~ Jon and Simon round off the year with a trip into the weeds talking about reaching the Mark Jenner period in the Spycops saga, Labour’s disgusting joining in on European far-right efforts to undercut human rights laws, the real reasons why housing is under so much pressure, and the latest stories from our newswire. The post Anarchist News Review: What have human rights ever done for us? appeared first on Freedom News.

Earlier this fall, hundreds of activists from all over the world crowded onto several dozen boats and set sail for Gaza. Their goal: Break through Israel’s blockade of the territory and end one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet. They thought that by sharing their journey through social media, they could capture the world’s attention.  At first, it was easy to dismiss the Global Sumud Flotilla—until it wasn’t. Before reaching Gaza, the flotilla was attacked by drones, and activists were arrested by the Israeli navy.  “We were at gunpoint; like, you could see the laser on our chest,” says flotilla participant Louna Sbou.   Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. They were then sent to a high-security prison in the middle of the Negev desert. “You have no control, you have no information, and you have no rights,” says Carsie Blanton, another participant. “They could do whatever they want to you.” This week on Reveal, we go aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla for a firsthand look at what activists faced on their journey and whether their efforts made any difference.

This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Louisiana Department Of Wildlife And Fisheries (LDWF), typically responsible in part for overseeing wildlife reserves and enforcing local hunting rules, has assisted United States immigration authorities with bringing at least six people into federal custody this year, according to documents WIRED obtained via a public record request. According to the documents, LDWF signed a memorandum of agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in May, which gives the wildlife agency the authority to detain people suspected of immigration violations and to transfer them into ICE custody. Since then, at least six men entered ICE custody after coming into contact with or being detained by LDWF officers. None of the men were issued criminal charges at the time they came into contact with LDWF officers, the documents show. Two of the men were known by ICE to have been in the country legally at the time the agency took them into custody. The documents also indicate that at least one “joint patrol” took place in a Louisiana wildlife management area in which LDWF agents were accompanied by officers with Customs and Border Protection and the US Coast Guard. The memorandum of agreement between ICE and LDWF makes no mention of CBP or the possibility of working with the agency as part of the agreement. However, the documents indicate that a relationship with CBP may have been facilitated through LDWF’s partnership with ICE. LDWF partnered with ICE under the agency’s 287(g) program, named after the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that enables officers and employees at the state or local level to perform some of the functions of US immigration officers, such as investigating, apprehending, detaining, or transporting people suspected of violating immigration law. As of December 3, exactly 1,205 agencies have partnered with ICE through the 287(g) program. (An additional eight agencies are currently pending approval from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.) Some 1,053 of these agreements were signed this year, meaning enrollment has increased by 693 percent compared to the end of 2024. The LDWF is one of just three state wildlife agencies—the others being the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources—that have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, according to public ICE records. All three agreements were signed this year. The marked expansion of the 287(g) program this year has generated relatively little attention. However, the documents from the LDWF indicate that the state and local agencies enrolled are actively detaining people not guilty of any crimes, and facilitating their arrests and possible deportation. CBP did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment. The LDWF answered questions about one particular incident, but did not respond to WIRED’s complete request for comment. ICE spokesperson Angelina Vicknair—when given the men’s full names, the dates and locations they were detained, all known circumstances of their detainment, and all other identifying information included in the documents—said that the agency did not have enough information to determine if the men were in custody, released, or deported. She also said that the number of men WIRED asked about, seven, constituted “too large a query,” adding, “We’ll need you to narrow it down.” Per a LDWF “After Action Report” obtained by WIRED, three men were taken into a federal custody after the agency conducted a joint patrol on August 11 with five US Coast Guard officers and an unknown number of CBP agents in Lake Borgne, which is in Louisiana’s sprawling Biloxi Marsh Complex. According to the report, the officers were looking for people allegedly violating state statues for seed oyster harvesting. The report claims that no one on the patrol witnessed any crimes or civil violations. Despite this, it says that “the federal partners were able to identify and detain 3 subjects for immigration issues,” adding that “all arrestees were transported by Federal agencies to detention centers.” It’s unclear why these individuals were singled out, but all three appear to have Hispanic last names. The report claims that two of the arrested individuals