Greenpeace Says Latest Keystone Pipeline Spill Shows Why Big Oil Targets Climate Activists

"Oil companies know that protest works," said Greenpeace USA's leader.


The Keystone pipeline ruptured and spilled oil near Fort Ransom, North Dakota on April 8, 2025.
(Photo: South Bow)

Jessica Corbett
Apr 11, 2025
CO0MMON DREAMS

With cleanup efforts still underway in rural North Dakota on Friday after yet another Keystone crude oil pipeline spill, Greenpeace USA interim executive director Sushma Raman said that the incident "shows exactly why we need to protect protest, free speech, and the right to speak up against harm."

Keystone ruptured on Tuesday, spilling an estimated 3,500 barrels of oil into an agricultural field, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). That came just weeks after a North Dakota jury awarded Energy Transfer and its subsidiary more than $660 million in a case targeting Greenpeace for protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline.

"We know fossil fuels are unhealthy at every stage of their life cycle. There is no fail-safe way to transport oil and gas, and the risks unfairly fall on the people who live near the route, while the company reaps the benefits," Raman said in a Friday statement. "Everyday people, public watchdogs, and advocacy groups have a right to raise their voices and criticize a corporation when their health and livelihoods are on the line."

"Yet this type of ordinary advocacy is exactly what is under attack in the more than $660 million jury verdict against Greenpeace entities in a lawsuit brought by pipeline company Energy Transfer," added Raman, whose group is appealing the March decision. "Oil companies know that protest works—which is why they're trying to make the stakes so high no one will be willing to take the risk."

"There is no fail-safe way to transport oil and gas, and the risks unfairly fall on the people who live near the route, while the company reaps the benefits."

Environmentalist David Suzuki and co-writer Ian Hanington similarly wrote last week that while Greenpeace argues that it assisted with the protests against Dakota Access "at the request of the Standing Rock Sioux, the environmental group is clearly seen as a threat to oil and gas interests and is a high-profile target for increasingly common efforts to silence opposition."

"From Standing Rock to Wet'suwet'en territory in British Columbia and beyond, militarized law enforcement agencies are relying more often on use of force against land and water defenders, and companies are resorting to tactics such as SLAPPs ("strategic lawsuits against public participation" designed to silence opponents through costly, time-consuming legal processes)," they noted. "Those working to protect land, air, water, plants and animals, and our future face an increasingly uphill battle."

The pair stressed that "the lawsuit against Greenpeace is an attack on the right to protest and speak freely. It won't be the last. We should all stand with Standing Rock, and with organizations such as Greenpeace that are working for people and the planet and holding the line against the destructive fossil fuel industry."

One expert detailed some of the industry's destruction in comments toThe Associated Press about the Keystone spill earlier this week:
The spill is not a minor one, said Paul Blackburn, a policy analyst with Bold Alliance, an environmental and landowners group that fought the pipeline's extension, called Keystone XL.

The estimated volume of 3,500 barrels, or 147,000 gallons of crude oil, is equal to 16 tanker trucks of oil, he said. That estimate could increase over time, he added.

Blackburn said the bigger picture is what he called the Keystone pipeline's history of spills at a higher rate than other pipelines. He compared Keystone to the Dakota Access oil pipeline since the latter came online in June 2017. In that period, Keystone's system has spilled nearly 1.2 million gallons (4.5 million liters) of oil, while Dakota Access spilled 1,282 gallons (4,853 liters), Blackburn said.

PHMSA said Thursday that it "has dispatched a total of eight inspectors to investigate the pipeline rupture," and Keystone's operator is "voluntarily committing to full cooperation with our investigation and pledging a series of corrective measures," including "a commitment not to restart the pipeline without prior approval."

The federal agency added Friday that as of 1:00 am local time, "five vacuum trucks have recovered and removed 1,170 barrels of crude oil. Cleanup operations are ongoing. PHMSA will continue to provide updated information as we receive it."

While Republican President Donald Trump aims to revive the Keystone XL project and boost the fossil fuel industry in general, one climate champion on Capitol Hill pointed to the spill as further proof of the need to phase out planet-wrecking oil and gas.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the chamber's lead sponsor of Green New Deal legislation, said on social media this week: "The Keystone oil pipeline has ruptured and spilled—again. We must continue to fight for strong pipeline safety requirements and get rid of dirty fossil fuels once and for all."

'This Executive Order is Illegal': Trump Attacks Half-Century of Environmental Protections in One Fell Swoop


"This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court," said one advocate.

Emissions are seen from a smoke stack at the Phillips 66 Refinery on February 6, 2024, in Linden, New Jersey.
(Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Apr 11, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Numerous environmental protection groups were preparing to file lawsuits Friday after President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to repeal what he called "unlawful regulations" aimed at protecting the public from pollution, oil spills, and other harms—sharply curtailing the process through which rules are changed as he ordered agencies to "sunset" major regulations.

The order was issued a week-and-a-half before the deadline set by another presidential action in February, when Trump required agencies to identify "unconstitutional" and "unlawful" regulations for elimination or modification within 60 days.

Those restrictions, under Wednesday evening's order, can be repealed without being subject to a typical notice-and-comment period.

Trump named the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement among several agencies affected by the order, and listed more than two dozen laws containing regulations that must incorporate a sunset provision for no later than September 30, 2025.

The laws include the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, suggested the order was Trump's latest push to benefit corporate polluters.



Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was "beyond delusional" for Trump to attempt to repeal "every environmental safeguard enacted over the past 50 years with an executive order."

"Trump's farcical directive aims to kill measures that protect endangered whales, prevent oil spills, and reduce the risk of a nuclear accident," said Hartl. "This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court."

