It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Gold’s 9% rebound in August to around $4,400 an ounce suggests bullion is starting to regain favour with institutional investors and central banks, leaving the market better placed to extend gains as it moves beyond the initial shock of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
The outbreak of the war in late February drove gold from a record high of $5,595 per ounce in January to below $4,000 in June as investors sought liquidity and some central banks tapped reserves to support domestic economies amid an oil price rally.
“It feels as though the handbrake has finally been released from gold,” said Ross Norman, an independent analyst.
Gold prices have broken above two key resistance levels this month, helped by lower oil prices and softer U.S. inflation data that reduced expectations for future rate hikes.
“If oil doesn’t steal the show again, if the situation in the Middle East does not erupt and oil prices spike, then it looks as if the path of least resistance for gold is higher,” said James Steel, chief precious metals analyst at HSBC.
The strength of the price rebound over the past two weeks suggests central banks or sovereign wealth funds may have been active, Steel said, adding that this thought was an inference rather than confirmed knowledge.
Another likely source of support was institutional demand for large bars as premiums in Asian trading hubs, including China, implied renewed buying interest. In China, the gold premium was at $1.50 an ounce last week. GOL/AS
“It is really, I think, the rebuilding of positions that large institutions had before the conflict with Iran,” Steel said.
Limiting the upside for bullion are faltering talks to end the Iran war, subdued jewellery and coin demand as well as flows into gold-backed ETFs, which are sensitive to interest rates. According to the World Gold Council, these ETFs added only $7 billion to $582 billion of assets under management in the first half of August.
Technical signals also act as a headwind: the relative strength index suggests gold is approaching near-term “overbought” levels, keeping the 200-day moving average, currently at $4,504, as a strong resistance level.
Source: Reuters
(Reporting by Polina Devitt; editing by Paul Simao)
Monday, August 17, 2026
New book reveals how to manage pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes without drugs, weight loss or supplements
GEM program emphasizes smart eating, physical activity
After 16 years of research and clinical testing, University of Virginia School of Medicine diabetes expert Daniel J. Cox, PhD, has authored a book detailing how people with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes can manage their condition without weight loss, insulin, medication or supplements.
After 16 years of research and clinical testing, a University of Virginia School of Medicine diabetes expert has authored a book detailing how people with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes can manage their condition without the need for weight loss, insulin, medication or supplements.
UVA’s Daniel J. Cox, PhD, not only created the GEM program, he has used it successfully for many years to manage his own type 2 diabetes – putting the disease in remission for the past 15 years. The program, Glucose Everyday Matters (GEM), teaches users to listen to their bodies, understand the consequences of their food choices and use exercise strategically to regulate their blood sugar.
Cox says the goal is to provide people with a practical alternative to medication that does not require dieting or deprivation. “I wanted to give patients, and myself, a way to directly and immediately control blood sugar,” he said. “All other approaches indirectly control blood sugar by increasing insulin production, assisting sugar to exit the body through urine or reducing insulin resistance.”
More than 600 million people around the world have pre-diabetes, and 530 million have type 2 diabetes, a condition in which the body becomes unable to regulate blood sugar. This can lead to heart disease, kidney disease, blindness, dementia and many other serious medical conditions. Type 2 diabetes typically affects people over age 45 but is increasingly striking children, teenagers and young adults. Many people must use medication or insulin injections to manage the disease.
In his new book, “A GEM for Your Pre- or Type 2 Diabetes,” Cox lays out his alternative. The program emphasizes how small choices, such as food selection, ultimately have a big impact on blood-sugar levels. But it also emphasizes flexibility: If someone craves a sugary treat, they can have a small piece, but they may need to take a walk after to keep it from spiking their blood sugar.
In addition to controlling blood sugar, the GEM program can have far-reaching health benefits, Cox says. It can help cut down on cravings, reduce fatigue and help prevent energy crashes. It can boost motivation, confidence and emotional well-being. And it can help build smart habits that support long-term wellness.
