of basic subscriber information.”

The ICE subpoena requested the detailed information linked to Thomas-Johnson’s Gmail account. Thomas-Johnson confirmed to The Intercept that he had attached his bank and credit card numbers to his account to buy apps.

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

Lindsay Nash, a professor at Cardozo Law and a former staff attorney with ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said that by not giving prior notice, Google deprived Thomas-Johnson of his ability to protect his information.

“The problem is that it doesn’t allow the person whose personal information is on the line and whose privacy may be being invaded to raise challenges to the disclosure of that potentially private information,” Nash said. “And I think that’s important to protect rights that they may have to their own information.”

Tech companies’ data sharing practices are primarily governed by two federal laws, the Stored Communications Act, which protects the privacy of digital communications, including emails, and Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive trade practices.

“Under both federal law and the law of every state, you cannot deceive consumers,” said Neil Richards, a law professor at Washington University St. Louis who specializes in privacy, the internet, and civil liberties. “And if you make a material misrepresentation about your data practices, that’s a deceptive trade practice.”

Whether or not corporations are clear enough with consumers about how they collect and share their data has been litigated for decades, Richards said, referencing the infamous Cambridge Analytica lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that the company misled Facebook users about data collection and sharing.

Google’s public privacy policy acknowledges that it will share personal information in response to an “enforceable governmental request,” adding that its legal team will “frequently push back when a request appears to be overly broad or doesn’t follow the correct process.”

According to Google, the company overwhelmingly complied with the millions of requests made by the government for user information over the last decade. Its data also shows that those requests have spiked over the last five years. It’s unclear how many of those users were given notice of those requests ahead of time or after.

Richards said that cases like these emphasize the need for legal reforms around data privacy and urged Congress to amend the Stored Communications Act to require a higher standard before the government can access our digital data. He also said the federal government needs to regulate Big Tech and place “substantive restrictions on their ability to share information with the government.”

It’s hard to know exactly how tech companies are handling our personal data in relation to the government, but there seems to have been a shift in optics, Richards said. “What we have seen in the 12 months since the leaders of Big Tech were there on the podium at the inauguration,” Richards said, “is much more friendliness of Big Tech towards the government and towards state power.”

From Dakar, Thomas-Johnson said that understanding the extent of the subpoena was terrifying but had not changed his commitment to his work.

“As a journalist, what’s weird is that you’re so used to seeing things from the outside,” said Thomas-Johnson, whose work has appeared in outlets including Al Jazeera and The Guardian. “We need to think very hard about what resistance looks like under these conditions… where government and Big Tech know so much about us, can track us, can imprison, can destroy us in a variety of ways.”

Update: February 10, 5:54 p.m. ET

This story has been updated to reflect that Thomas-Johnson’s legal team still does not know the full extent of the information that Google provided to ICE, but that Thomas-Johnson said his bank and credit card numbers were attached to his account.

The post Google Fulfilled ICE Subpoena Demanding Student Journalist’s Bank and Credit Card Numbers appeared first on The Intercept.

According to a congressional source who provided The Intercept with the communications on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, the immigration enforcement agency had not been responsive to questions from House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over DHS about Pretti’s shooting. The agency is legally required to send an “in-custody” death notification to several committees and members from the victim’s home state within 72 hours. The agency eventually sent the report, which  The Intercept is publishing, on Tuesday after the deadline. 

But first, it sent a self-Q&A, which can be read in full below. In it, the agency repeatedly declines to answer its own questions. 

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One question drafted by CBP asks whether agents were wearing body cameras, to which the agency responds that “CBP defers to the investigating agencies.” In another question, the agency asks itself if the immigrant being targeted had “a final order of removal.” CBP responds that it has to defer to “DHS and investigating agencies for further detail of the operation.” 

The agency also asks itself what training Border Patrol agents receive on de-escalation and use of force and offers a vague answer to its own question. “Authorized Officers/Agents shall employ de-escalation tactics and techniques, when safe and feasible, that do not compromise law enforcement priorities,” CBP responds.

The full questionnaire:

• Are/were witnesses being detained, what is their status?

·        CBP defers to the investigating agencies on witnesses. Other agitators were detained on scene.

• Was the suspect’s gun loaded? Was a round in the chamber? Was he concealed carrying? Did he have ID on him? Was he the only armed individual on the scene (other than LEOs)? Was he legally carrying? 

·        CBP can confirm that the subject’s gun was loaded, 2 additional magazines on we found on the subject.  No identification was found on the subject at the time of the incident. (Pending additional details).

• What happens next? Are the involved Agents on leave? Where are these agents from (what sector)?

·        An agent involved in a deadly use of force incident are immediately placed on administrative leave with pay or regular days off for 3 consecutive days. CBP will follow up with more information on this case as it develops.

• What training does BP receive on deescalation? 

·        De-escalation is part of CBP’s Use of Force Policy and agent are trained on it.  Below is from the CBP Use of Force Policy (https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/2024-09/exhibit_09_-_cbp_use_of_force_policy_final_jan_2021.pdf)

D. De-Escalation

1. De-escalation tactics and techniques seek to minimize the likelihood of the need to use force, or minimize force used during an incident, to increase the probability of voluntary compliance.

2. Authorized Officers/Agents shall employ de-escalation tactics and techniques, when safe and feasible, that do not compromise law enforcement priorities.

OCA will work with the Office of Training and Development as well as USBP to provide you a brief in the coming weeks specific to de-escalation training.

• Were any BPAs wearing BWCs? were they on?

·        CBP defers to the investigating agencies. 

• Did the AI being targeted have a final order of removal?

·        CBP defers to DHS and the investigating agencies for further detail of the operation.

The required death-in-custody notice provides some additional details. It offers no evidence to support speculation from administration officials that Pretti’s gun accidentally went off, triggering the shooting, or that Pretti had planned to massacre immigration officials. 

According to the report, the incident began after a Customs and Border Protection Officer (CBPO) was “confronted by two female civilians blowing whistles” who were ordered to move out of the roadway. The officer pushed the two women, according to the report, when one of the women went to Pretti for help. 

“The CBPO pushed them both away and one of the females ran to a male, later identified as 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a US citizen,” reads the notice. “The CBPO attempted to move the woman and Pretti out of the roadway. The woman and Pretti did not move. The CBPO deployed his oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray towards both Pretti and the woman.” 

According to the notice to Congress, CBP personnel attempted to take Pretti into custody, at which point “a struggle ensued.” The report says that a Border Patrol agent (BPA) yelled “He’s got a gun!” About five seconds later, according to the report, two agents began shooting at Pretti, and afterward, a separate agent told them he had Pretti’s gun. 

The sequence of events described by CBP contradicts the statements put out by the Department of Homeland Security from over the weekend. On Saturday, DHS claimed that it “looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” White House aide Stephen Miller wrote on X on Saturday that Pretti was a “would-be assassin,” and a “domestic terrorist.”

The full death-in-custody report on his killing:

The following statement pertains to an in-custody death that occurred on Saturday, January 24, 2026, in Minneapolis, MN. This information is based on a preliminary review by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) Investigative Operations Directorate (IOD) and may be updated and clarified as additional details become available. It is being provided to Committee staff concurrently with CBP senior leadership to ensure timely reporting.    

CBP OPR IOD established the following information and timeline based on a preliminary review of body worn camera footage and CBP documentation.    

On January 24, 2026, United States Border Patrol (USBP) Border Patrol Agents (BPAs) and Customs and Border Protection Officers (CBPOs) supporting Operation Metro Surge were conducting enforcement actions near the intersection of Nicollet Ave. and 26th St. in Minneapolis, MN. Several civilians were in the area yelling and blowing whistles. BPAs and CBPOs made several verbal requests for the civilians to stay on the sidewalks and out of the roadway.

At approximately 9:00 a.m., a CBPO was confronted by two female civilians blowing whistles. The CBPO ordered the female civilians to move out of the roadway, and the female civilians did not move. The CBPO pushed them both away and one of the females ran to a male, later identified as 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a US citizen. The CBPO attempted to move the woman and Pretti out of the roadway. The woman and Pretti did not move. The CBPO deployed his oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray towards both Pretti and the woman.

CBP personnel attempted to take Pretti into custody. Pretti resisted CBP personnel’s efforts and a struggle ensued. During the struggle, a BPA yelled, “He’s got a gun!” multiple times.  Approximately five seconds later, a BPA discharged his CBP-issued Glock 19 and a CBPO also discharged his CBP-issued Glock 47 at Pretti. After the shooting, a BPA advised he had possession of Pretti’s firearm. The BPA subsequently cleared and secured Pretti’s firearm in his vehicle.