In a memo, the White House wrote that "in effectuating repeals of facially unlawful regulations, agency heads shall finalize rules without notice and comment, where doing so is consistent with the 'good cause' exception in the Administrative Procedure Act."

"That exception allows agencies to dispense with notice-and-comment rulemaking when that process would be 'impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest,'" said the White House.

As climate advocates scoffed at the suggestion that regulating nuclear power and pollution-causing energy infrastructure is "contrary to the public interest," legal experts questioned the legality of Trump's order.

"If this action were upheld, it would be a significant change to the way regulation is typically done, which is through notice and comment," Roger Nober, director of George Washington University's Regulatory Studies Center, toldGovernment Executive. "If the agencies determine that a rule is contrary to the Supreme Court's current jurisprudence, then [this order says they] have good cause to remove it and [they] can get around notice and comment. That's certainly an untested and untried way of implementing the Administrative Procedure Act."

Georgetown University law professor William Buzbee toldThe Hill that the Supreme Court "has repeatedly reaffirmed that agencies seeking to change a policy set forth in a regulation have to go through a new notice-and-comment proceeding for each regulation, offer 'good reasons' for the change, and address changing facts and reliance interests developed in light of the earlier regulation."

"Adding a sunset provision without going through a full notice-and-comment proceedings for each regulation to be newly subject to a sunset provision seems intended to skirt the vetting and public accountability required by consistency doctrine," he said. "Like many other attempted regulatory shortcuts of the first and second Trump administration, this [executive order] seems likely to prompt legally vulnerable agency actions."

Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert suggested that the executive order is the latest example of Trump's push to govern the U.S. as "a king."

"He cannot simply roll back regulations that protect the public without going through the legally required process," Gilbert told Government Executive. "We will challenge this blatantly unlawful deregulatory effort at every step to ensure it doesn't hurt workers, consumers, and families."

Michael Wall, chief litigation officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the order "a blatant attempt to blow away hundreds of protections for the public and nature, giving polluters permission to ignore whatever is coming out of their smokestacks while developers disregard endangered species protections and Big Oil no longer heeds the reforms put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster."

"This executive order is illegal," he said. "Congress passed these laws, and the president's constitutional duty is to carry out those statutes; he has zero power to rewrite them."

"There's no magic wand the administration might wave to sweep away multiple rules on a White House whim," Wall added. "Any changes to the rules the president wants rescinded would have to be justified, rule by rule, with facts, evidence, and analysis specific to that rule. He cannot do this by fiat."

Opinion

Whatever purpose Trump's tariffs have they won't help US workers

Trump imposing massive tariffs on countries around the world is an attempt to make them pay for the US' deficit, but it’s American workers who will suffer.

Unfiltered
Daniel Lindley
10 Apr, 2025
THE NEW ARAB


Trump's tariffs are a radical but clumsy attempt to make the US economically self-sufficient by unleashing disaster capitalism on their own population, writes Daniel Lindley. [GETTY]

The world media has been set ablaze this week by the Trump Administration’s announcement that they are going to be imposing massive tariffs, or rather sanctions in disguise, on almost the entire world. Even uninhabited islands near Antarctica were included.

It’s hard to glean the purpose of these tariffs, when popular discourse is almost entirely either Trump opponents screaming how awful this is in one ear, or the president’s supporters spouting delusions about this being retaliation for America being ‘looted, pillaged, raped and plundered’ by other nations, in another.

Ultimately, however, they are a radical but clumsy attempt to make the US economically self-sufficient by unleashing disaster capitalism on their own population, while also serving as an extortion racket to make the world pay for the country’s deficit.

Whilst Trump has since announced a pause on the tariffs for most countries after Wall Street stocks surged in response, this will only be for 90 days. However, China is an exception and faces a raised tariff of 125% due to a "lack of respect", in the president’s words.

How did we get here?


Whatever deficit the United States finds itself in, it is of its own making, and not the fault of others as Trump claims.

Take the dollar's global dominance and the US national debt for example. Until 1971, the US dollar operated on a gold standard system. This means that rather than fluctuating on the market, its value was fixed at a specific weight of gold (from 1945-71 this rate was around $35 per troy ounce of gold). The advantage of this system is that, because gold will always be valuable, this guarantees the value of the US dollar as anyone anywhere in the world could convert their dollars into a specific amount of gold at any time. The disadvantage is that it limits how much currency the US Treasury can create.

By the 1970s however, the US decided that there’s really no need for the dollar to convertible into anything tangible, because international demand for dollars will always be high due to it being the world’s reserve currency and almost all international trade being done in dollars (oil being denominated in dollars is especially important).

This put the US in an extremely powerful position (arguably unprecedented in world history), in that it could create virtually unlimited amounts of its own currency out of thin air, and then use that currency to buy actual real goods from other countries. One might even call this the Magic Money Tree™.

That dynamic has led to the situation that exists today; where the US is by far the wealthiest country in the world despite having relatively little domestic production or industry, as it just net-imports almost $1 trillion in goods a year paid for by issuing IOUs, running up gigantic debts and assuming that this can be sustained indefinitely.

Another issue is this massive trade deficit has caused the destruction of swathes of American industry in favour of importing from abroad. However, it is the United States under a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, that launched the policy of de-industrialisation and offshoring, including to China after Nixon's 'reset'. Their purpose was to drive down wages and break labour unions.

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Now, Trump’s tariffs are abruptly telling the people of the US, it’s over. You’re not importing your stuff from the rest of the world anymore. You’re going to have to build your own domestic industries, or do without. However, it is unlikely Trump realises that re-industrialisation is unrealistic in such a short time frame, or that he is aware it would mean higher wages, unionisation, and not that much employment anyway given the advances in automation.