Many users find they lose weight without really trying. “People learn that they are in control of their blood sugar, not a victim of it, and learn that while focusing on controlling the blood sugar, they are getting healthier and more fit in the process,” said Cox, part of UVA Health’s Center for Diabetes Technology. “I’m always juiced after talking to people in the program, hearing how empowered they felt and [how they were] surprised to learn high blood sugar depends on what they choose to do.”
The approach has been tested in multiple clinical trials, and the vast majority of participants have benefited greatly, Cox noted. It does not work for everyone, but it can be life-changing for many.
“This book is for those people who want to take charge of their diabetes and feel empowered in the process. This book is also beneficial for significant others who live, eat and exercise with the person with diabetes,” Cox said. “My goal is to translate our years and millions of dollars of research findings into real-world benefits for those millions managing pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes.”
Cox’s book is now available at Amazon in an electronic format, for $2.99, and in print as well.
The second prototype of the Mobile Guardian Transporter test vehicle arrives at the sled track facility at Sandia National Laboratories for a head-on crash. Test results will help qualify the Mobile Guardian Transporter design, ahead of full-rate production.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — With rockets propelling it down the sled track at Sandia National Laboratories, a semitrailer loaded with mock nuclear weapons slammed into a barrier. It took mere moments to complete the second and final full-scale crash test of the Mobile Guardian Transporter, a next-generation system that will carry nuclear weapons and other sensitive materials for the Department of Energy’s Office of Secure Transportation.
The tests are designed to demonstrate that, if a trailer were ever involved in an accident on a public road, the cargo inside would remain secure and pose no danger to nearby communities, a key tenet of the Office of Secure Transportation’s mission and vision.
“This was our last opportunity to understand how the trailer performs in a crash,” said Jason Berger, the program’s crash test lead for the second test asset. “The results will help qualify the design, a critical step before production can begin.”
Sandia conducted a side-impact crash that evaluated the first Mobile Guardian Transporter test asset in 2020. The second test completes the full-scale crash series and gives engineers a more complete picture of how the trailer performs in severe accidents.
“The second prototype crash test is a critical step in showing that the trailer and its cargo do not pose a hazard to the public,” Berger said.
“We are extremely proud of the commitment and dedication of teams across Sandia and our external partners, who applied their knowledge to make this a successful test,” said Kelly Neely, the senior manager overseeing the Mobile Guardian Transporter program. “It’s taken focus, determination and technical expertise to get us to this point.”
Test planning and execution
While the test itself lasted only a few moments, planning and preparation took about a year and a half. For a test of this scope, that’s not very long.
“This was a very heavily instrumented test and the overall scope of it was very large,” said James Dykes, the test director. “These kinds of large-scale, high-consequence tests don’t come along very often because of the complexity. It was the largest data collection effort in the history of Sandia’s rocket sled track facility.”
A test with 100 channels of data collection and a few cameras would already be considered complex. In this test, the trailer was equipped with nearly 500 data channels for acceleration, strain, force and temperature, plus about three dozen cameras, when rockets propelled it down Sandia’s sled track in the fall of 2025.
Test coordination
As part of the planning process, the team created redundant pathways and backup channels to ensure they could capture the most critical data if some equipment failed.
“With this test, we’ve gone beyond the bounds of what is understood commercially and inside Sandia for data collection and acquisition,” Berger said. “To accomplish this, Sandia’s sled track test team stood up a temporary multi-acre facility with a control center, data collection trailers and console trailers near the sled track. Working at a remote, undeveloped site introduced many challenges. Strong monsoon storms caused flooding at the sled track multiple times, but the teams worked through these challenges to ensure the test occurred on schedule.”
Impact on weapons programs
Several nuclear weapons modernization and stockpile programs provided hardware for the test, including Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories. These systems represent different types of nuclear weapons that must be transported.
“Nuclear deterrence programs need to assess safe and secure transportation for each weapon type,” said Tara Olivier, a Sandia senior manager working in nuclear deterrence. “Gathering the environmental data from the crash will help qualify those systems on the Mobile Guardian Transporter.”