At approximately 9:02 a.m., CBP personnel cut Pretti’s clothing and provided medical aid to him by placing chest seals on his wounds. At approximately 9:05 a.m., Minneapolis Fire Department Emergency Medical Services (MFD EMS) emergency medical technicians (EMTs) arrived and assumed primary medical care for Pretti.

At approximately 9:14 a.m., MFD EMTs placed Pretti in an MFD EMS ambulance and he was subsequently transported to Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC). At approximately 9:32 a.m., HCMC medical personnel pronounced Pretti deceased.

CBP OPR IOD was advised that an autopsy would be conducted by medical personnel from the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office. CBP OPR IOD will request the official findings upon completion.

Homeland Security Investigations is investigating the incident and CBP OPR IOD is reviewing it. The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General was notified.

A spokesperson for CBP said that death-in-custody notices reflect standard lawful procedure. “They provide an initial outline of an event that took place and do not convey any definitive conclusion or investigative findings,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “They are factual reports – not analytical judgments – and are provided to inform Congress and to promote transparency.”

The report comes at a time when members of Congress, including Republicans, appear increasingly agitated with the lack of transparency from DHS. Both the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees have called for the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CBP to testify before their committees. 

While CBP is legally required to provide reports on use of force, ICE is not held to the same standard. Last January, President Donald Trump rescinded a Biden executive order on law enforcement data, releasing ICE from its obligation to provide Congress with information on use of force by their agents. The decision will likely stand in the way of the release of new information about ICE agent Jonathan Ross’s fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month. 

“We’ve all seen a staggering number of videos showing federal agents assaulting peaceful protesters and law-abiding immigrants and that’s because under Donald Trump, violence is a feature, not a bug, of DHS enforcement,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., in a statement to the Intercept. “The Trump administration is not documenting these abuses because they know the American people don’t support the brutality and fear that ICE and CBP are inflicting on communities. But if Congress fails to restrain DHS’ campaign of intimidation now, the horror we are seeing unfold in Minneapolis will become the norm across the country.”

Earlier this month, Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., and  Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., introduced legislation to limit the use of force by Department of Homeland Security agents and require DHS to track use of force and provide a notice within 24 hours if a DHS agent kills or hospitalizes a person. 

“The tragic killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good are just the latest examples of what can happen to any of us when Federal law enforcement isn’t restrained and won’t be held accountable,” wrote Homeland Security Ranking Member Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, in a statement to The Intercept. “Since DHS refuses to report on use of force incidents we have no other choice than to force them to with legislation to reign in their violent and deadly tactics and ensure there is transparency.” 

Update: January 27, 2026, 8:53 p.m. ET

This story has been updated to include a statement a CBP spokesperson sent after publication.

The post Read the Report on Alex Pretti’s Killing — and the Bizarre Q&A CBP Gave Congress First appeared first on The Intercept.

While Rubio and the Trump administration claimed in public that they wanted to deport students including Mahmoud Khalil and Yunseo Chung for supporting terrorism, internal Department of Homeland Security and State Department documents instead cite their advocacy for Palestinian rights in protests and writings — activities protected by the First Amendment.

Rubio and the administration have repeatedly conflated pro-Palestinian speech with support for Hamas, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization, but a DHS memo shows the government did not find any evidence that Chung or Khalil provided “material support” — meaning cash payment, property, or services — to any terror group. Even in their own communications, DHS and the State Department acknowledged they were in uncharted territory and likely to face backlash.

“DHS has not identified any alternative grounds of removability that would be applicable to Chung and Khalil, including the ground of removability for aliens who have provided material support to a foreign terrorist organization or terrorist activity,” reads the March 8 memo. “We are not aware of any prior exercises of the Secretary’s removal authority in [the Immigration and Nationality Act] section 237(a)(4)(c), and given their [lawful permanent resident] status, Chung and Khalil are likely to challenge their removal under this authority, and courts may scrutinize the basis for these determinations.”

Yet the following day, Rubio claimed that Khalil and the other students were supporting terrorist organizations. “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” wrote Rubio on X on March 9, referencing Khalil’s arrest.

The hundreds of pages of documents were evidence in a lawsuit brought against President Donald Trump, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and DHS by five students and academics — Rümeysa Öztürk, Badar Khan Suri, Mohsen Mahdawi, Khalil, and Chung — who alleged that their deportation orders violated their freedom of expression. 

The students won their case last year, but until Thursday, the trove of documents remained under lock and key after the judge agreed to seal the records on the State Department’s behalf. At the request of The Intercept, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, Massachusetts District Judge William G. Young ultimately unsealed the records, revealing intimate details about the State Department’s persecution of students speaking out in support of Palestine.

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The documents include a series of memos sent from the Department of Homeland Security to the State Department recommending deportation orders for the five students. The correspondence overwhelmingly focuses on the students’ participation in on campus protests and advocacy.

In the memos, commissioned by Rubio, the State Department and DHS argued that the students posed a threat to U.S. foreign policy because the protests they participated in fostered a “hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States” and undermined “U.S policy to combat anti-semitism around the world.” DHS and the State Department repeatedly based accusations of antisemitism and supporting terrorism on the students’ public speech, often noting that the First Amendment could make it difficult for the U.S. to win their deportation cases.

In Öztürk’s case, a State Department document dated March 21, 2025, noted that her visa had been revoked because she “had been involved in associations that ‘may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students indicating support for a designated terrorist organization’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later banned from campus.”

A separate document from the State Department dated March 15, referencing an assessment from DHS, found that Suri was “actively supporting Hamas terrorism” and “actively spreads its propaganda,” based on Facebook posts.

However, the State Department memo cautioned that Suri was likely to challenge his removal on First Amendment grounds. “Given the reliance on Suri’s public statements as an academic, and the potential that a court may consider his actions inextricably tied to speech protected under the First Amendment, it is likely that courts will closely scrutinize the basis for this determination,” officials wrote. 

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While the students won their lawsuit against the government, an appeals court earlier this month reversed the decision that released Khalil from custody. He still has time to appeal the reversal before he can legally be detained, but the White House has said the government plans to rearrest him and deport him to Algeria.

The State Department did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment by the time of publication.

The post New Legal Documents Show Marco Rubio Targeted Students for Op-Eds and Protesting appeared first on The Intercept.

At Bedford Hills, a maximum-security women’s prison in Westchester County, New York, a new superintendent and a recent policy change have sharply restricted the limited freedom incarcerated people in the general population once enjoyed. They could no longer count on regular showers — times were limited to tightly controlled shifts — and indoor recreation was eliminated even on the coldest days of the New York winter. The women found themselves locked inside of their single cells for the majority of the day, in conditions detention experts and survivors of solitary confinement compared to solitary confinement. 

“Nothing is consistent,” said Herrera, one of three people incarcerated at Bedford who told The Intercept about the conditions. “We have to scream for everything.” 

The conditions likely violate state law, according to multiple detention experts, all of whom have spoken with people incarcerated at Bedford. The new restrictions put the women in the middle of a political battle between activists who fought to place restrictions on the use of solitary and prison guards who have protested their implementation.

New York’s Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, or the HALT Act for short, limits the amount of time an incarcerated person can be forced to stay in their cell and when a prison guard can put a person in solitary, taking into account the punishment’s severe harm to physical and mental health. Researchers have found that solitary confinement increases the risks of premature death both during and after incarceration, from deaths of despair like opioid overdoses and suicide. 

“People should be receiving at least a minimum… seven hours out of cell time under the HALT Act,” said Sumeet Sharma, director of policy and communications at the Correctional Association of New York. Most people at Bedford previously had some freedom of movement to access communal spaces, shower, and cook. But when his team conducted a two-day monitoring visit at Bedford in November, they found that “that’s just not happening anymore,” Sharma said. “Essentially, people are locked in.” 

The New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has denied these accusations. 

“The allegations regarding recent operational changes at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility are inaccurate and misleading,” wrote Nicole March, a spokesperson for the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, in a statement to The Intercept. March said the changes were implemented to deal with “frequent fights and safety concerns” at Bedford Hills.  

March added that many facilities still lack adequate staffing due to an unauthorized prison guard strike in spring of 2025, but that “HALT programming is now fully operational in the overwhelming majority of facilities and, with respect to Bedford Hill, it has been for several months.”   

That compliance appears to exist “on paper,” said Sharma, whose team confirmed that people in the general population units had lost access to communal indoor recreation space and now had to sign up to leave their cells after speaking with prison guards, officials, and incarcerated people. A written copy of the policy reviewed by The Intercept also noted the restrictions on recreation.

“In practice,” Sharma said, even when people sign up to leave their cells, “they’re not getting the statutory amount out of cell time. That appears to be a violation of the HALT Act.”