Setting back the global order or resetting it?

The media reaction is correct in that it’s difficult to overstate how massive a change this is. The entire US economic model of the last 50 years has been made unworkable overnight.

Whilst there is a logic that tariffs make imports more expensive and therefore in theory this increases consumption of domestic goods, it certainly doesn’t mean it will work. Especially in a country which currently doesn’t even have a domestic alternative for many of these goods.


Tariffs have a bad reputation in US history. This is largely due to the legacy of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which increased the average tariff rate on imports from around 13% to 20%. This is widely regarded to have been disastrous, as other countries retaliated by imposing their own tariff rates on the country, hurting US export industries and worsening the Great Depression.

This isn’t necessarily a good model though. In 1929, the US had the largest trade surplus in the world, leaving it especially susceptible to its trading partners imposing retaliatory tariffs on its exports. Today’s situation is the exact opposite. The US now has the largest trade deficit in world history; that is, no country has ever consumed more than it produces than Americans do today.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear that changing this is the real aim of the tariffs in his recent press conference, commenting “we’re the largest consumer market in the world, and yet the only thing we export is services, and we need to stop that. We need to get back to a time when we’re a country that can make things, and to do that we have to reset the global order of trade.”

One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is that imposing massive sanctions like this is going to do immense diplomatic harm. International relations is heavily dependent on trust, nobody wants to do business with a country which is seems politically unstable and unpredictable.

In fact, these tariffs are even more inflammatory than in 1930, because it entails the USA tearing up the very international order which they set up and enforced for decades.

Millions of lives have been lost in the various wars, coups etc that the US has waged to keep weaker countries obedient to their system, where the fruits of the world’s labour are shipped to them with only dollars going the other way. For the US to then turn around and claim this system constitutes the rest of the world ripping America off has gone down like a plate of rotten Big Macs.

The people will pay

On the domestic front, this is going to hit the living standards of American workers very hard.

Tariffs are almost always inflationary. Whilst the tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term did not result in the inflation many predicted, those were on such a smaller scale it’d be foolish to extrapolate a similar outcome now because most businesses will have to pass their cost to the consumers. Already, reports suggest an Apple iPhone made in China could cost $2300 in the US.

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So why is Trump doing it? This is what I think is not well understood. Theories differ between reports that it is an outdated obsession of Trump's since the 1980s, while others claim they’re just a threat Trump is using to bully concessions out of other countries. It may well be both, but either way, tariffs seem like the only ideological lynchpin of Trump's economic policy, and so far, he has doubled down on them and boasted that world leaders are kissing his a$$ to make a deal.

It would be a bit less extreme if these measures were accompanied by some kind of industrial policy to bring production back the US, but that’s not happening. Another crucial question for US industry is, since there’s a good chance these tariffs will simply be reversed by Trump’s successor in four years, is it really prudent of us to invest billions of dollars into creating this new industrial capacity when it might not even be used after Trump’s gone? What’s in it for them?

Whilst we’re in uncharted waters, this is all unlikely to work for the administration. Maybe if the US had a more competent ruling elite which was following a long-term plan, something like this could have been done if they’d spent the last decade building economic crash pads to mitigate the damage this will inevitably cause.

It’s like he’s sailed the American people to an isolated island, burned the ships, and told them they now have no choice but to figure out how to live here.


Daniel Lindley is a writer and trade union activist in the UK.

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

US Consumer Sentiment Falls to Second-Lowest Level in 70+ Years—And It's Likely to Get Worse

WORKERS CONSUMING ARE 70% OF U$ GDP

“The scariest part of today's plunging consumer sentiment numbers is that we might be looking at the high-water mark," said one expert.


A customer shops for eggs at a grocery store on March 12, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois.
(Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Apr 11, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Consumer sentiment in the United States continued its sharp plunge this month under President Donald Trump as Americans grew increasingly concerned about the prospect of a job-destroying recession in the near future—fears fueled in large part by the administration's erratic tariff policies.

The University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers, released Friday, found that U.S. consumer sentiment plunged 11% at the start of April compared to last month, a decline that was "pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region, and political affiliation."

That's according to the survey project's director, Joanne Hsu, who said that "sentiment has now lost more than 30% since December 2024 amid growing worries about trade war developments that have oscillated over the course of the year."

Friday's assessment shows that overall consumer sentiment has fallen to its second-lowest level since the early 1950s.

"Consumers report multiple warning signs that raise the risk of recession: expectations for business conditions, personal finances, incomes, inflation, and labor markets all continued to deteriorate this month," said Hsu. "The share of consumers expecting unemployment to rise in the year ahead increased for the fifth consecutive month and is now more than double the November 2024 reading and the highest since 2009."

"This lack of labor market confidence," Hsu added, "lies in sharp contrast to the past several years, when robust spending was supported primarily by strong labor markets and incomes."

"President Trump isn't executing an economic agenda, he's piloting a kamikaze mission."

Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement that "the scariest part of today's plunging consumer sentiment numbers is that we might be looking at the high-water mark."

"The president's reckless trade policies have roiled markets, shattered retirement accounts, and halted shipping orders. We could be looking at price spikes, shortages, and even a recession in the weeks and months to come," said Owens. "Worst of all, while consumers are bracing for impact, Congress is gutting the safety net they'll need to rely on if the economic devastation continues. President Trump isn't executing an economic agenda, he's piloting a kamikaze mission."

Trump himself has admitted that his tariffs, which he partially paused for 90 days earlier this week, could spark a recession.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the president "told advisers that he was willing to take 'pain'" and "privately acknowledged that his trade policy could trigger a recession but said he wanted to be sure it didn't cause a depression."