legally entered the United States but overstayed the amount of time they were allowed to remain in the country. The third person, it claims, entered the country illegally and had an unspecified “criminal history.” Given the report’s sparse information about the men, it’s unclear if any of them have been deported or remain in federal custody. Some time after the August 11 patrol, the report claims, a CBP lieutenant asked LDWF about organizing “future patrol opportunities and joint patrols” with the agency. “After this operation, CBP has reason to believe that future patrols will be beneficial and productive,” the report reads. “They also expressed how much they learned traversing some of the more specific waterbodies with the local knowledge of our agents, they were able to learn new routes across the area that will allow them to extend the effectiveness of their independent patrols.” In an August 22 email obtained by WIRED, LDWF regional captain Tim Fox says that CBP wanted to organize future patrols “on a less formal basis.” It’s unclear whether a less formal patrol would still produce a paper trail. According to a later LDWF incident report, the agency arrested three additional people in October, all of whom were taken into ICE custody. The men were issued civil citations for going to a wildlife management area and using their firearms without the proper permits, the report says, but none were issued any criminal charges. The report claims that on October 23, two LDWF officers patrolling the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area heard several gunshots in an area where “people often illegally target shoot.” The suspects, three men in their twenties, all cooperated with LDWF at the scene. When asked to show their weapons, they showed the officers a pistol, an AR-15, several magazines, and a few dozen rounds of ammunition. The officers confirmed that none of the firearms were stolen. One of the men also showed the officers where they had been shooting. The men showed identification—a Louisiana ID card, a Honduran ID card, and a Honduran passport, respectively—when asked, but did not have the appropriate permits for being in a Wildlife Management Area and firing a weapon. The two men who fired weapons were issued three civil citations, while the one who didn’t was issued two. At some point during LDWF’s interactions with the men, the agency called immigration authorities. “Due to the unknown immigration status and them possessing firearms, we made contact with Homeland Security Investigations,” the report reads. A HSI agent reportedly told LDWF that one of the men had a final removal order, one had “pending” immigration proceedings, and one man had legal parole to be in the US. When LDWF contacted the local ICE field office, ICE sent two agents to the scene. Upon arrival, the report claims, “The ICE Officers made several phone calls and they decided to take custody of all three subjects.” All three men were placed in handcuffs and escorted to the ICE officers’ vehicles. It’s unclear if any of these men were deported, but based on information in the report, none of them appear to currently be in ICE custody, according to the agency’s detainee locator. In response to WIRED’s public record request, LDWF also included an incident report filed on October 6. The report describes a man who allegedly littered “roofing shingles, nails and other assorted building materials” near Cypress Lake for which he was issued one civil citation for “gross littering.” It notes that the man didn’t speak English, but “was cooperative during this investigation” with the help of a translator. The incident report says that the man had “unverified citizenship,” but it does not specify whether he was taken into ICE custody. When asked about the incident and why it was included in the response to WIRED’s public record request, a LWFD spokesperson clarified that the agency reported the man to ICE after he was issued the littering citation. The spokesperson said that as a result of the man’s “unverified citizenship,” the LDWF “forwarded the citation and report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” “LDWF has no further information regarding Mr. Garcia’s current status or location,” the spokesperson said.

THESE CENTRES, IN A NON-PLACE LOST AMONG THE MOUNTAINS, THREATEN TO BECOME A EUROPEAN MODEL FOR DEPORTATIONS ~ Thymo Nzk ~ On 1 November, hundreds gathered in Tirana, Albania to protest against the Rama–Meloni agreement, which provides for the construction of the detention and repatriation centres for migrants outside the EU borders. The current wave of securitisation sweeping across Europe has paved the way for yet another advance in the externalisation of borders—a trend that risks becoming the so-called “Albanian model.” At the heart of the issue is deportation procedures for people in transit, a topic soon to reach the European Parliament under the forthcoming Return Regulation. The implementation of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum is scheduled for June 2026. While Europe’s far-right rallies behind the slogan “remigration,” Italy once again plays the role of pioneer in an authoritarian experiment. Despite legal ambiguities, the Meloni government began building detention facilities in Albania’s remote province of Lezha shortly after the November 2023 agreement. The move sets a perilous precedent, but it is not a first. Offshore processing models were previously considered by both Denmark and the United Kingdom (the notorious “Rwanda plan.”) During a recent bilateral meeting, Keir Starmer reportedly expressed interest in establishing Return Hubs of his own. But Edi Rama suggested looking elsewhere in the region, stressing Albania’s “special relationship” with Italy. Rama often romanticises this link as one of friendship and cultural