With so many partners, a large task in test planning was getting everyone on the same page.
“It’s a huge effort to coordinate all of the teams, and then to ensure we’re doing the right test and collecting the right data,” Berger said.
As part of the test, the trailer, restraints and the shipping containers for the weapon systems were pushed to their limits. Capturing the right data was essential for understanding how this hardware performed and for supporting future design qualification.
Validating the models
With the test complete, the team is now focused on analyzing the data.
“We met all our testing objectives, including the speed at which the trailer crashed. We’re where we wanted to be with data acquisition and collection,” Dykes said.
The Mobile Guardian Transporter team will continue working closely with modeling and simulation teams to compare the test results with pretest predictions and refine their computer models.
“Using the crash test data, we’ll build a modeling and simulation tool that will allow us to analyze many different crash environments,” Berger said. “The modeling and simulation tool will be our enduring tool to assess trailer performance, assess safety of our weapons systems during transport, and assess nuclear safety of the trailer.”
Key partnerships
Strong partnerships across the nation’s nuclear security enterprise were essential to executing a successful test.
“Executing this crash test is a shining example of Sandia integration and what we can do,” Berger said. “Large-scale systems-of-systems tests involve many stakeholders and, specific to the crash test, it was critical that the Office of Secure Transportation, NNSA and Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national labs were all in lockstep for funding, delivery of test hardware on schedule and development of a complex technical basis and data collection design.”
At Sandia, the design agency for Office of Secure Transportation’s Mobile Guardian Transporter and the lead systems integrator for nuclear weapons programs, about 200 employees worked on the test.
“Completing the crash test for the Mobile Guardian Transporter is a significant accomplishment, thanks to the dedication and commitment of many Sandians and our exceptional partners,” Labs Director Laura McGill said. “Safe and secure transport is a key element of maintaining a credible deterrent.”
The Kansas City National Security Campus’s New Mexico Operations location is the production agency for the Mobile Guardian Transporter. The crash test data will help inform final design decisions and support future production of the new transporter fleet.
Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia Labs has major research and development responsibilities in nuclear deterrence, global security, defense, energy technologies and economic competitiveness, with main facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Livermore, California.
Firing set operator Paul Vinyard prepares to push the button that will initiate the rocket motors to propel the Mobile Guardian Transporter down the sled track at Sandia National Laboratories.
Credit
Photo by Bryn Whisenand/Sandia National Labs
The Nike rocket motors and the pusher sled that propelled the Mobile Guardian Transporter Prototype 2 test vehicle down the track at Sandia National Laboratories rest in the sand brake trough used to stop the sled.
Credit
Photo by Michael Ludwig/Sandia National Labs
Trump, 80, Declares Fox News Host an Enemy of MAGA
Erkki Forster Sun, August 16, 2026
DAILY BEAST
President Donald Trump melted down at Fox News host Shannon Bream after her Sunday morning broadcast failed to flatter him, seething into the evening.
The TV-obsessed president appeared to have tuned into Bream's program on Sunday morning, where the Fox News host grilled Trump's handpicked attorney general Todd Blanche over the $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization" fund and pressed him on why the president is building the White House ballroom without congressional authorization.
Trump, 80, erupted at Bream, 55, in a 340-word Truth Social tirade after the show, fuming, "Watching Fox News with Shannon Bream is always like watching the Worst of Fake News CNN."
Trump called Fox host Shannon Bream “milktoast.” / Paul Morigi / Paul Morigi/Getty Images
He continued, "I don't know Shannon, but she always seems to pick guests, charts, and 'polls' that are negative, never talking about all of the incredible things that the Trump Administration has done."
He rattled down a list of dubious supposed accomplishments, including claiming that the United States is "more RESPECTED throughout the World than at any time in Memory" and that he achieved "the essential Denuclearization of Iran."