While Goldman Sachs withdrew its recession forecast after Trump announced the partial tariff pause, Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi told Fortune that he took "no solace in the president’s announcement to delay the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days."

"Even if the administration can cut a few deals during this period, it will leave us with significantly higher tariffs, which are tax increases on American consumers and businesses," said Zandi. "This will weigh heavily on the U.S. and global economies and likely result in a recession."

"To what end?" he asked. "There will be no boost to investment in the U.S. The trade deficit will be no smaller. And there won't be any reliable increase in government revenues. It is impossible to fathom why the world is being put through all this unnecessary drama."

Trump Assault on Federal Contractor Wages Could Mean 25% Pay Cuts for Hundreds of Thousands


"A higher federal contractor wage standard is good for employers and the federal government overall," said one left-leaning think tank.



Construction workers repairs a street near the White House, in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Eloise Goldsmith
Apr 11, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

After U.S. President Donald Trump last month undid a Biden-era regulation that required businesses that contract with the federal government to pay their workers a $17.75 an hour minimum wage, the Center for American Progress released an analysis Friday which found that some workers impacted by the change could see a 25% pay cut.

Thanks to rollback from Trump, "corporations working on government contracts are free to cut wages for hundreds of thousands of workers," according to the author of the analysis, who also said that the move constitutes a new front in the Trump administration's "war on workers."

Former President Joe Biden's order, which was announced in 2021 and went into effect in 2022, initially raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour with automatic updates, which bumped it the minimum up to $17.75 in January 2025.

The rescission was part of an executive order that reversed 18 "harmful executive orders and actions" issued by Biden.

According to CAP, a liberal think tank, Trump's scrapping of the Biden minimum wage protection leaves in place an Obama-era rule, meaning some workers on federal contracts can now be paid a minimum of $13.30 an hour.

The analysis arrived at the 25% pay cut by calculating the difference between the $17.75 floor and $13.30. However, CAP noted that the U.S. Department of Labor still has to issue guidance over how it will enforce this older wage standard.

Other wage protections for workers on federal contracts exist, but CAP argues that "they are inadequate for protecting the workers who just saw their minimum wage taken away."

The Davis-Bacon Act establishes minimum prevailing wage standards for workers on federal construction sites, for example, but the wages established under the law can be much lower than $17.75 an hour, according to the analysis.

"The boost for workers from the Biden minimum wage increase that the Trump administration just nullified was substantial," according to CAP, which cites a Department of Labor estimate from 2021 that the change would impact 327,300 employees in the first year of implementation.

In 2021, the left-leaning think tank the Economic Policy Institute estimated that, taking into account the hundreds of thousands of workers who could see their wages raised through Biden's executive order, the total pay increases thanks to the rule would amount to $1.2 billion in 2022.

"A higher minimum wage for federal contractors helps ensure that taxpayer dollars incentivize good jobs, rather than low-wage jobs where contractors compete with each other in a race to the bottom," according to a statement from EPI following Trump's rescission of the minimum wage rule. "A higher federal contractor wage standard is good for employers and the federal government overall."

Senate Democrats Urge SEC Probe of Possible Trump Market Manipulation, Insider Trading

"Did President Trump tip off big donors or family to cash in on his tariff chaos?" asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks while colleagues including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) look on during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on April 3, 2025.
(Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Apr 11, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


Amid mounting concerns over possible stock market manipulation by President Donald Trump and members of his inner circle, Democrats in the U.S Senate on Friday joined their House colleagues in urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate potential insider trading and other violations related to the chaos caused by the administration's mercurial global trade war.

After slapping sweeping tariffs of 10% or more on almost every country in the world last week, Trump abruptly paused some of the levies for most nations. These moves prompted a stock market plunge, followed by a robust rally that saw over $5 trillion in value added to the market in just hours on Wednesday—a day the president proclaimed that "this is a great time to buy" stocks and openly boasted about enriching his billionaire buddies.

"In any administration this corrupt it is more than necessary to ask, were people personally profiting from insider information?"

According to a Bloomberg estimate, Wednesday's bounceback bonanza added $304 billion to the collective wealth of the world's top billionaires, with Elon Musk, the world's richest person and the de facto head of the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, adding an estimated $36 billion, or about 10%, to his net worth.

"We urge the SEC to investigate whether the tariff announcements, which caused the market crash and subsequent partial recovery, enriched administration insiders and friends at the expense of the American public, and whether any insiders, including the president's family, had prior knowledge of the tariff pause that they abused to make stock trades ahead of the president's announcement," six Democratic senators—Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Adam Schiff (Calif.), and Ron Wyden (Ore.)—wrote Friday in a letter to SEC Chair Paul Atkins.

"It is unconscionable that as American families are concerned about their financial security during this economic crisis entirely manufactured by the president, insiders may have actively profited from the market volatility and potentially perpetrated financial fraud on the American public," the senators continued. "At this critical moment, the SEC must do its part to restore Americans' faith in the rule of law and to preserve the integrity of the financial system, in accordance with its statutory mission."

In a video posted on social media Wednesday, Schiff asked, "The question is, who knew what the president was going to do, and did people around the president trade stock knowing the incredible gyration the market was about to go through?"

"This is a president who is trading in his own meme coin even as he's president, his kids are trading in their own cryptocurrency, you've got people like Elon Musk who are doing their own conflicted self-dealing in the administration, and in any administration this corrupt it is more than necessary to ask, were people personally profiting from insider information while peoples' savings, their retirement accounts, are being torched," he added.

"The American people deserve to know if any representatives took advantage of their positions for personal gain."