proximity. Yet, seen through a historical lens, it is hard not to see it on colonial terms. In 1939, fascist Italy invaded and annexed Albania, turning it into a protectorate, a dynamic of dominance that still echoes through contemporary economic and political ties. The transactional nature of this partnership is hard to miss. The Giro d’Italia’s decision to begin its 2024 edition with a symbolic first stage in Albania came just two days before national elections that secured Rama his fourth consecutive term. Few tools generate national pride, and thus political consensus, much like sport. The transnational network Against Migrant Detention had already mobilised in Tirana last December. Protests outside Albania’s Constitutional Court denounced the agreement’s multiple irregularities. Thirty-three NGOs appealed to the Court of Justice of the European Union, but their case was dismissed on procedural grounds and the legal scholar Endri Shabani, co-founder of the anti-corruption movement Nisma Thurje, likened detention in these centres to “kidnapping.” The Camps in the Mountains The section of the centre intended for asylum seekers has a capacity of 880 places. The Center for Permanent Repatriation (CPR) has a capacity of 144, with 20 spaces reserved for the prison. These centres are in a non-place lost among the mountains, a landscape that appears empty and desolate. Amid the rocks, high concrete walls topped with barbed wire stand out, and metal bars surround stacks of sterile containers. A slap in the face for who ever believed in the rhetoric of a Europe of rights-born from the ruins of a history of regimes thought to belong to the past, supposedly closed and overcome. Cases of serious self-harm have already occurred. The death of Hamod Badoui, arrested, deported, transferred repeatedly, stands as a tragic indictment of this system. Here, isolation becomes a deliberate tool of psychological breakdown, discouraging others from making the journey. Saturday’s demonstration began in Tirana’s central Skënderbej Square. Around 150 participants, mainly Italians, Albanians, but also some from others from across Europe, marched to the Italian embassy shouting “Shame on you!”, then onward to EU offices and the prime minister’s residence, chanting in several languages: “Marveshje ilegale, rezistencë globale” (Illegal agreement, global resistance) and “Make the fortress Europe fall.” Later, the group travelled 60 km north to Lezha, the province administering the centres. The mayor has actively spread disinformation, even launching a racist meme campaign on social media. In this economically fragile region, the centres are marketed as job opportunities offering above-average wages. Besmira Lekaj, coordinator of the youth centre welcomed us to HANA’s offices (Hand to Hand against National Apathy) to give us an insight into the local social fabric and share the work they do. By focusing on awareness-raising and the promotion of active citizenship, they play a crucial role in the community. The context is complex, and the only criticism of the agreement from the main opposition party (the Democratic Party of Albania) concerned the perceived threat that the arrival of alleged foreign sexual predators would pose to the community. They described Albanian society as still deeply affected by the legacy of the old regime. The current governing party (the Socialist Party for Development) is the direct heir of the dictatorship-era Party of Labour of Albania, later restructured and renamed, though still partially maintaining its central apparatus and local territorial structures. At the Gates of Gjadër As night fell, demonstrators reached the Gjadër camp. Outside the gates, they read aloud the names of forty-seven people who died in Italian detention centres. Their voices echoed across the empty landscape, unanswered by the indifferent Albanian and Italian police officers stationed beyond the fences. Only a few mocking grins came in reply. The next day, a plenary assembly at the University of Tirana titled “Is Europe Still Our Dream?” hosted discussions, debates and renewed calls for action. Activists from “Mediterranea Bologna” were absent from these two days of events due to a protest against the expulsion of two Albanian citizens. On their way to join the rally, they noticed that the police were using the very Ryanair flight they had boarded. They attempted to raise awareness among the staff, but then refused to remain on board, opposing the normalisation of the use of civilian flights for deportations. The campaign to denounce the illegitimacy of this deal will continue, though much now depends on the European Court of Justice, which has not yet ruled on the matter. The Italian judiciary have already rejected several detention validations from Gjadër. Under the original plan, migrants intercepted at sea by the authorities would be transferred to Albania, where their asylum claims would be processed before deportation. Officially, stays are meant to last 24 hours in the hotspot and up to 28 days in the detention centre—a timetable many lawyers deem impossible to implement. A recent ruling by the European Court of Justice has already constrained such practices, but the European Commission’s spokesperson for Home Affairs, Markus Lammert, said that if conducted “under EU law,” the protocol could “in principle” be deemed compliant. After all, it only takes a new law to legalise a human-rights violation. Values, it seems, are malleable, bendable to fit the shifting balances of power. The struggle ahead will be fought on many fronts: legal, cultural and moral. But one thing is clear, this marks the dawn of a new repressive paradigm that Europe will have to reckon with for years to come. The post Hostages overseas: Italy’s frontier-prison in Albania appeared first on Freedom News.