"Yet, week after week, I see Shannon 'interviewing' hostile guests," he wrote, singling out Fox News political analyst Juan Williams, who had called Trump an "unpopular president" on Bream's program on Sunday. Trump has gotten into the habit of launching personal attacks on female journalists who ask questions he doesn’t like. / Donald Trump/Truth Social
"In any event, Shannon's 'show' is beyond redemption," the thin-skinned president said. "Fortunately, MAGA, which is close to 100% of the Republican Party, understands that, and watch her 'Ratings' start to fall."
In reality, ratings for Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream have remained relatively steady, with the show drawing roughly 1 million viewers each Sunday, according to USTVDB.
"Oh well, it couldn't have had too much of an impact," Trump wrote, seemingly trying to shrug off Bream's influence, before boasting that he was heading to the Oval Office to work on more "TRIUMPHS" and "SUCCESSES" for the country.
Bream appears to have hit a particularly sensitive nerve when she questioned Trump's ballroom on Sunday, which has emerged as one of his top priorities even as Americans struggle with soaring prices amid his quagmire war with Iran.
Bream grilled Attorney General Todd Blanche about the White House ballroom and the
"Why not just go to Congress?" Bream asked Blanche in reference to a court ruling that ordered Trump to halt construction on the ballroom because Congress has not approved the project.
"We don't believe we have to go to Congress," replied Blanche, the president's former personal lawyer. "We believe Congress has already given us the authority to do what we're doing." Bream's show was apparently still under Trump's skin by Sunday evening, when he returned for another round of complaints.
Donald Trump/Truth Social
"During Shannon Bream's show, they showed pictures of the Military Complex/Ballroom site at the White House. Unfortunately, the pictures were months old, before much work had been started," the president wrote at 9 p.m. "Why didn't Shannon Bream, 'Milktoast' to her friends, show the updated pictures instead of ones that were so old and irrelevant?"
Trump has dubbed Bream "Milk Toast" in what appears to be a mangled jab at her as "milquetoast."
"Her show, Fox News Sunday, is so biased against MAGA, 'TRUMP,' and Republicans, that it is ridiculous!" he continued. "Also, she, Brett [Baier], and others, should stop showing Fake Polls — They're just embarrassing themselves."
Trump, who has refused to accept polling showing him struggling with voters, added that Fox News' supposed unfavorable coverage reminded him of the run-up to the 2024 election, which he claimed to have won in a "landslide."
During Bream's show, Williams had pointed to Fox News' own poll showing Trump's popularity underwater, with just 39 percent of Americans approving of his performance as president compared to 61 percent disapproving.
Trump has gotten into the habit of launching personal attacks on female journalists who ask questions he doesn't like, repeatedly telling CNN host Kaitlan Collins to "smile more," calling 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O'Donnell a "disgrace," and barking "quiet piggy" at Bloomberg News correspondent Catherine Lucey.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Fox News for comment.
MASS DEPORTATION NOW!
US immigration judges are deporting people in mass hearings – some without notice
Alexandra Villarreal in San Antonio, Texas
THE GUARDIAN Sat, August 15, 2026
Families arrive for immigration court in New York City on 31 July.Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images
A man in line for the elevator bank at the federal immigration court in San Antonio, Texas, on a morning in mid-July told the security guard that he had an attorney. "You're special," the guard replied, with genuine surprise.
Upstairs, inside Brittany A Rodriquez's courtroom, the young judge with stark blond highlights gave an asylum seeker a month-and-a-half to turn around an application for protection or be ordered deported. Another person who told her "I don't have a lawyer, I only have God" was given until September to find legal representation, or the judge indicated she would move forward with the case regardless.
On Rodriquez's docket that day was a 49-year-old Cuban man who had his hearing moved up by an entire year, out of the blue; a six-year-old Mexican girl and a three-year-old Cuban boy who may have been appearing in court alone – it was not clear; a 22-year-old Venezuelan woman and her two-year-old son; and dozens of other people whose fates in the United States rested on her decisions.