The senators' letter follows a similar missive led by House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and sent to Atkins, SEC Inspector General Deborah Jeffrey, and U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro on Thursday requesting an "immediate" investigation into "possible insider trading and market manipulation violations that took place between Sunday, April 6, 2025, when U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent visited President Trump at his Florida resort, and Wednesday, April 9, 2025, when the president announced the pausing of the tariffs—and whether such unlawful activities are ongoing."

"Insider trading by federal officials and their friends or family is not only a breach of trust of the American people, but erodes the integrity of government institutions and raises concerns about corruption and fairness in the political system," the letter states. "There should be zero tolerance for this kind of corruption in our society, let alone from those we entrust to lead us in the public sphere."

In yet another letter sent on Thursday, six Democratic representatives—Joe Neguse (Colo), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Seth Magaziner (R.I.), Mike Levin (Calif.), Dave Min (Calif.), and Steven Horsford (Nev.)—asked House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to "call on every member of the House of Representatives to immediately file and release their periodic trading reports for any transactions conducted between April 2, 2025 and April 9, 2025."

"The American people deserve to know if any representatives took advantage of their positions for personal gain," the letter states.

Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said during an interview with Spectrum News NY1 that "I don't think that Trump just coincidentally said buy stocks and then shortly later made an announcement that dramatically inflated and dramatically raised a lot of these asset prices."

"I do not care if you're a Democrat, I do not care if you're a Republican: If you are trading individual stock when the market is being manipulated in this way, you need to answer for it," Ocasio-Cortez added.

On Wednesday, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) also called for a probe of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-Ga.) stock purchases during this week's market drop, and "whether any K Street lobbyists or other big firms were tipped off by Donald Trump's actions."

In an interview with Meidas Touch published Friday, Casar said that "it's just remarkable how much a culture of corruption has completely infected and taken over the entire Republican Party."

"This is all part of the same story. They crash the market and then open it up to insider trading so that... members of Congress, K Street lobbyists, the billionaire donor buddies of Donald Trump can cash in after everybody's retirement accounts got screwed over," Casar continued.

"At the end of the day," he added, "this is all about basically taking your hard-earned money and giving it to themselves or funneling it to their buddies."

'Lawless': Trump DOJ Defies Supreme Court Order for Return of Man Sent to Salvadoran Prison

"I'm not asking for state secrets," said a federal judge as lawyers for the White House refused to provide information about Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

A member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus holds a picture of Kilmar Abrego Garcia during a news conference to discuss his arrest and expulsion at Cannon House Office Building on April 9, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Apr 11, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous decision on Thursday was clear: The Trump administration was ordered to "facilitate and effectuate" the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident with no criminal record who was among hundreds of migrants rounded up in recent weeks and sent to an El Salvador prison.

But lawyers for President Donald Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday insisted they needed more time to "review" the high court's ruling and refused to provide details on when and how they would ensure Abrego Garcia was returned to his family in Maryland.

Drew Ensign, one attorney representing the Trump administration, argued at a hearing Friday afternoon with U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland over the court-ordered requirement that the government "share what it can concerning the steps it has taken" to return Abrego Garcia.

The hearing had been previously scheduled before the Supreme Court handed down its ruling, and went ahead as planned despite the DOJ's request on Friday morning for Xinis to postpone it till next Wednesday.

"Defendants are unable to provide the information requested by the court on the impracticable deadline set by the court hours after the Supreme Court issued its order," wrote the DOJ lawyers in a filing on Friday morning, striking an aggressive tone similar to the one the government displayed in the hearing later.

Immigration attorney Eric Lee said the filing displayed "a lawless government."




Xinis responded to the request by giving the lawyers until 11:30 am—a two-hour extension of the previous deadline—to submit a written declaration of steps the administration is taking for Abrego Garcia, whom they have said was sent to El Salvador due to an "administrative error," claiming that his fate is out of the United States' control.

But she urged the lawyers to keep in mind that the "act of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was wholly illegal from the moment it happened."

At the hearing, she clashed further with Ensign.

The attorney said again that the administration is "not yet prepared to share" more information about Abrego Garcia.

"I'm not asking for state secrets," she replied, demanding "roughly a dozen times," according to The New York Times, that Ensign provide information about the man's exact whereabouts and plans for his return. "Is anyone moving with any kind of speed to get to the bottom of this so I can get an answer?"

Ensign confirmed that the government intends to comply with the Supreme Court's order before the hearing ended after less than half an hour. Xinis ordered the DOJ to provide daily updates about its progress in securing his release.

In a press briefing on Friday, White House press secretary falsely claimed that the Supreme Court ordered the White House only to "facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return" of Abrego Garcia.

The White House and the Republican Party have attacked the judiciary numerous times in recent weeks, with calls to impeach judges who have ruled against Trump's agenda—including U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who issued a nationwide restraining order against the president's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to expel suspected gang members to El Salvador.

Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller is among the officials who have pushed the idea that federal judges, in demanding that Trump follow constitutional law, are interfering in "foreign affairs."

The Supreme Court included in its ruling a directive for Xinis to proceed with "due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs," leading Miller to suggest that the White House is still under no obligation to return Abrego Garcia.

"If the United States government is paying El Salvador to imprison people on its behalf," said Andrea R. Flores, vice president of FWD.us, "there should be absolutely no 'foreign affairs' reason that they cannot ask their contractor, El Salvador, to return Kilmer Abrego Garcia immediately."

US and El Salvador Guilty of 'Grave' Crimes of Enforced Disappearance, Arbitrary Detention: HRW


"The cruelty of the U.S. and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families," said one human rights advocate.


Relatives of Venezuelan migrants deported from the U.S. to a maximum security prison in El Salvador attend a vigil in front of El Salvador embassy in Caracas, Venezuela on April 2, 2025.
(Photo: Juan Barreto / AFP via Getty Images)


Eloise Goldsmith
Apr 11, 2025

COMMON DREAMS

Human Rights Watch on Friday accused the governments of the United States and El Salvador of "a grave violation of international human rights law" over the deportation more than 230 Venezuelan nationals by the Trump administration to a megaprison in El Salvador last month.