Corrections officers in New York have long been resistant to implementing HALT. Thousands of guards went on a wildcat strike last year after a group of corrections officers was charged with murder for brutally beating and killing an incarcerated man named Robert Brooks. In addition to protesting accountability for Brooks’s killers, the guards demanded that HALT be repealed. They argue the law places an undue burden on them by making it harder to put people in solitary confinement, either as a punishment or a safety tool.

Although the guards didn’t get their wish, advocates who helped get the law passed said New York corrections officers and prison officials are still refusing to implement the limits on solitary confinement and mandatory out-of-cell time throughout the system. 

“The legislation is not being adhered to” by administrators at Bedford, said Donna Hylton, an activist who was incarcerated at Bedford Hills for 27 years and campaigned to get the law passed.

Herrera said she’s especially worried for the women who are too old or sick to use the outdoor recreation space in winter. 

“You put somebody, 24 hours, in one cell with four walls, it’s a lot to take,” she said. “Mentally, some people can’t handle this kind of situation.”

All three people incarcerated at Bedford who spoke to The Intercept characterized their treatment at the hands of the guards as vindictive, reflecting a conviction that incarcerated people deserve additional punishment beyond their imprisonment.

Herrera and two other people incarcerated at Bedford got in touch with The Intercept via the Fight 2 Live Relief Fund, a New York abolitionist organization that has been advocating for better conditions at Bedford. 

An incarcerated woman named Kit, who requested anonymity because she feared retaliation from prison officials and guards, said she’d heard guards call incarcerated women “entitled, needy, [having] ‘princess syndrome.’ It’s that mentality that, oh, this isn’t hard enough for these women.” 

“That is where these policies are coming from — not from a desire to make the facility safer or to operate better,” Kit said, “but this sick and twisted sense of entertainment and satisfaction out of the pain and the stress of incarcerated individuals who are affected by these policies.” 

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Thomas Gant, a formerly incarcerated activist and organizer with the Center for Community Alternatives who is in communication with people inside of Bedford, characterized the situation at the prison as the combined result of policy changes and retaliation from guards taking their anger out on incarcerated people. Many guards remain dissatisfied with the end result of the strike, after which Gov. Kathy Hochul fired thousands of officers in an already-understaffed system and increased surveillance.

“The relation is, we’re just going to make you guys’ lives as miserable as possible,” he said. “[Their] way of getting at you back is to say, ‘Hey, there’s staff shortages, so you guys can’t go to the yard, or, you know, you can’t have this visit, or I got a longer time to get you down to the visit.’ These are just all retaliatory tactics, all because correction officers now have a semblance of being held accountable.” 

The New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, which represents the guards, declined to comment.

Chloe Aquart, director of the Restoring Promise Initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice, said the culture of “secondary punishment” among prison guards is widespread at U.S. prisons. 

“That’s kind of how we operate in the United States,” she said. “So prison isn’t enough. The treatment in prison has to be an additional punishment, beyond taking you away from your family, taking you away from your community, stripping your rights.” 

The “most concerning” change at Bedford, said Sharma, “was that you had women in general population units who weren’t able to take a shower.”

Instead, he said that women were given the option to use a bucket to bathe if they were unable to get a shower slot for the day. “So someone would have the same bucket … that they’re using to store some things in, or if someone is menstruating, that bucket is used to dispose of bodily fluids and bodily material. So that same bucket is essentially being refilled before that and then given to people for getting them to wash themselves,” he said. 

The limited showers have also affected people whose religious practices require bathing before worship. “As a Muslim,” wrote Nur, an incarcerated transgender man who wanted to remain anonymous to prevent retaliation from prison officials, in a letter to The Intercept. “It is required to perform ablution (cleansing) before prayer.” 

Even if you can get a shower slot, that doesn’t mean staff will actually let you out at the intended time, Nur wrote. “They are not letting people out of their cells at their allotted time,” wrote Nur. “Incarcerated individuals are losing patience, resulting in screaming and banging on the cell door to obtain the attention of the security staff. Sadly, we are ignored.”

DOCCS denied the allegations of inadequate shower time and lack of religious accommodations, but confirmed that showers are limited to specific time slots.

“Shower access has not been eliminated or limited. Available daily time slots begin at 8:45am and end at 9:30pm,” wrote March in an email. “Additionally, hot water is delivered to every incarcerated individual at around 6:00am. Individuals often use this hot water to wash their faces or take quick sponge baths.” 

Herrera had spent the last four years of her life behind Bedford’s iron gates, but she said things have gotten steadily worse since October, when a new deputy superintendent arrived named Michael Blot.

Sharma and two other advocates in New York also pointed to Blot’s role in the changes.

The new policy on out-of-cell time “seems to be a decision that was made by a new Deputy Superintendent who came to the prison in the fall last year after a stint at Sing Sing,” said Sharma, referring to a maximum-security men’s prison further upstate. 

F2L began a letter-writing campaign to DOCCS in November asking for Blot to be fired and for regular shower access and indoor recreation time to be restored. Anisah Sabur, a lead organizer in the HALT Solitary Campaign, agreed that Blot “came in and made a bunch of changes.” 

“This individual is saying that Bedford is a maximum-security facility, and these are the maximum-security regulations that they are following,” Sabur said, “but most of them are just blatant violations of the HALT law.”

DOCCS denied that Blot was solely responsible for the sweeping changes at Bedford. 

“Facility operations are based on established Department policies, not individual management preferences,” wrote March, the DOCCS spokesperson, in December.

The chaos and tensions created by these changes from both guards and incarcerated people at Bedford Hills have also heightened incidents of violence, said Nur. Herrera also mentioned increased violence against incarcerated people at Bedford.

In mid-November, Nur said a woman tried to leave her cell with a robe on “to retrieve a water bucket,” because she wasn’t able to shower during her allotted time. According to Nur, a guard asked the incarcerated woman what she was doing. The woman explained that she was bathing and put her hands up and backed away. 

Next, Nur said that the officer “charged towards” the woman, punching her in the face and slamming her naked body onto the ground. “The response team [answered] with [further] abuse,” wrote Nur, in a letter to The Intercept. “They dragged her off the unit, exposing her naked body in front of her peers and male security. It was traumatizing to witness.” 

“I’m afraid that I could be next,” he said.

DOCCS declined to comment on the allegation, saying they were unable to without a name or “case-specific details.” 

Nur said he knows how to endure isolation, but the grief and fear throughout Bedford have been devastating to witness.

“To witness the madness that surrounds me is terrifying,” he wrote. “I can handle confinement; it’s just mentally draining to hear many of my peers cry in agony about not wanting to be alone for so many hours confined. It brings an emotion that I can not explain: I can only compare it to empathy. I know what it feels like to be abandoned and forgotten.” 

“This new policy … is creating cabin fever and chaos,” said Kit. “They’re being held in their cells for hours and days with nothing to do to be proactive, unable to shower, unable to clean their cells, unable to cook and make their food. And the officers, and particularly the security in the garden, seem to be getting a very sick pleasure out of it.”

The mental impact of isolation is something Kit understands all too well. 

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For nearly a decade, Kit, who is transgender, was held in solitary confinement in multiple men’s prisons before being sent to Bedford. The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act technically prohibits placing trans inmates in solitary confinement for their protection without their consent, but in practice, the overwhelming majority of trans people incarcerated in the United States have spent time in solitary confinement.

“I almost lost my life on numerous occasions,” said Kit. “These are women who have never experienced solitary confinement, who are used to regular programming … are being thrown into days and days with nothing to do, literally overnight.”

Correction: January 23, 2026, 10:59 a.m. ET

This story has been updated to correct Chloe Aquart’s professional title after previously noting an outdated role.

The post New York Women’s Prison Forces People to Go Without Showers or Recreation appeared first on The Intercept.

A letter the DOL sent this week to the Chicago Teachers Union, obtained by The Intercept, requests a meeting with the union to “obtain detailed information about the union and its financial records, bookkeeping practices, and internal controls.”

Organizations can be chosen for auditing for a number of reasons, but the letter’s timing raised suspicion within the teachers union and with outside experts. It came on the eve of the deadline for the union to turn over financial documents to a House committee targeting the union based on claims circulated by an Illinois right-wing anti-union group.

The Chicago Teachers Union has been one of the organizations at the forefront of the fight against the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, making it a clear target for the administration’s attacks. The group has vocally criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions, provided “defend your rights” training for families and students, and formed “sidewalk solidarity” lines to help students and their families safely avoid immigration agents. The union’s president, Stacy Davis Gates, who is Black, has been a target of the right since she took office in 2022. 