WHILE LAST YEAR THE PERPETRATORS WERE IDENTIFIED AS BEING PART OF ORGANISED CRIME, IN 2025 THE MAIN AGGRESSORS ARE UNKNOWN ACTORS AND STATE ACTORS ~ Aldo Santiago, Avispa Midia ~ While the governor of Chiapas, Eduardo Ramírez Aguilar, boasts that it is the, “second safest state in the country,” attacks against human rights defenders, journalists, and activists have increased by 29% so far in 2025, according to a report prepared by the Observatory of Human Rights Defenders in Chiapas (OHRD) Last Friday (31 October), OHRD released a report documenting 79 attacks against human rights activists and journalists that occurred in the southern Mexican state during the first half of 2025. According to the organisation, the data is alarming because, compared to the same period in 2024, it shows a clear upward trend in violence against human rights activists. The records of the OHRD demonstrate that the documented types of attacks aim to obstruct or halt human rights activists’ work in Chiapas, as evidenced by the pattern of violence and harassment recorded. Among the documented cases, 85% were direct attacks on activists and journalists, and only 15% were related to contextual risks. Of all the violence, 62% were physical attacks and 38% were digital. The most frequent types of aggression include intimidation, defamation, surveillance, criminalisation, verbal abuse and abuse of power. Digital attacks manifested as hateful, aggressive, intimidating, or sexually explicit messages. “In particular, there has been an increase in surveillance and intimidation in digital spheres, as well as serious physical attacks. Defamation is carried out by state officials in retaliation for reports of violence and ineffectiveness by the state apparatus, criminalising the legitimate work of civil society and journalists,” the report details. The Observatory of Social Security (Obse) also highlights the difference between the current data and the 2024 period regarding the origins of the attacks. Its records show a change in the profile of the aggressors during the first seven months of 2025. While last year the perpetrators were identified as being part of organised crime, in 2025 the main aggressors are unknown actors and state actors. Secondly, the organization details that, especially in defamation cases, government authorities are identified as the perpetrators. Lastly, individuals linked to organised crime are identified. Among the main motivations attributed to the perpetrators are generating fear, discrediting individuals, undermining the work of the defence sector, criminalising dissent, and promoting self-censorship. THE MOST ATTACKED AREAS: LAND, ACCESS TO JUSTICE, AND WOMEN According to Obse, the 79 recorded incidents represent an average of 11 violent incidents per month. Among the attacks against human rights activists, the most frequently targeted rights are those related to land and territory, access to justice, and the rights of Indigenous peoples and women. The defence of land and territory stands out as the area with the highest number of attacks, compared to the same period in 2024. The report also emphasises an increase in attacks against those who defend women’s rights. Among the victims are members of human rights organisations, activists, community authorities, and leaders of local organisations in contexts of heightened violence. “The majority of documented victims of attacks are women, 66% in 2025, representing an increase compared to the same period in 2024, when they accounted for 58%,” Obse emphasises. In March, during his report on the first 100 days of his term, Governor Ramírez Aguilar presented Chiapas as “the second safest state in the country.” However, information gathered by organisations collaborating with Obse reveals a very different scenario. With the implementation of a new security strategy, which notably includes the actions of the new police force known as the Pakal Immediate Reaction Force (FRIP), communities have witnessed a reduction in armed confrontations, contributing to a perception of apparent calm, the report emphasises. “However, to this day the violence continues and the forms of control and threats faced by the population persist, such as forced recruitment, enforced disappearances, forced displacement, and the presence of armed forces throughout the state,” Obse reports. Slain activist priest Marcelo Perez The report adds that FRIP operations have focused on prosecuting common crimes and, furthermore, human rights violations have been documented during police actions, including arbitrary arrests and torture. In addition, they emphasise that there is control over information and the narrative surrounding the security strategy, as exemplified by the numerous public denials by state officials regarding violent incidents reported by the population. “With 73 human rights activists attacked from January to July 2025 and 69 during the same period in 2024, there is no progress in the safety of human rights defenders in the state,” says El Obse, for whom the persistence of the levels of violence contrasts with the institutional narrative that insists on the idea of a, “pacification” of the territories while normalising the security crisis. “This narrative, however, is not based on data or a real transformation of security conditions, but rather on a strategy of increasing militarisation that reinforces territorial control without questioning—much less dismantling—organised crime networks,” the report states. For these organisations, this contradiction is evident in the creation and strengthening of the FRIP, presented as a special force to combat organised crime, while at the same time, official discourse denies violence as a structural threat in Chiapas. “While it is claimed that ‘nothing is happening,’ police and military forces are deployed under the pretext of security, exacerbating the criminalisation of human rights defenders and the military occupation of Chiapas, with particular emphasis on border municipalities,” Obse emphasises. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine translation The post Chiapas: Attacks on human rights defenders and journalists on the rise appeared first on Freedom News.