The actions taken against the deportees constitute both enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention, according to a statement from the group released Friday.



"The cruelty of the U.S. and Salvadoran governments has put these people outside the protection of the law and caused immense pain to their families," said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

The group said that since their removal, the Venezuelans "have been held incommunicado" and that the United States and Salvadoran officials have not released a list of the people who were removed, though CBS News last month published a list of names the outlet obtained.

The administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used law that gives the president broad authority to detain or deport non-citizens during times of war, to justify dozens of the deportations—triggering a fierce legal battle.

The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act in response to an alleged "invasion" by "Tren de Aragua," a Venezuelan gang, but the government has produced scant evidence that the people removed had ties to Tren de Aragua. One hundred and one of the deportees were removed under regular immigration procedures.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Salvadoran government has failed to offer a legal basis for detaining the Venezuelan deportees and has not indicated when or whether they will be released.

"It appears that their detention is wholly arbitrary and potentially indefinite; a grave violation of El Salvador's human rights obligations," the group said.

Enforced disappearance, according to Human Rights Watch, is when officials deprive someone of their liberty and then conceal the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person. The violation is "especially serious" because it means they are outside the protection of the law.

The group is calling on U.S. authorities to publicly identify the Venezuelans who were removed to El Salvador and is urging the Salvadoran government to "confirm their current whereabouts, disclose whether there is any legal basis for their detention, and allow them contact with the outside world."

The statement from Human Rights Watch also detailed the struggle that family members of the deported individuals have faced getting information about them.

The group has interviewed 40 relatives of people "apparently" removed to El Salvador, and all of them told Human Rights Watch that U.S. immigration authorities initially informed their relatives, who were in U.S. immigration detention, that they would be sent to Venezuela. They were not told they would be sent to El Salvador.

"Nobody should be forced to piece together bits of information from the media or to read into the authorities' silence to find out where their relatives are being held," Goebertus said. "Salvadoran authorities should urgently disclose the names and locations of all detainees transferred from the US, and allow them to contact their families."

In addition to the Venezuelans who were deported in March, the Trump administration also deported a smaller number of Salvadoran nationals. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has admitted that one of the men sent to El Salvador was deported in "error." On Thursday, the Supreme Court instructed the Trump administration to take steps to retrieve the man it had wrongly deported.

Supreme Court Orders Trump Officials to Return Man Wrongfully Deported to Salvadoran Prison

"This is a massive win for justice and the rule of law," said one Democratic congresswoman. "Now Trump must comply."

Jennifer Vasquez Sura (in blue dress), the wife of wrongfully deported Venezuelan man Kilmar Abrego García, listens during a news conference with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to discuss his husband's plight on April 9, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Apr 10, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday issued a ruling with no noted dissents affirming a federal judge's order compelling President Donald Trump's administration to enable the stateside return of Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran man wrongfully deported to a notorious prison in his native country.

"The rule of law won today," said Andrew Rossman, one of Abrego García's lawyers. "Time to bring him home."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in Thursday's unsigned order that the Trump administration must "facilitate and effectuate" Abrego García's release from custody "and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador."




"The intended scope of the term 'effectuate' in the district court's order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the district court's authority," Sotomayor added. "The district court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs."

Last week, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis gave the Trump administration until Monday April 7 to return Abrego García, who was deported last month to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) super-maximum security prison in central El Salvador after the government claimed without credible evidence that he was a gang member.

"Defendants seized Abrego García without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or officer; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador in direct contravention" of immigration law, she wrote.

A panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to stay Xinis' order, with one judge on the tribunal writing, "The United States government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process."

The panel refuted the Trump administration's assertion that it could not return Abrego García, calling the government's argument "that the federal courts are powerless to intervene... unconscionable."

However, on Monday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked Xinis' order just before the midnight deadline pending review by all nine justices.

Abrego García's legal team argued that their client was the victim of a "Kafkaesque mistake." Among the so-called evidence the government used to claim he is a member of the MS-13 criminal gang was a Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie he wore, and a snitch's tip. The Trump administration subsequently admitted in a March 31 court filing that Abrego García's deportation was an "administrative error" and an "oversight."

Before he was deported, Abrego García, 29, lived in Maryland with his wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen; their autistic, nonverbal 5-year-old child; and two children from Vasquez Sura's previous relationship. His lawyers said he left El Salvador to escape the then-endemic gang violence there.

Advocates for Abrego García welcomed the high court's order, with Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) writing on the social media site Bluesky that the justices "did the right thing."

"This is about the rule of law and due process," he added. "Kilmar Abrego García should be reunited with his family."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said: "This is a massive win for justice and the rule of law. Now Trump must comply."

Human Rights Defenders File Suit Over Trump's 'Unconstitutional' ICC Sanctions

An advocate who has worked with the ICC said the order "actively undermines international justice efforts and obstructs the path to accountability for communities facing unthinkable horrors."

International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan attends a United Nations Security Council meeting on Sudan and South Sudan at the United Nations headquarters on January 27, 2025 in New York City.
(Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Apr 12, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

In a federal court in Maine on Friday, two human rights advocates argued that U.S. President Donald Trump's economic and travel sanctions against International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan violates their First Amendment rights, because of Trump's stipulation that U.S. citizens cannot provide Khan with any services or material support as long as the sanctions are in place.

The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU on behalf of Matthew Smith, co-founder of the human rights group Fortify Rights, and international lawyer Akila Radhakrishnan.