Rodriquez had been on the bench for only about a month, appointed after a career in immigration enforcement. She and the federal attorney whose role it was to argue against the immigrants – the role she herself had filled for almost six years, up until May – quickly read through a list of people, 15 in total, who had missed their hearings. Now, they could be ordered removed from the US "in absentia", without being physically present to find out.
Suddenly, Rodriquez found five more no-shows on the list. "I didn't even do that whole last page," she said casually. "I think these are all 'in absentias', too."
This quiet yet life-altering scene epitomizes the newest frontier in the second Trump administration's deportation push, where people are being scheduled for mass hearings in immigration court at the last minute and those who don't make it are receiving removal orders almost by default.
That, in turn, sets them up for arrest and repatriation whenever they stumble into the midst of immigration agents – or, increasingly, run into local and state law enforcement personnel from departments that are cooperating with federal immigration enforcement, during something as benign as a traffic stop.
"There's people that are walking around, going about their business, without realizing that they have a removal order on their record," said Katie Fleming, director of public education and engagement at the Washington DC-based legal non-profit Acacia Center for Justice.
There's people that are walking around, going about their business, without realizing they have a removal order
Donald Trump has ranted against due process for immigrants and asylum seekers since his first presidential administration, when he repeatedly complained about their right to defend themselves in immigration court and said the US needed to "get rid of judges".
"When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came," Trump tweeted in 2018, adding the following day: "Hiring many thousands [sic] of judges, and going through a long and complicated legal process, is not the way to go."
Eight years later, Trump has upended the immigration courts so completely that critics allege many thousands of people are now being denied justice. Adjudicators have taken on roles as so-called deportation judges, while their agency, the executive office for immigration review (EOIR), has become an integral part of the White House's mass deportation strategy instead of a last defense against wrongful removal.
"They abandon the real mission of the agency, which is to provide fair hearings and due process to as many people as possible, and instead sort of run it as an adjunct of DHS [Department of Homeland Security] enforcement, with the only real objective to be being [able to] enter as many removal orders as you can, as fast as you can," said Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration judge.
EOIR's primary responsibility is, in its own words, "to adjudicate immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and administering the Nation's immigration laws". Yet it falls under the Department of Justice, not the US's judicial branch, raising serious, chronic concerns about its independence from executive policy priorities, while its nearly 3.2m-case backlog has long caused headaches for both Democratic and Republican administrations.
An unnamed EOIR spokesperson said: "The Executive Office for Immigration Review prioritizes the timely completion of all cases and makes scheduling adjustments as needed to ensure cases do not languish. Unnecessary delay hurts both aliens with meritorious claims and the American public who wish to see aliens with non-meritorious claims removed as quickly as possible. As it continues to add new immigration judges, EOIR will continue to make scheduling adjustments to ensure all cases are handled in a timely and lawful manner."
Now, the undermining of due process in US immigration courts has come not in one fell swoop, but with a series of policy changes since the start of the second Trump administration that has dramatically eroded the tenets of a fair court system – notice of hearings, transparency, judges' discretion, meaningful appeals, the opportunity to be heard – seemingly to prioritize speed and the administration's hard line on immigration, experts said.
The result of these new practices has been to reduce people's ability to receive individualized determinations based on the merits of their cases, cutting them off instead at earlier stages of the legal process and serving them up for deportation.
"All of these different policy changes and practices and tactics are intertwined, right?" Fleming said. "They're all part of the same story, which is instead of functioning as an independent court system where there are independent adjudicators evaluating claims one at a time, we're seeing the courts incorporated into a much broader enforcement strategy."
Many of the second Trump administration's policies that have hamstrung access to justice in the immigration courts are occurring at the earliest steps in a case, during what's called a master calendar hearing. These court dates are often a person's first few appearances and have typically been mostly administrative, with about 20 cases scheduled at once.
Usually, the judge recounts – and an interpreter at times translates – people's rights and responsibilities, explains the civil immigration charges against them, asks whether they want time to find a lawyer, gives them a list of free legal organizations, checks that the court has an up-to-date address for them and sometimes confirms the facts in their charging documents – where they're from and how they entered the US, for instance.