Davis Gates said her union has worked hard to “support working families, Black students, immigrant students, Brown students” and win accommodations for transgender and queer students. “That’s our work. And so those things seem to be in clear opposition to [how] the MAGA administration is moving.”

Both the DOL and the House Committee on Education and Workforce are demanding documents mandated by the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, which requires the union to provide its members with financial audits. In November, the House committee sent the union a letter accusing it of failing to provide the documentation from fiscal years 2019 to 2024.

The union complied with the House committee’s request but objected to this characterization in a letter sent on Friday, calling out the request’s “similarity” to litigation from outside groups seeking the union’s financial records. 

The House inquiry exclusively cites sources connected with the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank with deep ties to Republican megadonors. John Tillman, an influential conservative activist, relaunched the group in 2007 and founded several other conservative groups, including the Liberty Justice Center — which is currently suing the Chicago Teachers’ for its financial audits.

The union fears that the audits could could become accessible to the public, including the Illinois Policy Institute and Liberty Justice Center.

The union shared its independent auditors’ reports from 2018 to 2024 with The Intercept and said that it has been a faithful steward of teachers’ dues and increased revenue under Davis Gates’s leadership. 

“The reality is that the union has always shared its audits with its members,” said Robert E. Bloch, an attorney representing the Chicago Teachers Union. “They’re just trying to force the publication of the audits to the general public so that they can try to find things to attack the union over.” 

The Illinois Policy Institute told The Intercept that the Chicago Teachers Union had failed to provide members with an audit since September 9, 2020 and had mismanaged funds. Citing its own work, the institute slammed the union for increasing political spending in recent years, arguing that this came at the expense of its members.

According to the Chicago Sun Times, the union’s political spending “skyrocketed” in 2023, but its spending on staff salaries and member services has also increased.

Members of the union and its allies told The Intercept they see the House inquiry as part of a coordinated attack. 

“Our perspective is that the Illinois Policy Institute is essentially a state chapter of Project 2025, and their sole purpose has been to undermine Stacy Davis Gates’s leadership and the thousands of Chicago educators that she represents,” a Chicago Teachers Union spokesperson said on Wednesday. “And so now MAGA Republicans here in Washington have taken the bait.”

The size and power of the Chicago Teachers Union makes it an especially appealing target for right-wing entities looking to damage the labor movement and public education in one big blow, said Jacob Remes, a labor historian at New York University. 

“In most states … the statewide teachers union is, if not the biggest, among the biggest unions in the state,” Remes said. “And so if what you’re trying to do is bust unions, you go after the big ones.”

The union said it is far more transparent than the organizations accusing it of malfeasance. “One of the ironies is that unions are the most regulated entities in the United States. Everyone is looking at their finances all the time,” said Kurt Hilgendorf, deputy chief of staff at the Chicago Teachers Union.

Funding for the Illinois Policy Institute is fairly opaque. According to ProPublica, the think tank received roughly $890,000 and $1.4 million from DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund specifically for conservative donors. Contributors to donor-advised funds are not legally required to disclose their identities, which makes them an effective way for donors to remain anonymous. DeSmog, a group tracking major polluters and their financial backers, found that IPI also received roughly $2 million from Donors Capital Fund, another conservative donor-advised fund. 

The publicly available donors have deep ties to the MAGA world. According to DeSmog, the Illinois Policy Institute has received over $4.5 million from the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, which is run by Trump megadonor Richard Uihlein, and $1.1 million from the Mercer family, which donated millions to elect Donald Trump. 

“The institute has produced award-winning reporting and research on government unions in Illinois, including CTU, for more than a decade,” a spokesperson for the Illinois Policy Institute wrote in a statement. “Our articles and posts on CTU’s audits controversy have garnered millions of views. As a result of our work, the institute is commonly cited by lawmakers and media across the country as an expert in union financial reporting.”

An attorney for the Liberty Justice Center said its work is nonpartisan and that it does not coordinate directly with the Illinois Policy Institute. 

“This case has nothing to do with partisan politics. LJC has represented clients from across the political spectrum and has filed lawsuits against both Republican and Democratic government officials,” wrote Ángel Valencia, senior counsel at Liberty Justice Center. “As an independent nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, Liberty Justice Center does not coordinate operations, strategy, or fundraising with IPI.” 

The group also denied any coordination with Republican lawmakers. “Our organization has had zero contact with the House Committee as it relates to their actions,” wrote Valencia. “Our lawsuit is completely separate and unrelated. To insinuate otherwise is false, misleading and desperate.”

Illinois Democrats have also raised concerns about the Republican-led committee’s use of the Illinois Policy Institute as their sole source for the investigation. In a letter released Thursday, the Illinois representatives argue that the union has provided “financial reports, consistent with their obligations.” 

“Given the spurious nature of the claims and that the sole citations are sourced from the Illinois Policy Institute, a locally controversial organization previously registered as a lobbying entity until 2013, we are concerned that the inquiry itself is overtly partisan in nature,” wrote a group of Illinois Democrats, including Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., in a letter to the House Education and Workforce Committee. 

The Trump administration, Republicans in Congress, and their billionaire-backed groups have been relentless in their targeting of unions and public education, Remes pointed out. 

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“The Trump administration has been anti-union in every regard,” Remes said, noting that teachers unions are often a conservative target, which comes on top of the administration’s dismantling of the Department of Education.

“Schools are really important if what you’re trying to do is undermine the idea of equality,” Remes added. “So public education has been a target from the right for forever.” 

Noting the Trump administration’s largely racist fixation on Chicago, Remes pointed out that the fact that the union is run by a Black woman makes it a particularly appealing target. 

Davis Gates, the CTU president, said that it’s clear the union is “powerful,” which is why it’s in the crosshairs.

“If you look at the [Illinois Policy Institute] and the MAGA movement, what I think you’ll see is this intense focus on refusing to fund health care, refusing to fund public education, refusing to fund the social good, the common good,” Davis Gates told The Intercept. “Our union doubles down on those things.”

Update: January 17, 2026

This story has been updated with a statement from the Illinois Policy Institute.

The post Trump Is Helping Right-Wing Groups Target Chicago Teachers Union appeared first on The Intercept.

“The Department of Homeland Security has demonstrated lawlessness. They’re operating unaccountable, they’re violating the Constitution, and they are creating chaos and fear and potential death in every single city that they walk into,” said Ramirez, D-Ill., pointing to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross’s recent killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. At that moment, “so many of us knew that a use of force policy needed to be codified from this body as quickly as possible,” she said. 

As it stands, DHS has extremely limited guidelines on the use of force and no public reporting requirements for when a federal agent injures or even kills a civilian. In 2023, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended that the department strengthen its use of force data collection and analysis, but those changes were never implemented.

The new “DHS Use of Force Oversight Act” would require all DHS officers to “use only the amount of force that is objectively reasonable,” and “attempt to identify themselves and issue a verbal warning to comply” before using force when possible.

The legislation, which has 11 co-sponsors and is co-led by Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., would also require DHS to collect and maintain consistent data related to the use of force and to publish a report on its website that includes “data relating to each incident” where force was used by a law enforcement officer or agent with the department. 

If a DHS agent kills or hospitalizes a person, the department would then be required to brief the House Committee on Homeland Security, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, and the public within 24 hours.  

The Democrat-led bill has slim odds of passing in the Republican-majority House of Representatives, especially as the Trump administration has wholly endorsed ICE violence and expected the GOP to stay in line. Still, Ramirez said, the bill is “the bare minimum” to curb the department’s violence in the short term, which is why she hopes to get support from both sides of the aisle to act swiftly. 

“We have a moral responsibility to use every single tool at our disposal to defend our constituents,” Ramirez said. “This Use of Force Oversight Act Bill is pretty basic. You can’t stop someone and kill them and then get away with it. Here are the proper protocols and how force is used and how you prioritize the escalation — that’s not controversial.” 

There have been a few recent Democratic legislative pushes to restrain ICE, including a bill from Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., that would require agents to wear scannable QR codes with identifying information (as opposed to the regular badges that most police officers wear), and another from Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., to restore ICE funding to its pre-2025 levels. But leadership has largely been hesitant to call for abolishing or defunding the agency.

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That appears to put the party out of step with voters. Calls for ICE to be abolished and for DHS to be defunded have been gaining support, according to recent polling. One poll released by The Economist and YouGov this week found more Americans in favor of abolishing ICE than keeping it.

“This moment shows us that our constituents are demanding moral courage and moral clarity,” Ramirez said. “It is our responsibility to represent our constituents … to fight for every single resource they need to thrive, and to protect them, and uphold the Constitution.”  

When Ross fatally shot Good, a 37-year-old mother of threeacting as a neighborhood observer in Minneapolis last week, the killing sparked massive outrage nationwide.