In November 2005, a group of US Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them became one of the most high-profile war crimes prosecutions in US history—but then it fell apart. Only one Marine went to trial for the killings, and all he received was a slap on the wrist. Even his own defense attorney found the outcome shocking.  “It’s meaningless,” said attorney Haytham Faraj. “The government decided not to hold anybody accountable. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know how else to put it.” Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. The Haditha massacre, as it came to be known, is the subject of the third season of The New Yorker’s In the Dark podcast and this week’s episode of Reveal. Reporter Madeleine Baran and her team spent four years looking into what happened at Haditha and why no one was held accountable. They also uncovered a previously unreported killing that happened that same day, a 25th victim whose story had never before been told.  This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2025.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Over two years of nearly incessant bombardment, Israeli forces have killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, at least a third of whom are children. The human toll has been called genocide by human rights organizations around the world and by a UN commission, but a new report from an Israeli research center also points to environmental devastation: Gaza’s soil is polluted after the destruction of wastewater treatment plants, sewage contamination is widespread, and particulate matter left by exploded bombs is increasing rates of respiratory illness.  According to a new report by the Arava Institute, an environmental research institute based in Israel, Gaza is covered with an estimated 61 million tons of rubble, much of which contains asbestos, unexploded munitions, and unburied human remains. “The environmental situation in Gaza before October 7 was a disaster,” said Tareq Abuhamed, who leads the Arava Institute and is Palestinian. Rebuilding even to that prior state of disaster is likely to take decades.  A report from the UN, published in late September, estimated that nearly $70 billion in damage has been done to Gaza’s roads, buildings, and infrastructure over the past two years, while more than 80 percent of cropland has been destroyed. Less than 10 percent of all hazardous waste is being safely disposed of, and most, by necessity, is being burned or piled in open-air landfills. Untreated wastewater, meanwhile, is dumped directly on the land or into the sea.  “The garbage becomes mountains, and the mountains are a breeding site for mosquitos and rodents, which spread malaria,” said Yasser El-Nahhal, an environmental chemist and eco-toxicologist with the Islamic University of Gaza.  > “I don’t think there’s any doubt in anybody’s mind that [Israel’s actions in > Gaza have been] ecocidal.”  Long before Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, Israeli blockades prevented easy access to water, electricity, and food. Rolling blackouts have been common in Palestine for the last 20 years, and many residents relied on small-scale desalination units, plants that make seawater drinkable, and private water tankers to purchase potable water. Now, the aid organization Doctors Without Borders says that only 1 out of every 10 of their requests for water to be imported are approved by Israeli authorities.  “The environment [was] destroyed before the war,” said El-Nahhal. “But since the war, it has been destroyed several times above imagination.”  Palestinian researcher Mazin Qumsiyeh of Bethlehem University’s Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability calls what is happening now ecocide: a term broadly defined as the severe, long-term, and widespread destruction of the environment. A growing coalition of countries hopes to legally define ecocide as a crime the International Criminal Court might prosecute. “Gaza, of course, was a functioning society, even though it was subjected to significant sanctions in the past 16 years that limited supplies,” Qumsiyeh said. “They had a functioning society. They had schools, universities, sewage treatment facilities, and a desalination plant. All of this was destroyed in this genocidal, ecocidal war.”  Earlier this month, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world’s largest conservation congress, signed a resolution asserting that ecocide should be treated as a criminal offense. Jojo Mehta, founder of the legal advocacy group Stop Ecocide International, said that while the resolution defines ecocide quite broadly, it could certainly be applied to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. “What’s been happening in terms of the environment in Gaza is horrific,” Mehta said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt in anybody’s mind that it’s ecocidal.”  Israeli officials did not return multiple requests for comment on this story.  The Arava report calls for unimpeded aid to Gaza, as well as potable water systems and personal hygiene kits to mitigate disease. The UN, in its September report, wrote that to make Gaza’s environment livable again “will require a cessation of hostilities. The first phase of recovery will focus on saving lives, through restoration of essential services and removal of debris.” Nonetheless, Qumsiyeh of Bethlehem University said that Palestinians will continue to rebuild—even if, as he believes is likely, the current ceasefire falls apart. “I don’t claim we have a huge success rate,” he said, “But imagine your community being destroyed dozens of times, and you continue to rebuild. That shows an incredible amount of hopefulness.”