But over the last year-and-a-half, federal officials have debuted tactic after tactic that, as far as critics are concerned, have weaponized these hearings. Last summer, ICE attorneys started asking to dismiss thousands of cases on the spot, so they could immediately place the same people into a more fast-tracked deportation process that often bypasses the judge's role completely. By January, more streamlined efforts to quickly deny asylum applications without an individualized hearing began to surge, too.
Then, the first signs of a new tool to close as many cases at once came in March, in San Francisco, where master calendar hearings were being scheduled with little time to prepare – a test run for what was to come nationwide, researchers discovered.
By the end of May, they started noticing master calendar hearings across the country scheduled for unusually large numbers of people, with a single judge in a single session on a single day. Notice of the hearings, if given at all, was short and sent out in English; a lot of the people didn't have attorneys; and many of them were being ordered deported without ever going to court through removal orders in absentia, when they failed to appear.
"These are kind of ways to skirt you getting a final hearing where you can actually present evidence for the relief you're seeking in immigration court," said Brandon Marrow, who created bklg.org, and who is researching what the federal government has now labeled "mega master" calendar hearings.
Officials have set a threshold of 100-200 scheduled cases and 150 total people per session for these mega masters, while disproportionately and intentionally singling out those without lawyers. Even hearings that don't meet the definition for mega masters have often been much larger than they were historically, and at much shorter notice for the respondent.
These accelerated court dates make it harder for people to find lawyers if they don't already have one, as their timeline shrinks from months or years to mere days. Free representation is difficult to come by, with legal clinics across the country already overwhelmed by their caseloads, while private attorneys require immigrants to have saved up for what often amounts to thousands of dollars in fees.
Ironically, having a lawyer would allow for faster proceedings, Schmidt said.
"If somebody came in with a lawyer, I could probably do a fair master calendar in about two minutes," he recalled. "It actually took much longer to do hearings, masters, without lawyers if, you know, if you really wanted to give the person a fair opportunity to be heard."
For the mega masters especially, there are almost always more people scheduled than the number who ultimately attend – which usually means at least some proportion are then being ordered removed in absentia. The number of respondents who are not detained appearing for masters hearings this June rose 28.6% compared with June 2024, while the number of in absentia removal orders soared 183.6%, according to researchers at bklg.org.
"Their case isn't being heard on any level, and if they filed an application for relief, if they filed an asylum application, if they filed all the evidence – if they're not in court, the court will deem that application abandoned," Fleming said.
The reasons why people aren't attending their hearings are manifold, but two stand out: lack of notice and fear. Schmidt remembers how often mistakes cropped up when he was a judge, where addresses had the wrong street name or city, and where notices were returned to the court instead of reaching their intended recipient.
"The clerical staff was spread pretty thin, and filing change of address forms wasn't one of their top priorities," he said. "There'd be stacks of them sitting on credenzas, waiting to be filed, which told you something about the reliability of the system."
In recent months, the median potential notice period, or lead time immigrants who are not in detention have had ahead of master calendar hearings has plummeted, falling to just 42 days in June. With notifications still sent through the mail, attorneys fear immigrants are not learning of their hearings until it's too late, a concern supported by existing data.
When Christopher Cusmano, an immigration judge in New York, oversaw a master calendar hearing with 73 people and a median lead time of 169 days, on 27 May, he issued seven removal orders in absentia. A month later, on 25 June, more than three-quarters of the 95 people on his docket, who had a median lead time of just 24 days, received in absentia removal orders, according to data provided by researchers at bklg.org.
In Kansas City, Judge Jayme Salinardi considered two dockets in early June. The first – where 93 people had a median lead time of, at most, 15 days to be alerted that their court date had changed – resulted in 56 in absentia orders. The second, where 96 people had a median lead time of 196 days, ended with just nine, research by bklg.org further found.