While thousands of people in the Minneapolis area take to the streets to demand that the department leave the Twin Cities, the Trump administration has continued to deploy officers to Minnesota and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. As of Wednesday, nearly 3,000 federal officers had been deployed to the Minneapolis area, in what the administration is calling the “largest immigration operation ever.” The initial surge last week began after a misleading video from right-wing influencer Nick Shirley alleging child care fraud in Minnesota, which fueled racist, anti-immigrant, and specifically anti-Somali sentiments.

The Intercept has reported extensively on excessive use of force cases by federal agents since the early days of Trump’s enforcement surge, documenting a pattern of agents tear-gassing, beating, and shooting less-lethal munitions at both undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens who spoke out against the administration’s deportation machine.

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Ramirez views her bill as an interim step to limit the violence DHS has unleashed, and she said Democrats should also withhold federal funds from the department with an ultimate goal of dismantling it. 

“I want to use the appropriation process to hold money from DHS,” said Ramirez. “I want to work on dismantling DHS. We need to impeach Kristi Noem, and then we need to hold her accountable as well.” 

On Tuesday, several federal prosecutors quit in protest after the Department of Justice pushed to investigate Good’s widow, who witnessed her violent killing firsthand. 

Ramirez said that blaming victims is par for the course with DHS and with Noem.

“This agency was designed, created intentionally in this particular way, so that it gives them massive latitude to do whatever they want in the name of protecting us from domestic terrorism,” she said, “which is why strategically you hear Kristi Noem, the president, Tricia [McLaughlin] the assistant secretary, all calling victims — victims attacked and harmed by ICE — domestic terrorists. Because as long as they can call them domestic terrorists, they think that they can have impunity.” 

The post New Bill Would Put Basic Limits on ICE Use of Force After Minneapolis Killing appeared first on The Intercept.

On Thursday, Mamdani revoked all executive orders issued by Adams after his federal indictment on September 26, 2024.

“That was a date that marked a moment when many New Yorkers decided politics held nothing for them,” said Mamdani during a Brooklyn press conference on Thursday, alluding to accusations that the Adams administration was tainted by his efforts to cozy up to President Donald Trump to avoid prosecution.

Mamdani’s new executive order revokes the Adams administration’s adoptions of the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or IHRA definition of antisemitism, which defines criticism of Israel as antisemitic. It also ends an Adams-era ban on city agencies boycotting or divesting from Israel. Mamdani kept the mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism in place.

The Israeli government lashed out at Mamdani over his order, painting it as both antisemitic and anti-Israel.

“On his very first day as @NYCMayor, Mamdani shows his true face: He scraps the IHRA definition of antisemitism and lifts restrictions on boycotting Israel,” posted the Israel Foreign Ministry on X. “This isn’t leadership. It’s antisemitic gasoline on an open fire.”

Other pro-Israel Mamdani critics posted similar denouncements.

“Mamdani @NYCMayor just UNDID previous executive order which adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism,” wrote Inna Vernikov, a Republican councilwoman from Brooklyn on X on Thursday night. “IHRA protects from discrimination Jews who believe in self determination and provides clarity on the definition.”

Accusations of antisemitism are nothing new for Mamdani, who made history on Thursday by becoming the first Muslim mayor of New York. Coverage of his campaign, and now his administration, has repeatedly fixated on his relationship with Israel, despite his insistence on focusing on local issues like grocery prices, housing, and transportation.

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Despite those criticisms, many New York civil liberties groups argue Mamdani’s orders are an important step in restoring freedom of speech.

“Mayor Mamdani was right to revoke Mayor Adams’s executive orders that adopted a flawed and far too broad definition of antisemitism, and that prohibited city agencies from boycotting Israel,” wrote New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman, in a statement to The Intercept. “Both orders seem to have been designed to suppress speech Mayor Adams disagrees with, but that is protected by the First Amendment.”

The IHRA definition of antisemitism has been widely criticized for stifling political speech over Israel and manufacturing consent for its treatment of Palestinians by classifying criticism of Israel’s actions and of Zionism as inherently antisemitic.

CAIR-NY, the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, lauded the decision to revoke the IHRA definition and the ban on boycotting Israel.

“This unconstitutional, Israel First attack on free speech should have never been issued in the first place,” CAIR-NY executive director Afaf Nasher wrote in a statement. “We applaud Mayor Mamdani for immediately overturning it.”

Aside from the orders themselves, Nina Smith, a Democratic political strategist, said that Mamdani was showing New York voters that he is sticking to his campaign promises.

“Mr. Mamdani campaigned on having a direct and authentic relationship with the people he serves in New York, with New Yorkers,” said Smith. “The Adams administration was marked by controversy and corruption, as was outlined in the indictments. And so, it’s not like he’s doing this out of spite. He’s doing this because he wants to have a clean and authentic relationship with New Yorkers going forward.”

The former mayor was indicted for allegedly taking bribes and soliciting illegal campaign contributions from “wealthy foreign businesspeople” and Turkish officials. The Trump Justice Department later dropped the charges. Adams has denied all wrongdoing.

Multiple prosecutors resigned in protest over the decision to squash the corruption allegations, with one alleging that Adams had been “rewarded” for “an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case.”

The post Israel Accuses Zohran Mamdani of Antisemitism for Reversing Orders Adams Gave Under Indictment appeared first on The Intercept.

That was June. In the months since, labor unions have been galvanized against President Donald Trump’s deportation machine, challenging the president in the streets, the courtroom, and at the ballot box — and helping an American labor movement historically rife with divisions over immigration and race to coalesce.

“In their attempts to silence me, they gave me a louder platform,” Huerta, the California president of the Service Employees International Union and also president of SEIU-United Service Workers West, said in an interview with The Intercept. “[People] saw, if this could happen to a labor leader, a prominent leader, it could happen to anyone.”

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Since Huerta’s arrest, labor unions — including SEIU, AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Union of Southern Service Workers — have helped lead thousands of demonstrations against Trump’s immigration policies, which they argue have largely targeted the working class, including many in their unions. The energy has spread far beyond the LA storefront where Huerta was arrested — spanning across cities like Seattle, Boston, and New York. Huerta’s arrest and the surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country have injected renewed fervor in an organized labor movement that has been in decline since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and now faces an existential threat from Trump’s anti-labor agenda.

The labor movement in the United States used to be “very anti-immigration,” said Jacob Remes, a labor historian and a professor at New York University. But that’s changed, particularly as immigrants have come to represent a higher share of the U.S. working class and its union membership.

“I think that’s a sign … of understanding that the American working class is not entirely immigrants, but has a lot of immigrants,” Remes said. “And a recognition that we’re not going to solve problems by scapegoating immigrants.”

The Trump administration has largely failed to take this into account, and may have “overreached,” Huerta said.

“In their deportation of immigrants, by labeling them criminals, and then coming at them by any means,” said Huerta, who is pleading not guilty to his charges which were reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, “I think it has really created an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ environment.”

Hundreds of workers traveled from North Carolina to Louisiana in late June to call for an end to ICE raids; for Congress not to pass the “Big, Beautiful, Bill,” which injected billions of dollars into ICE and detention facilities; and for Trump to release every immigrant unjustly held in detention. The demonstration culminated in two protests outside of detention centers, in “Detention-alley,” a term for the 14 massive immigration detention centers scattered along the Southeast.

“We were standing there in solidarity,” said Nashon Blount, a housekeeper at Duke University and a member of the Union of Southern Service Workers who attended the June protest, “letting them know that we’re here. That we’re going to stand with ya’ll regardless.”

When the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Charlotte’s Web in November, surging federal agents into Charlotte and surrounding North Carolina, immigration officials terrorized Black and brown working people just trying to make a “stable living” in places like warehouses, stores, construction, and fast food restaurants, Blount said.

“They literally try to antagonize and racial profile them, just because they know it’s an easy target to go to places or stores where they know that these people will be,” he said.

But the legacy of racial terror in the South, and in North Carolina specifically, prepared workers in the state to fight back, Blount added.

“ICE is always going to melt in the South, because we bring the heat,” he said. “We know how to fight against [oppression].”

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Protest isn’t the only method that unions have used to push back against the Trump administration. Blount pointed out that local unions have also offered “know your rights” training as a key component of organized labor’s support system for immigrant workers. “So that when [a raid] does occur, you know how to go about it,” he said.

The threats facing immigrant union workers aren’t hypothetical. In September, three members of SEIU 32BJ in Boston were detained by ICE after leaving work. According to the union, all three members applied for asylum under a Biden-era policy that granted them work authorization and allowed them to reside in the United States until their asylum hearings were held. Two of the men have already self-deported, while the third remains detained.