Elon Musk is trying to rewrite the history of his four-month tenure in Washington. As the billionaire founder of Tesla and Space X returns to the private sector after four months as a “special government employee,” he has put aside the celebratory chainsaw and cast himself as a misunderstood outsider whose dreams of efficiency were stymied by a terminally broken bureaucracy.  Nowhere is this attempted whitewashing more jarring than his effort to sweep away the consequences of the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, which has supported food assistance programs around the world and helped administer the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. Musk once bragged about feeding USAID into a “woodchipper.” But, on May 20, when Bloomberg’s Mishal Husain asked about the disruption of PEPFAR funding in an interview in Qatar, the tech executive dismissed the claim out of hand.  “First of all, the program, the AIDS medication program is continuing,” he said. “So your fundamental premise is wrong. Do you have another example, since the one you cited is false?” As Husain pressed on, explaining that the State Department—which is absorbing what’s left of USAID—had granted a waiver only to certain PEPFAR programs, Musk repeated his denial.  “It’s false, it’s false,” he said. Before Husain moved on, Musk made a promise: “Okay well which ones aren’t being funded? I’ll fix it right now.” But it was not false. And Musk did not fix it. Despite his assurances on stage—and his subsequent assertion in response to the rocker Bono that “zero people have died” as a result of funding cuts—the destruction he spearheaded is continuing to have devastating effects in places that relied on USAID for lifesaving aid. But don’t take my word for it; take the Trump administration’s. State Department cables obtained by Mother Jones warn that cuts to foreign assistance programs are driving hunger and human trafficking in Malawi, and threatening to undo years of progress battling the AIDS epidemic in Lesotho, by terminating a program that worked to prevent HIV transmission from mothers to their children.  These are just two examples, based on internal records. But the consequences of slashed or interrupted services have been severe and wide-ranging. The US has cut programs for malaria. At a hearing on Capitol Hill last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio celebrated cutting “$10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique”—a PEPFAR-supported program that reduced HIV transmission in 2.5 million men by 60 percent. The assertion that people will you die if you take away their food or medication is not a hypothetical; New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof previously reported on an HIV-positive 10-year-old orphan from South Sudan named Peter Donde who died from a pneumonia infection after the administration shuttered the community health program that ensured his access to medication. Rubio, like Musk, has called the reports that children have died as a result of program interruptions a “lie.” > “The abrupt termination of this award has severely disrupted care delivery and > threatens to reverse hard won gains in controlling Lesotho’s HIV epidemic that > leaves Lesotho vulnerable at this critical juncture,” the memo stated. “With a > shrinking health workforce, the quality and continuity of care have markedly > declined—placing approximately 125,000 adults and children at risk of illness > and death.” Before he went on the defensive, though, Musk seemed to relish the process of gutting foreign assistance. Destroying USAID was one of Musk’s first tasks at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. In his first weeks in Washington, the world’s richest man spread a conspiracy theory that USAID had helped start the Covid-19 pandemic, falsely suggested that it secretly bankrolled news organizations like Politico, and dismissed the agency’s employees as “radical-left Marxists who hate America.” The sense that the people wielding the chainsaw did not understand what they were cutting down was reinforced by Musk himself, who stated at a public cabinet meeting that “we accidentally canceled” Ebola prevention but had quickly restored the program. (The program in fact had not been restored.) Musk was not simply going rogue. His attacks were in sync with an executive order from President Donald Trump ordering a review of all foreign assistance projects, and a freeze on foreign-aid spending pending further approval. Although the State Department announced that certain life-saving programs, such as food assistance and PEPFAR, would receive waivers to continue operating, those waivers were slow to arrive and undercut by payment issues. And some programs that seemed to meet the narrow criteria were terminated anyway after a cursory review process.  That was the case with the Bophelo Bo Botle (Good Health) award, a $7 million PEPFAR grant implemented by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) in the small southern African nation of Lesotho. The country, which Trump used as a punchline during his State of the Union, has the second-highest HIV prevalence rate on Earth, but it has made significant strides thanks to years of investment in testing, education, and treatment. The award was terminated anyway on February 26 and has not been reinstated. In a May 23 cable urging the State Department to restore the cuts, a diplomat in the US embassy in Maseru noted that the program had been “delivering important services permitted under the Lifesaving Waiver” and warned that the cuts would have deadly consequences. “The abrupt termination of this award has severely disrupted care delivery and threatens to reverse hard won gains in controlling Lesotho’s HIV epidemic that leaves Lesotho vulnerable at this critical juncture,” the memo stated. “With a shrinking health workforce, the quality and continuity of care have markedly declined—placing approximately 125,000 adults and children