Even if people do receive sufficient notice of their hearings, many are terrified to go near an immigration courthouse after arrests there last year. Since at least 1996, both immigration judges and what is now DHS have recognized that the presence of immigration enforcement officers in the courts can have "a chilling effect on the respondent's ability to present his or her case". But once the second Trump administration took office, EOIR officials quickly dismissed that shared understanding as "contrary to logic".
What ensued were high-profile mass arrests, where ICE agents stalked the courts' hallways for their targets, whom they then hauled to detention centers across the country. A federal judge has since blocked that policy, but enough people had already been affected to sow fear and distrust among immigrants who otherwise would have likely attended their hearings.
In total, judges issued 53,808 removal orders in absentia in June, constituting a majority of overall case completions for that month. More than 13,000 of those removal orders came from master calendar hearings with a hundred or more people scheduled, where the median lead time was 45 days or fewer.
"These absentia numbers are completely unlike anything that's been seen before in the immigration courts," said Joseph Gunther, a researcher with bklg.org. "Certainly, compared to before, a lot of things are happening that are completely unprecedented."
Even if people attend their hearings, courts under pressure to issue removal orders are at times rushing proceedings, experts suggested. In Minnesota, Fleming recently witnessed a judge order a detained person deported because their application had not yet arrived – despite the fact it was written punctually in detention then had been misdirected in the mail.
Once people are ordered deported, reversing course can be a feat, even if the reason is something as obvious as never receiving notice of their court date. Generally, immigrants would have to file what are called motions to reopen, which typically carry a $1,065 filing fee and are "challenging applications," Fleming explained, adding: "They require evidence and legal argument."
"It can be very hard to get an attorney to drop everything and represent someone on a complex motion to reopen," she continued. "So it puts them in a very vulnerable legal position" – one where ICE could arrest and deport them, as quickly as in a single day.
Meanwhile, more than 100 immigration judges have been fired or have resigned or retired since Trump's second inauguration, many of them being those with higher rates of granting relief or who had experience defending immigrants.
Their replacements have increasingly been recruited by the administration, won over by rhetoric such as: "Apply today to become a deportation judge" who will make decisions that will "define America for generations".
In June, fewer than 2% of all completed cases across all hearings ended with an immigrant winning relief, such as asylum or another legal pathway through the court.
"When you send out ads recruiting deportation judges, I think you're probably not going to get people whose primary concern is understanding immigration law or making sure that people are fairly treated or, you know, resisting government overreach," Schmidt said.
On the same day as Rodriquez's morning docket in San Antonio, the clerk for another judge at the courthouse, appointed under the first Trump administration, spoke quietly to her colleagues and was overheard by the Guardian saying: "We don't have that many attorneys" for all the immigrants appearing before them.
Among the lawyers who did attend, many asked for more time to work on their clients' cases, as at least some of them hadn't even been able to review the record yet.
That judge, Rifian Newaz, reached the list of no-shows at the court that day and paused for a long time, clearly painstakingly reviewing everyone's files. One person didn't get proper notice of the hearing, he said. Another was just a child, whom he then moved to the docket for unaccompanied kids, to give a second chance.
When the hearing concluded, he had still issued 26 new in absentia removal orders.
Opinion - Europeans are sour on Trump, but they increasingly back his immigration policy
David Wippman and Glenn Altschuler, opinion contributors Sun, August 16, 2026
THE HILL
It took only a few days for Europe's latest immigration crisis to threaten one of the European Union's core principles.
After 72,000 migrants from Morocco entered Ceuta, a Spanish territory in North Africa, Italy imposed temporary border restrictions against travelers from Spain. Spain promptly reciprocated, jeopardizing the freedom of movement that has been a cornerstone of European integration.
The episode underscores a striking paradox. A huge majority of Europeans have an unfavorable view of President Trump. But on immigration, the issue that did more than any other to drive his political ascent, they are moving in his direction.
As a presidential candidate, Trump cited the need "to regain respect all over the world" as one of the most important issues facing the U.S. In May, Trump declared (and not for the first time), "Our nation is … respected again, respected like never before."