“They’re just hard-working people who want to help win for their families the American dream, and struggle and improve their lives, improve their families’ lives, they’re escaping, in most cases, pretty horrible situations,” said Kevin Brown, executive vice president of SEIU 32BJ.

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Brown said that the union worked to get the three men legal counsel and has been advocating publicly for the release of detained workers. Their work included the high-profile case of Kilmar Ábrego Garcia, a sheet metal apprentice with the SMART Local 100 union, who was illegally sent to a Salvadoran prison before the administration was ordered to release him in December.

Despite growing unity among workers and the large share of immigrant union members, divisions along racial and immigration status lines continue to create fault lines within the labor movement. Conservatives have consistently tried to pit the working class against immigrant rights, arguing that immigration drives down wages, a sentiment that some union members share.

Brown said that connecting members with immigrants within the union helped to bridge some of those divides. “It becomes, ‘Well, I work with her or him every single day. I don’t want them deported,’” said Brown. “When it becomes real in terms of their co-workers, things change.”

Efforts to separate the interests of “working people” and the interests of immigrants are based on faulty logic, argued Brown. “We firmly believe, from an economic perspective, that immigrant labor actually improves wages and benefits,” he said.

Although the research is nuanced, experts have generally found that on balance, immigrants boost job growth and the overall health of the economy.

“Trump’s war against immigrants is making it harder for working families to get by,” said Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa. “And these raids are enabling employers to abuse labor laws by silencing and exploiting the very workers whose rights, wages, and safety are already most at risk. Our communities deserve a government that doesn’t weaponize fear against people who are just trying to make a dignified living for their families.”

Manny Pastreich, president of the New York local SEIU-32BJ, admitted that Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric — pitting the working class against immigration — does make it more difficult to unify his coalition.

“Divisions and attacks have been part of Trump’s agenda from the day he arrived on the scene to today, and so that is part of the playbook, and it’s incredibly destructive,” he said. “I would be lying if I said that it doesn’t have an impact.”

However, he said, these are the same forces his union has always grappled with and managed to come through the other end.

“Employers do this all the time, trying to divide people by race, by immigration status, by everything else. … Trump didn’t invent division; he’s just taken it to a new level,” said Pastreich. “But working people understand that, particularly when we’re talking about the boss, we’re stronger together.”

“For many of us,” said Huerta, the immigration crackdown “has deepened our commitment to this sense of worker justice. How do we broaden the labor movement to fight on behalf of those who are most vulnerable?”

The post American Labor Needed Unity. Then Came Trump’s Immigration Crackdown. appeared first on The Intercept.

“It made me physically nauseous,” said Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, reflecting on the massive sums Democrats raised and spent on the 2024 presidential election, “thinking about how many people could be fed, or how many clinics could be funded, or how much student debt could be paid off.”

So after Abughazaleh announced her candidacy for a highly competitive primary in March, she transformed her campaign headquarters in Rogers Park — a lower-income neighborhood in Chicago’s North Side— into a mutual aid hub.

Situated at the front of her 9th Congressional District campaign office are rows of basics like diapers and winter clothes to medical supplies like Narcan. “We’ve also had people bring in stuff like nail polish,” said Abughazaleh, adding, “everyone deserves good things.” Anyone is welcome to come off the street, she explained, without checking for income or immigration status.

In addition to offering supplies while the office is open, the campaign also helps stock a community fridge available any time of day and hosts drives to collect specific supplies. A request for tampons for Chicago’s Period Collective, for example, resulted in a massive outpouring of support. “We ended up getting over 5,600, and my campaign manager’s car was just filled with tampons,” said Abughazaleh through laughter. “I wanted him to get pulled over so bad.”

The point here is to “show” the campaign’s values through providing for the community, rather than simply telling people why they should vote for her, said Abughazaleh.

“I grew up Republican,” she said, “and I can’t think of anything that would have made me be a Democrat faster — especially if it were today, when people have lost all faith in the political system — than people showing their values rather than just saying them.”

Abughazaleh faces off against a competitive field to replace retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. As of early November, 21 candidates had filed to run in Illinois’s 9th Congressional District — including a whopping 17 Democrats and four Republicans. The Democratic primary race will be held in March.

Abughazaleh, a former journalist with a large social media following, is ahead of the pack in conventional fundraising, and hopes that her “experimental” approach to campaigning will help pull her over the finish line. In fact, she thinks the Democratic establishment could learn a thing or two from her.

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In November, with SNAP benefits paused due to the government shutdown, Abughazaleh’s campaign donated $2,500 to the Niles Township Food Pantry.

“I can’t think of anything more convincing for voters, but also just the right thing to do during that period, and during all of this, than the Democratic Party using its immense resources to — with no strings attached — stock food banks, fund clinics, and make sure people have what they need,” she said.

“We don’t need to spend $20 million to make lefty Joe Rogan in a lab,” Abughazaleh added, in a nod to a strategic pitch Democratic operatives offered earlier this year. “We can spend $20 million on making sure kids have enough to eat, or making sure that parents have baby formula, or making sure that older folks are having meals actually delivered.”

Abughazaleh’s approach has not been without its detractors. On social media, some people have accused the campaign of attempting to buy votes by offering free food, water, and clothes, in the same place as advertisements for the candidate.

Accusations of “vote buying” are a serious risk for candidates implementing strategies like Abughazaleh’s, said Jessica Byrd, a political strategist and president of the Black Campaign School. “One accusation of buying votes, and your entire campaign is under a microscope. It slows you down, it makes you less effective, and then you have to spend money to defend yourself,” explained Byrd. “So it really is a risk.”

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Abughazaleh has already faced significant scrutiny in her race. In October, she was indicted along with five other activists on federal conspiracy charges over an Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest. She and her co-defendants are pleading not guilty.

“It’s incredible” that the Abughazaleh campaign is going ahead with its mutual aid efforts despite the reputational risks and associated costs, Byrd said. Stacey Abrams’s campaign for governor in Georgia, where Byrd served as deputy campaign manager, instituted a similar strategy in 2022, forming a program to connect residents with existing services, from legal support to food assistance. “We were barely out of COVID, and it was really clear that we couldn’t just ask for people’s votes,” said Byrd. “We actually needed to ask how everybody was doing.”

Byrd said she appreciated seeing another campaign focus on how they can help their constituents before coming into office.

“People are suffering deeply, deeply suffering,” said Byrd. “Every single person running, their constituents are looking at them saying, ‘How are you helping me right this moment, right now, not in the future, not when you get it through the legislature? How are you a hero right now?’ And it’s on all of us to figure out how we can serve people right this moment.”

From a political perspective, it’s hard to know whether this type of strategy will pay off in more votes. Andre Martin, who serves as Abughazaleh’s deputy campaign manager and runs the mutual aid operation, said while most of the items are donated, there’s still a cost associated with pulling something like this off.

“It’s really, really taxing. It’s not an easy thing. It takes a lot of our resources,” he said. “It’s not something that comes without cost to our ability to do more conventional organizing. We spend a lot of time helping folks.”

Part of that cost is spending a significant amount of time on compliance with campaign finance regulations. Abughazaleh told The Intercept that the campaign works with a compliance firm that carefully monitors the pools of resources being donated to, or by, the campaign’s mutual aid arm.

According to Martin, the purpose of the hub isn’t to actively campaign to people coming in for resources. “Sometimes people will ask because they see the signs,” he said, adding, “We are mostly just asking people if they need help, like, finding things on the shelves, navigating our sorting system, things like that. That’s the only information we solicit from them.”

However, Abughazaleh said canvassing isn’t the goal here. “I wanted to figure out the best way to use our funds to not just run a race, but also help the community,” she said, “because if every campaign did something like that, then every election would be a net benefit to the community, win or lose.”

Update: January 2, 2026
This story has been updated to include an additional affiliation for the political consultant Jessica Byrd.

The post Kat Abughazaleh Thinks Campaign Funds Should Help Feed People appeared first on The Intercept.

The template agreement, which references the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR — but also applies funding to fight malaria, tuberculosis, and other pathogens — would require countries that receive global health assistance to share a broad range of health care and pathogen data for the next 25 years.

The model document would also require foreign governments to provide the United States with “any data access or information needed to monitor compliance” with the Helms Amendment, which prevents U.S. federal funds from being used to provide abortion care abroad. This stipulation would give the United States broad authority to collect data on abortion care and policy for decades to come.

“The [agreement] is just another example of the Trump Administration’s playbook for using its power and influence to further its anti-choice agenda and undermine critical national public health responses,” wrote Melissa Cockroft, global lead on abortion for the International Planned Parenthood Federation, in a statement to The Intercept.