Trump targeted Khan with the sanctions over his issuing of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, whom he accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The plaintiffs argued that stopping U.S. citizens from working with Khan will bring their work investigating other atrocities to a halt.

Smith has provided the ICC with evidence of the forced deportation and genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, but he said he has been "forced to stop helping the ICC investigate horrific crimes committed against the people of Myanmar, including mass murder, torture, and human trafficking."

"This executive order doesn't just disrupt our work—it actively undermines international justice efforts and obstructs the path to accountability for communities facing unthinkable horrors," Smith said in a statement.

"The Trump administration's sanctions may discourage countries, as well as individuals and corporations, from assisting the court, making it harder to bring alleged perpetrators from Israel and other countries to trial."

Charlie Hogle, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, said it was "unconstitutional" to block the plaintiffs and other humanitarian groups in the U.S. from "doing their human rights work" with the ICC.

Radhakrishnan, who focuses on gender-based violence in Afghanistan, said she was "bringing this suit to prevent my own government from punishing me for trying to hold the Taliban accountable for its systematic violence against women and girls from Afghanistan."

In March, Amnesty International warned that Trump's sanctions would "hinder justice for all victims for whom the [ICC] is a last resort," particularly those in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The court "relies on its member states to cooperate in its investigations and prosecutions, including by arresting individuals subject to ICC arrest warrants," said Amnesty. "The Trump administration's sanctions may discourage countries, as well as individuals and corporations, from assisting the court, making it harder to bring alleged perpetrators from Israel and other countries to trial."

"Ultimately, the sanctions will harm all of the ICC's investigations, not just those opposed by the U.S. government," said the group. "They will negatively impact the interests of all victims who look to the court for justice in all the countries where it is conducting investigations, including those investigations the U.S. ostensibly supports—for example in Ukraine, Uganda, or Darfur."

Making Big Money But Losing Your Soul: The Shame of U$  Legal Titans

Every lawyer takes an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution. To abandon that pledge at this moment, when the Constitution is in mortal danger, is shameful.


People hold signs as they protest outside of the offices of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison LLP on March 25, 2025 in New York City.
(Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Steven Day
Apr 11, 2025

Common Dreams

As part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s seemingly endless journey on the Good Ship Retribution, he has, as widely reported, now fired shots across the bow of a number of law firms. Their “crime” has been having the audacity to employ lawyers Trump dislikes or representing people or causes he dislikes. The sanctions he wants to enforce are significant, including barring the offending firms’ attorneys from receiving federal contracts, striping them of security clearances, and even barring them from entering federal buildings. And this is in addition to launching federal investigations into their DEI policies.

Because, after all, what could be worse than diversity, equity, and inclusion?

The law firms Trump is attacking are, at least mostly, huge operations, the type of firms that are collectively known as “Big Law.” While some of these firms are fighting back, many have chosen to cut a deal. In other words, they’ve caved. Large firms that have folded include Milbank, Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. The “honor” of being regarded as the leader of the pack, however, goes to Paul Weiss, as the first to cave.

While earning a living is important, being a lawyer is about much more than money.

As an attorney practicing in a small law firm in Wichita, Kansas, I have little in common with lawyers working in Big Law firms. A Paul Weiss lawyer and I are both attorneys, but we practice in different worlds. For 40 years I have defended healthcare providers in malpractice cases. These lawsuits sometimes involve millions of dollars. That’s chicken feed to these guys. The top Big Law litigators will at times handle litigation involving hundreds of millions of dollars or even more, while, at the same time, the firm’s business lawyers represent corporations in transactions involving multiple billions of dollars.

These Big Law firms are immense. Paul Weiss has over 1,000 lawyers.

My firm has six, and that includes one who is basically retired.

Top partners in Big Law firms like Paul Weiss can charge $2,400 an hour or more.

My usual billing rate is less than a tenth of that number.

The annual pay last year for an equity partner in Paul Weiss was $7.5 million.

My pay is, shall we say, somewhat lower.

A true multinational firm, Paul Weiss has offices located from Asia to Europe and their home base in North America, with offices in both the U.S. and Canada.

My firm has just the one office and none of us have practiced law outside the United States. But I have visited Canada a few times.

I do, however, have one thing in common with Big Law attorneys. We all took the same oath to support and defend the Constitution which, by definition, includes supporting and defending the Rule of Law.

Very few lawyers specialize in constitutional law or professional ethics. Most of us practice in areas like divorce cases (family law), defending or prosecuting criminal cases (criminal law), trying civil lawsuits (trial lawyers), probating wills (estate practice), and representing corporations in business transactions (business law). Working in these specialized areas of the law there’s little occasion to think deeply about concepts like defending the Constitution. But the oath, and the lawyer’s obligation to follow it, is always there.

Law is a profession, but also a business—and, as they say, the business of business is business—in other words, making money. And there is nothing wrong with this. EMS providers save lives, but they also have bills to pay. The need to pay bills is just as true for lawyers. But while earning a living is important, being a lawyer is about much more than money.

Those leaders of Big Law, still refusing to vigorously defend or even speak out in support of the Rule of Law, need to consider what matters most to them. What they would most want to be remembered for—maximizing profit or defending freedom?

Defending the Constitution when, and if, the need arises must always come first. This is true even when doing so is painful, which at times it can be. As a publication of the American Bar Association has said, lawyers “are obligated to act in support of the U.S. Constitution in all situations, especially where it’s the hardest for you.”

Many lawyers have gone through an entire career never having to face an issue like this. But those of us practicing today aren’t that lucky. We live in a time when the survival of the Constitution and the Rule of Law are in the greatest jeopardy since the Civil War. The American people decided to give the staggering power of the presidency to a man who has never tried to conceal his hunger for absolute power, nor his love of cruelty.