Polling tells a different story. Across the partisan political spectrum, Europeans have been alienated by Trump's tariffs, threats to seize Greenland, attacks on NATO, the war in Iraq, and his expressions of contempt for the leaders of their countries.
In 2022, people in every country in Western Europe considered the U.S. a reliable partner. Now, only Hungary and Poland do. In a recent survey of 36 countries, respondents in 25 said they view China more favorably than the U.S. That includes Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada and Mexico.
In the United Kingdom, France, and Spain, only 13 percent of the population hold a favorable view of Trump. That number falls to 9 percent in Italy, 8 percent in Germany, and 4 percent in Denmark.
But on immigration, leaders of right-wing parties, whose animus for immigrants long predates Trump, have borrowed from his playbook to foster a populist revolt against mainstream political institutions and political elites. Some of them may soon take power in Europe's most important democracies.
In France, Marine Le Pen's far right National Rally Party brands immigration an existential threat to national identity, security, and economic stability. Le Pen favors immigration quotas and "national priority" for French citizens in jobs, housing, and social welfare benefits. National Rally has a commanding lead ahead of next April's presidential election.
The Alternative for Germany, a party whose slogan "Everything for Germany" was once used by the Nazis, has been classified by the country's own domestic intelligence service as a right-wing extremist organization. It opposes asylum, advocates mass deportations, even of German citizens who are not ethnic Germans, and depicts the country's Muslim population as "a great danger to our state, our society, and our system of values." And this party has overtaken Chancellor Friedrich Merz's governing center-right party in the polls.
In Britain, Nigel Farage's Reform U.K. party deems immigration "a scourge" and blames immigrants for rising prices, declining living standards, and inadequate public services. Last month, Farage accused the British government of "anti-white racism" and promised to ban foreign nationals from government housing and welfare programs if he is elected. Reform U.K. has been leading in the polls for the better part of a year. It now comes in a close second to the governing Labour party, but that drop is likely a temporary product of Andy Burnham's recent elevation to Prime Minister.
For European right-wing nationalist politicians who met last year in Madrid under the banner "Make Europe Great Again," Trump has become a political liability. They know that in Italy, for example, confidence in Trump among voters with a favorable view of Prime Minister Georgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy Party has fallen from 49 percent to 30 percent. And they know that British voters, asked why they would not support Reform U.K., listed Farage's support for Trump as their top reason.
Recognizing the explosive power of anti-immigrant sentiment, leaders of moderate and even left-leaning governments in Europe have tightened immigration policies, asylum rules, and border controls. More and more, Europe's mainstream politicians have begun to sound much like their nationalist counterparts.
Denmark's prime minister, a social democrat, suggested Spain might be excluded from the Schengen Area, which allows free movement among its 29 member countries. Merz, Germany's Chancellor, demanded that Morocco "take back illegal migrants immediately."
Political leaders who ignore public concerns about immigration imperil their prospects at the polls. But the politics of immigration have become increasingly disconnected from reality. Anti-immigration sentiment has intensified, even though the number of migrants entering Europe illegally is far lower than it was a decade ago.
As in the U.S., immigration has become a proxy for deeper anxieties — about national identity, economic insecurity, cultural change, and the extent to which political elites care about ordinary voters. Trump has turned those fears into a politics that scapegoats immigrants as criminals and invaders and treats political opponents as threats to the nation.
Europeans don't like Trump. They should think carefully before embracing his signature policy.
David Wippman is emeritus president of Hamilton College. Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
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4.3 The Multitude against Empire. 393. Notes. 415. Index. 473. Page 11. PREFACE. Empire is materializing before our very eyes. Over the past several decades, as ...
Page 1. MULTITUDE. WAR AND DEMOCRACY. IN THE AGE OF EMPIRE. MICHAEL HARDT ... Empire calls on war for its legitimation, the multitude calls on democracy as its ...
Just as today's. Empire was formed in response to the insurgencies of the multitudes from below, so too, potentially, it could fall to them, as long as those.