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The document was developed in line with the State Department’s new “America First Global Health Strategy,” which seeks to broadly eliminate multilateral cooperation on international health care initiatives, like the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system being negotiated by the World Health Organization, in favor of direct agreements between the United States and other countries.

After the government shutdown brought negotiations to a screeching halt, the department has renewed its efforts to reach bilateral global health agreements with dozens of countries, primarily in Africa, identified in its America First Global Health Strategy. The State Department is supposed to complete the deals by the end of the year.

Global health experts who spoke to The Intercept cautioned that these agreements appear to be highly unbalanced, giving the Trump administration sweeping authority to extract data on a number of issues, including on abortion, raising significant concerns about misuse at a time when the Trump administration is looking to limit access to abortion globally.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Collecting data itself isn’t an unusual function of a global health initiative, said Mitchell Warren, the executive director of AVAC, a nonprofit organization focused on HIV prevention.

PEPFAR, in particular, “has always been very data rich, lots of data collected and analyzed, but in a very collaborative nature between governments, civil society, and the United States government … and there’s always been great clarity on why we’re collecting this data,” he said.

However, Warren also noted that the section around “any data access” necessary to monitor compliance with the anti-abortion Helms Amendment — which gives broad discretion to the United States to request access to abortion-related data for decades — goes far beyond that scope.

“The part about Helms and requiring compliance information on that for 25 years, along with everything else, does raise some concerns about what [the administration] is doing with this,” said Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, president and CEO of Global Health Council. “Is there a larger play at foot to use data to monitor countries’ regulatory moves around liberalizing restrictions on abortion?”

While it’s unclear exactly how the Trump administration plans to use this data, Cockroft said the model agreement is concerning against the larger backdrop of its anti-abortion agenda.

In January, President Donald Trump reinstated the global gag rule, a policy that prevents foreign organizations that receive global health assistance from providing information, referrals, or services related to abortion care or advocating for abortion access.

“We know the Trump administration is seeking at all costs to restrict abortion access globally,” said Cockroft. “Requests from the Trump administration in the MoU for ‘any data’ for compliance monitoring are very concerning, as it is unclear how exactly the data will be used and to what ends.”

Dunn-Georgiou told The Intercept that the administration is also in the process of expanding the rule, potentially to encompass all non-military foreign assistance, U.S.-based nonprofits, and foreign governments, massively expanding its scope and impact.

While there’s no public information on how exactly these final agreements will differ from the template produced by the Trump administration, most recipient countries, particularly in Africa, don’t have much negotiating power to change the terms to their benefit.

“People are getting sick. Medicine is hard to find. I’ve even heard of condom shortages in some countries because the prevention funding for HIV has been stalled,” said Dunn-Georgiou. “Many countries are feeling so squeezed for funding that they will take the deal.”

The post Trump Wants to Make African Countries Share Abortion Data to Get AIDS Funding appeared first on The Intercept.

She had been rationing her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits for over a month, unsure of when, if ever, the deposit would hit her account again. “It’s been awful,” said Sarah, who asked to be identified by her first name only because she fears speaking out could hurt her job search. But the Maryland mom said she was willing to sacrifice if it meant millions of Americans could afford their health insurance.

“The pitch they made, it made sense,” Sarah told The Intercept. “Everyone knew it was going to be painful, but it was important … and they just wasted it all.”

On Sunday, a group of eight Democratic senators, including Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., cut a deal with Republican leadership to end the government shutdown. They did it without forcing Republicans to agree to any of the major concessions Democrats said they were fighting to secure, which included a reversal of Medicaid cuts and an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. The deal is slated for a vote in the House on Wednesday evening, and it looks likely to pass.

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While Senate Republican leadership agreed to hold a vote on the subsidies, the legislation is more than likely dead in the water, especially since Democrats forfeited their main piece of leverage. As a result, tens of millions of Americans are projected to see their premiums skyrocket, and an estimated 7.8 million low-income Americans will outright lose their insurance through Medicaid.

The Intercept spoke with four SNAP recipients who said they’re furious that Democrats squandered the sacrifice they made for the last month to ensure access to health care for millions of Americans — just as voters rewarded the party for finally fighting back against Republicans with major electoral victories last week.

“We sacrificed and we would continue to sacrifice because we understood what the stakes were. People’s health care was at stake,” said Delight Worthyn, 67, a SNAP recipient with lupus living in New Haven, Connecticut. “And that they would cave for nothing after we have all gone through this. … I only feel betrayed.”

Though the Supreme Court has paused a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration pay full SNAP benefits for the month of November, some recipients have started receiving full or partial benefits. The SNAP funding available varies by state.

Sasha Slansky, 33, a full-time master’s student at Queens College at the City University of New York who works a series of odd jobs to pay her bills, said it’s “insulting” for Democrats to use SNAP recipients as a justification for caving to Republicans and President Donald Trump. In his floor speech, Durbin invoked SNAP recipients as one of the reasons he was agreeing to Republicans’ shutdown deal.

“Don’t talk about me and my food insecurity to justify kicking people like me off of my health care,” said Slansky, noting that Democrats seem not to have taken into account the overlap between SNAP recipients and people who receive Medicaid and their insurance through the Affordable Care Act. “It’s insane, and it’s insulting, and it’s also just so wildly out of touch.”

Nearly 30 million of the 38.3 million people who received SNAP in 2022 were enrolled in Medicaid. The number of SNAP recipients has since risen to 42 million people, as of this year.

“I’m also on Medicaid,” Slansky said. “And as Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani and many, many Democrats have made clear, this has the potential to kick [millions] of Americans off of Medicaid, which likely includes me.”

Natalie, a delivery driver living in Lynnwood, Washington, said she managed to spend only half of her SNAP benefits for the month, stretching meals that would normally last her two days to three or four. She received her benefits for the first time since October on Tuesday, but she said it doesn’t erase the hardship of the last month.

Though the Supreme Court has paused a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration pay full SNAP benefits for the month of November, some recipients have started receiving full or partial benefits. The SNAP funding available varies by state.

“It felt like we were making a small sacrifice, skipping [meals], because we felt like we were doing something to help save people, and that we were doing something good for the country, and to have our only leverage just handed over,” said Natalie, who asked to be identified by her first name because she’s transgender and wanted to avoid transphobic harassment. “It feels like it wasn’t for anything.”

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Natalie said she wishes that Democrats had built off of their electoral victories in New York, Virginia, New Jersey, and California earlier this month to pressure Republicans, instead of immediately disarming when they had the upper hand.

“The MAGA Republicans were on the ropes. They were getting the blame. Why didn’t they keep using that and pushing the narrative, the truth, on social media and traditional news that Republicans are doing this to people?” said Natalie. “That was a really strong message, and it was one that people were willing to sacrifice for.”

The post SNAP Recipients Crushed by Democrats Caving on Shutdown: “They Just Wasted It All” appeared first on The Intercept.

Democrats had spent weeks arguing that the longest shutdown in history was necessary to make sure health care subsidies administered under the Affordable Care Act were preserved in the next spending package. They won’t be: Instead, Senate Republicans agreed to hold a separate vote on ACA subsidies by the end of the year. With Republicans in the majority, Democrats are almost guaranteed to lose. 

Speaking to The Intercept, a key Democratic leader who voted to end the shutdown argued the party did get something out of the fight: the illustration of a point. 

“It proved the point that Republicans are not sensitive to health care insurance premiums and we are sensitive to health care insurance premiums,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., “and the national polls show that we’ve made a national issue out of [it].” 

Durbin, who is retiring at the end of his current term, is the only member of Democratic leadership to vote for the deal to end the government shutdown. He told The Intercept that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was “disappointed” by his decision but understood. 

Without Republican votes to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, millions of Americans are expected to see their health care premiums double next year. And despite agreeing to allow a vote in the Senate, Republicans seem unlikely to pass a bill to keep those subsidies in place. 

“No,” Republicans will not vote to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told The Intercept. “Why would I continue to give tens of billions of dollars to insurance companies?” said Graham. “That’s insane.”

In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., would not even commit to holding a vote on the Affordable Care Act subsidies. “I’m not promising anybody anything,” Johnson told reporters last week. “We’re not taking four corners, four leaders in a back room and making a deal and hoisting it upon the American people.”

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., called the outcome a “betrayal” of working-class families. 

“The American people have endured the pain of the longest government shutdown in history only to see a small group of Senate Democrats concoct a so-called ‘deal’ that guarantees nothing on health care and is a betrayal to the working families whose insurance costs are going to skyrocket,” Rep. Lee told The Intercept. “I am strongly opposed to capitulating to false promises that will hurt people in the long run.”