at risk of illness and death.” According to the US diplomat, the termination means “over half of those currently receiving HIV/AIDS treatment in Lesotho will lose access, leading to treatment interruptions, increased new HIV infections, and higher mortality rates.” But it was not just about people currently living with HIV; one of the major purposes of the program, according to the cable, was “prevention of mother-to-child transmission.” Musk did not respond to a request for comment. In response to inquiries from Mother Jones, a State Department spokesperson said that, “Following the Secretary’s approval for lifesaving PEPFAR programs, PEPFAR program implementers who are providing lifesaving treatment and prevention of mother to child transmission services were notified and urged to resume approved service delivery,” and that ”[a]gencies have been working with their implementers to resume activities as quickly as possible.” But Catherine Connor, vice president of Public Policy and Advocacy at EGPAF, confirmed that while the organization was still hoping to restart the program, “the outlook is not positive.” “I think that we’re just now entering the phase where we’re able to look at the whole picture and say, well, ‘we removed this piece of the puzzle, we lost more than we were betting on,’” Connor said. “My impression is that when these decisions were made, they were made based on what’s happening on paper, not in practice. And now that these decisions are being put into practice, the implications of those decisions are coming to light.” With the termination of the program, EGPAF had “lost our eyes and ears and hands on the ground that would have really helped us identify patients that may be falling off of care, identify places in the health system where we could try the course correct,” she said. And the Lesotho government lacked the resources to fill the void. “Right now, there is a hole in the health system on what they’re able to offer,” Connor said. “The average annual income of a person in Lesotho is not much more than $1,000 a year. I think the ability for the [Lesotho] government to step in and fill these gaps quickly, you know, I think they’re trying their best, but it’s just hard to imagine a situation where they could jump in quickly and fill the gaps that the US government is leaving.” That’s just one program, in one country. Emergency food aid was another category that was supposed to be eligible for waivers. But some of the funding was simply cut. ProPublica recently reported on a State Department cable from April warning that the administration’s reductions in food aid were worsening conditions in refugee camps in Malawi—leading to an increase in human trafficking. That warning was not heeded, and in May, a diplomat at the US Embassy in Malawi’s capital city of Lilongwe sent the State Department another warning on the subject. The memo, which was obtained by Mother Jones, warned that “Reductions in assistance will exacerbate hunger, malnutrition, and other drivers of migration, making it difficult for Malawians to feed themselves and continue to support 60,000 refugees currently residing in the country.”  “Without intervention,” the official added, “continued deterioration of the food security situation will lead to loss of life.” Food assistance in the country’s refugee camps is administered by the World Food Program. The Trump administration slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in World Food Program funding—then said it had done so by mistake in some cases, and would turn the spigots back on. But that hasn’t happened in Malawi. A State Department official in Malawi reported that “[t]he lack of a USAID contribution to date in FY 2025 has made it necessary for the World Food Program to reduce the ration transfer from 75 percent to 50 percent of the caloric value.” Rations in the country’s largest camp “are set to run out in June.” The World Food Program cuts weren’t the only ones with major ramifications. “One USAID-funded emergency award implemented by a non-governmental organization was terminated, canceling planned food assistance for over 27,000 people and agricultural recovery support for small farmers,” the memo noted, “and a second award providing emergency nutrition commodities was also terminated.” And the consequences of reduced food aid went well beyond malnutrition. According to the cable: “Local social welfare authorities and police shared their observations of sharp increases in intimate partner violence, child abandonment, child marriage, and trafficking in persons in the food-insecure areas they serve, resulting from the intense stresses faced by families without food.” In a statement, the State Department spokesperson said that “an overwhelming majority of WFP programs—nearly 80% of pre-existing awards and over 115 programs with WFP—remain active” and that “the most critical elements of our global nutrition response remain fully operational.”  But they also offered a defense of the cuts as a matter of national interest: “America is the most generous nations [sic] in the world, however no one can reasonably expect the United States to be equipped to feed every person on earth or be responsible for providing medication for every living human.” For Musk, this skepticism about the value of food assistance is a bridge between his public and private work. In 2021, after the president of the World Food Program suggested on the platform now known as X that Musk could end starvation by giving away just two percent of his fortune, the billionaire shot back with a challenge. “If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it,” he said. Later that year, Musk did donate nearly $6 billion of stock to an undisclosed charity, leading to speculation that he may have followed through.  But the money ultimately did not go to staving off starvation; it ended up, instead, at his personal foundation—which distributed just 2.8 percent of that amount to actual charities that year.