None of the eight senators who broke to support the deal are up for reelection, suggesting that Democrats understand how unpopular the decision is with their base. Beyond Durbin, the seven other senators who voted to end the shutdown are Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.; John Fetterman, D-Pa.; Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Angus King, I-Maine; Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.; and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. 

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It’s a stark contrast to last week’s election, when Democrats swept races in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, and California. Many credited Democrats’ success with their sudden willingness to fight back against Republicans in defense of health care. 

Backlash has been so severe that some Democratic members of Congress are calling on Schumer to resign from his leadership position. So are some of the party’s 2026 hopefuls — including Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner.

“Sen. Schumer has failed to meet this moment and is out of touch with the American people. The Democratic Party needs leaders who fight and deliver for working people,” wrote Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., in a post on X. “Schumer should step down.”

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., also called for Schumer to step down. 

“I’ve said it before, and I will say it again. We need courageous leaders who put working families at the center of all they do. 8 democrats caving to empty promises is an indefensible leadership failure,” wrote Ramirez on X. “For the sake of our country, Schumer needs to resign.”

Schumer’s office did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

So far, legislation to reopen the government has been stalled in the Senate due to objections from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., over a hemp-related provision in the bill. But Johnson has ordered representatives to return to Washington to vote on reopening the government as soon as the Senate passes its version. 

Even though Graham said Republicans won’t extend the enhanced subsidies, the South Carolina senator agreed that Democrats did get something to show for the shutdown fight. 

“We get the government reopened,” Graham said. “They get a vote on health care. Everybody gets something.” 

The post Key Senate Dem Says Party Caved on Shutdown to Make a Symbolic Point About the GOP appeared first on The Intercept.

The announcement stands in stark contrast to another recent decision from the administration to give Afrikaners priority for asylum, even as the State Department moved to severely limit refugee admission to the United States. The president has justified prioritizing white South Africans by spreading misleading claims about the persecution and killings of white farmers.

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While Trump’s immigration and foreign policy stances in relation to these three countries may seem disjointed, experts on white supremacy and Christian nationalism told The Intercept that it all fit into the white Christian nationalist playbook. Trump’s strategy feeds into his base’s fears over immigration and demographic change while positioning the president as a defender of Christian values.  

“There is this myth that if [white Christians] lose a majority in the United States of America, then the white Christian civilization that we have built here is fundamentally going to be threatened … and that’s why you have to open your borders to the Afrikaners and close your borders to people who are not white and not Christians,” said Stephen Lloyd, a professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland who specializes in world Christianity as well as theology, ethnicity, and race in South Africa.

Trump’s narrative, however, flies in the face of facts on the ground. 

After Trump threatened to deploy military action in Nigeria over claims that Christians were being persecuted, and designated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” for alleged violations of religious freedom, Nigerian officials and regional experts quickly fired back.

“We are not proud of the security situation that we are passing through, but to go with the narrative” of a Christian genocide, Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Al Jazeera, “no, it is not true. There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria.” 

While Nigerians have undeniably experienced violence at the hands of militant groups like Boko Haram, Christians have not been the exclusive target. In fact, much of the violence has been directed at Muslims who practice their faith in a way these groups disagree with. 

“There are many Christian victims of violence in Nigeria. Nobody disputes that,” said Alex Thurston, an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati, who specializes in Islam and African politics. “[However], the idea of a genocide against Christians is the wrong framing. The violence in Nigeria affects many different Nigerians of many faiths.”

Research from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, an independent global monitor of conflict and protest data, found that of the 1,923 attacks on civilians in Nigeria, so far this year, roughly 50 of those attacks targeted Christians because of their religion. 

The alleged persecution of the Afrikaners serves a similar narrative purpose for Trump, while also being riddled with many of the same fallacies. 

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For the most part, Afrikaners don’t see themselves as refugees, said Lloyd. “Even some very conservative Afrikaner separatists talk very much in terms of wanting to build their future in South Africa, not outside of it,” he said.

Afrikaners who grew up under apartheid were taught to view themselves as their “own distinct culture,” explained Lloyd, which includes heavy ties to Christianity but is distinct from white Christian culture in the United States. “Afrikaners often feel themselves to be a tribe in the way that the Zulu or the Xhosa people are a tribe. And so there is still that sort of national sentiment that you look out for each other, you try to care for each other. You care for each other’s political future.” 

Notably, there hasn’t been a “mass exodus” of Afrikaners to the United States since Trump announced an expedited refuge process, Lloyd said. Of the roughly 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa, only 400 have immigrated to the United States under the fast-tracked refugee process Trump initiated.

However, framing these complex political scenarios in the context of a genocide of white people or Christians is politically beneficial to Trump, said Christine Reyna, a professor of psychology at DePaul University. It allows him not only to drum up concerns over immigrants, she said, but it motivates his base to support him out of that fear. 

“In Nigeria, it’s genocide against Christians, and in South Africa, it’s the supposed genocide against these white Afrikaners,” said Reyna. “And so in absence of an actual genocide in the United States against either of these two groups, you can keep that narrative of that existential fear of extermination and genocide and oppression that is alive and well within a certain subset of white Americans.”

Despite crafting similar narratives in Nigeria and South Africa, Trump’s policy prescriptions are quite different. 

“One of the ideas of Christian nationalism is that racial and ethnic groups have their own particular territories,” said Lloyd.  

So while members of the Christian right in the United States may view themselves as the saviors of Nigerian Christians, they believe that they should remain in Africa and not mix with white Christians here. Whereas white, or “Western,” Christians in Africa should be brought into the United States. 

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This racist logic allows them to justify limiting immigration of the “other” as somehow biblical, as is the case with South Sudanese immigrants. “One of the key things about Christian nationalism is the love of your own,” said Lloyd. 

“That’s why I think they are signaling that immigration policy is going to preference Afrikaners,” Lloyd said. “The idea that you’re preferencing conservative white Christians is, in essence, preferencing ‘your own people’ over those in Haiti, those in South Sudan, those in Venezuela.” 

In a January Fox News interview, Vice President JD Vance said that God requires Christians to “love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” 

“There’s this sense that we have to keep America Christian because when Christians become a minority, they’re persecuted,” Lloyd said. “And also, if we maintain our Christian majority, then we can be the defenders of Christians around the world.” 

The post How Christian Nationalism Is Shaping Trump’s Foreign Policy Toward Africa  appeared first on The Intercept.

The 11-page indictment, which was filed on October 23 and unsealed Wednesday, accuses Abughazaleh and the other protesters of using “force, intimidation and threat” as part of a conspiracy to prevent an unnamed ICE agent from “discharging his duties” and to “injure him in his person or property.”

The conspiracy, as the charging document describes it, involves allegations that the protesters “banged aggressively” on a federal agent’s car, “crowded together in the front and side of the Government Vehicle and pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement,” and “scratched the body of the Government Vehicle, including etching a message into the body of the vehicle, specifically the word ‘PIG.’”

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“This is a political prosecution and a gross attempt at silencing dissent, a right protected under the First Amendment,” wrote Abughazaleh, in a statement to The Intercept. “This case is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish those who dare to speak up. That’s why I’m going to fight these unjust charges.”

The indictment alleges that Abughazaleh, a former journalist and candidate in the Democratic primary for Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, put her hands on the hood of the car and “braced her body and hands against the vehicle while remaining directly in the path of the vehicle.”

The disruption, according to the indictment, forced the federal agent “to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators.”

If convicted, the protesters could face up to six years in prison for the conspiracy charges and eight years in prison for the intimidation charge. Conspiracy charges are a common tool for prosecutors to use against protesters.

Abughazaleh — who went viral earlier this year after video emerged of ICE agents slamming the 26-year-old Democratic candidate to the ground at the same facility — pointed to the irony of the Trump administration accusing protesters of violence.

“As I and others exercised our First Amendment rights, ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls, and teargassed hundreds of protesters, myself included. Simply because we had the gall to say masked men abducting our neighbors and terrorizing our community cannot be the new normal,” she wrote.

The Broadview ICE processing center has been noted for its violent clashes between federal agents and protesters — with ICE agents deploying aggressive tactics at demonstrators — including an infamous incident where agents shot a pastor in the back of the head with a pepper ball.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order against federal agents in the Chicago area earlier this month, requiring them to wear a body camera and give at least two advanced warnings before deploying tear gas.

Abughazaleh, who is running in a crowded field to replace Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said she won’t be intimidated by the charges brought against her. “I’ve spent my career fighting America’s backwards slide towards fascism, and I’m not going to give up now,” she wrote.

The post Trump DOJ Charges House Candidate Kat Abughazaleh With Conspiracy for Protesting ICE appeared first on The Intercept.