The “nonprofit killer” is back—this time tucked into congressional Republicans’ aggressive new tax proposal, which they’ve dubbed the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill.” For those who forgot: In November, the House of Representatives passed HR 9495, or the “Stop Terror Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act,” which would give the Secretary of the Treasury the power to strip a nonprofit’s tax-exempt status on the suspicion of giving or receiving any backing from a ‘terrorist supporting’ group or person—as defined by the White House. The legislation started with widespread bipartisan support that waned as experts and constituents voiced outrage; it waned further after Donald Trump’s election. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), initially a backer, is one of dozens of House Democrats who flipped their vote. Doggett, as Sophie Hurwitz reported for Mother Jones, was less concerned about the bill’s text than the way Donald Trump was likely to use it: > One of the organizations whose nonprofit status Trump wants to terminate, > Doggett said, “has protested one of my speeches.” > > “Protests are inconvenient,” he said. “The one I had was inconvenient. [But] > America is stronger when we protect dissent in all its forms, as long as it is > done in a proper way.” > > > “There has been much made in this debate of the fact that some of us have been > switching positions,” he said. “Well, we listen to our constituents.” Kia Hamadanchy, the ACLU’s senior policy counsel, says the measure grants the Secretary of the Treasury “broad and unilateral discretion” to strip organizations of their tax-exempt status “without any due process”—or any evidence beyond the “accusation that they support terrorism.” Hamadanchy calls that an authority that no administration of any party should have, one that “could be weaponized against people across the political spectrum,” particularly by the Trump administration. “They’ve already shown,” Hamadanchy says, “that they want to weaponize things like nonprofit status.” Nonprofits are taking note, too. Dom Kelly, who heads the disability rights group New Disabled South, characterized the legislation as “a continued attempt to silence those who work in opposition to the Trump administration and the right’s extreme agenda.” The bill’s vague, expansive language, Kelly explains, “means that this administration can go after organizations for any reason they want.” Still, Kelly isn’t backing down: “If they come for us,” they said, “we will fight them with everything we’ve got.” For most nonprofits, especially smaller ones, that fight won’t be easy. “Even having to litigate is a huge mess, takes time, causes all sorts of headaches,” Hamadanchy says, offering the example of universities targeted by the Trump administration over student protests. > “If they come for us, we will fight them with everything we’ve got.” “A lot of people in Congress conflated student protesters with Hamas, without really any evidence,” he says. “You can imagine a world where the Trump administration tells a university: ‘You let these people protest on your campus? You are providing material support to Hamas.'” Indeed, the Trump administration has already stripped Columbia’s research funding to the tune of $400 million, ostensibly motivated by allegations of antisemitism following pro-Palestine protests last year. Harvard University has lost more than $2.5 billion in federal support since April, when it balked at Trump’s demands—again largely citing antisemitism claims—for sweeping power over its campus, curriculum, and personnel. Hamadanchy doesn’t think every application of the bill will survive legal challenges, but harm would be done simply by its becoming law: “It basically serves a larger purpose,” he says, “of chilling speech.”

DESPITE MULTIPLE COURT RULINGS IN HIS FAVOUR, ABDULRAHMAN AL-KHALIDI’S DETENTION CONTINUES UNDER SHIFTING LEGAL JUSTIFICATIONS ~ Alisa-Ece Tohumcu ~ Despite judicial rulings supporting his release, Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi, a Saudi dissident and former member of the pro-democracy Bees Army, remains held in detention in Bulgaria since October 2021. Bulgarian authorities, primarily the State Agency for National Security (SANS), have continued to block his freedom on national security grounds. He has not been charged with any crime. “I am not an accused person, nor am I guilty, nor have I been convicted of anything to seek pardon or forgiveness”, said Al-Khalidi in a statement. He revealed that the Sofia Administrative Court had ruled on 26 March that he must be released immediately. Instead of being freed, Al-Khalidi was transferred to a different section of the Busmantsi detention centre, where he was informed that his detention was being reclassified from “asylum detention” to “expulsion detention.” When he attempted to contact his lawyer, his phone was taken by officials who physically restrained him. He was coerced into signing documents under the threat that he would otherwise be denied access to an appeal process. Solidarity demonstration with Al-Khalidi Al-Khalidi argues this reclassification was a deliberate attempt to bypass the court’s decision and prepare for his deportation, despite his asylum claim which is still ongoing. He cites violations of the EU Directive which limits the detention of asylum seekers to situations where less restrictive alternatives are unavailable, and only following individual assessment. Al-Khalidi applied for asylum in November 2021, shortly after crossing into Bulgaria and being arrested. Over the next three years, his application was rejected multiple times and appealed through Bulgaria’s court system. In May 2023, the Supreme Administrative Court annulled all lower decisions and sent his case back for retrial due to procedural irregularities. His asylum case remains unresolved and pending appeal at the Supreme Administrative Court. A petition calling for an end to his deportation has gathered over 1,100 signatures. On 10 March, Front Line Defenders, along with 20 other human rights organisations, issued a joint statement warning that Al-Khalidi faces a serious risk of torture or death if returned to Saudi Arabia. They called on Bulgarian authorities to respect court decisions and international obligations. “The Bulgarian government must immediately release Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi, in line with the court rulings and its obligations under international human rights law”, said the statement The post Saudi dissident faces deportation from Bulgaria appeared first on Freedom News.