Making matters worse, the separation of powers, which is supposed to protect us from presidential overreach, has, in the words of Don McLean, caught the first train to the coast. Congress is moribund. The Supreme Court hasn’t clearly spoken yet. There is reason for concern, given the majority’s far-right ideology, as to how they will rule when the time comes. And even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump he may refuse to accept it, creating a constitutional crisis.

To be honest, I can live with a constitutional crisis. What scares me more is if there isn’t one. That when the general public is finally forced to face up to Trump’s authoritarian agenda, people will yawn and go about their lives. And why wouldn’t they, given the example set by institutions like Columbia University caving to Trump’s extortion/ And the same goes for much of Big Law—choosing the easy route of ignoring their oath to keep the cash flowing into the firm accounts.

Big Law does have much to lose if they fight. Crossing Trump has the potential of creating a serious crimp in their cash flow. Not only would they be risking government business, but they would face a real risk of losing major corporate clients—their biggest cash cow. Corporations will have no problem recognizing that if they continue to retain lawyers who are on Trump’s enemies list, they will face a significant risk that Trump will sic MAGA on them, which could seriously damage their business. If Columbia University and Big Law are willing to kiss Trump’s ring, can anyone doubt that for-profit corporations will do the same?

So yes, Big Law has much to lose. But realistically we aren’t talking about closing the doors of a firm. The worst-case scenario is probably something like equity partners at Paul Weiss only taking home $4 million a year for a few years instead of $7.5 million. But the fact remains, they took an oath. This is part of the quid pro quo inherent in becoming a lawyer. You are allowed to practice your profession, but to do so you must first take an oath accepting the obligation to support and defend the Constitution. This is a duty all lawyers share, whether they work in big firms, small firms, corporate legal departments, the government, or a nonprofit entity. It’s a big part of what defines us.

To abandon that pledge at this moment, when the Constitution is in mortal danger, is shameful. Those leaders of Big Law, still refusing to vigorously defend or even speak out in support of the Rule of Law, need to consider what matters most to them. What they would most want to be remembered for—maximizing profit or defending freedom?

It shouldn’t be a hard decision.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Steven Day
Steven Day practices law in Wichita, Kansas and is the author of The Patriot's Grill, a novel about a future America in which democracy no longer exists, but might still return.
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17th-Century Planters Would Be Proud of Trump’s Embrace of Colonial Violence

President Trump talks about immigrants, Palestinians, and Black South Africans as white Europeans have talked for centuries about the peoples they sought to control.



An AI-generated video posted on social media on February 25, 2025 by U.S. President Donald Trump shows a Trump hotel on the Gaza Strip.
(Photo: screenshot/Truth Social)

Aviva Chomsky
Apr 11, 2025

TomDispatch


In the colonial view of the world—and, in its own strange fashion, U.S. President Donald Trump’s view couldn’t be more colonial—white European colonizers were embattled beacons of civilization, rationality, and progress, confronting dangerous barbaric hordes beyond (and even, sometimes, within) their own frontiers. Colonial violence then was a necessary form of self-defense needed to tame irrational eruptions of brutality among the colonized. To make sense of the bipartisan U.S. devotion to Israel, including the glorification of Israeli violence and the demonization of Palestinians, as well as the Trump administration’s recent attacks on Black South Africa, student activists, and immigrants, it’s important to grasp that worldview.

On the Caribbean island of Barbados, Great Britain’s 1688 Act “For the Governing of Negroes” proclaimed that “Negroes… are of a barbarous, wild, and savage nature, and such as renders them wholly unqualified to be governed by the Laws, Customes, and Practices of our Nation: It is therefore becoming absolutely necessary, that such other Constitutions, Laws, and Orders, should be… framed and enacted for the good regulating or ordering of them, as may both restrain the disorders, rapines, and inhumanities to which they are naturally prone and inclined.”

The ever-present barbarian threat is now embodied by “aliens” and “radicals” who challenge Israeli colonial violence and a U.S.-dominated global order.

When I read those words recently, I heard strange echoes of how President Trump talks about immigrants, Palestinians, and Black South Africans. The text of that act exemplified what would become longstanding colonial ideologies: The colonized are unpredictably “barbarous, wild, and savage” and so must be governed by the colonizing power with a separate set of (harsh) laws; and—though not directly stated—must be assigned a legal status that sets them apart from the rights-bearing one the colonizers granted themselves. Due to their “barbarous, wild, and savage nature,” violence would inevitably be necessary to keep them under control.

Colonization meant bringing white Europeans to confront those supposedly dangerous peoples in their own often distant homelands. It also meant, as in Barbados, bringing supposedly dangerous people to new places and using violence and brutal laws to control them there. In the United States, it meant trying to displace or eliminate what the Declaration of Independence called “merciless Indian savages” and justifying white violence with slave codes based on the one the British used in Barbados in the face of the ever-present threat supposedly posed by enslaved Black people.

That grim 1688 Act also revealed how colonialism blurred the lines between Europe and its colonies. As an expansionist Europe grew ever more expansive, it brought rights-holding Europeans and those they excluded, suppressed, or dominated into the same physical spaces through colonization, enslavement, transportation, and war. Enslaved Africans were inside the territory, but outside the legal system. Expansion required violence, along with elaborate legal structures and ideologies to enforce and justify who belonged and who never would, and—yes!—ever more violence to keep the system in place.
Ideas Still With Us

The legacies of colonialism and the set of ideas behind that Act of 1688 are still with us and continue to target formerly colonized (and still colonized) peoples.

Given the increasingly unsettled nature of our world, thanks to war, politics, and the growing pressures of climate change, ever more people have tried to leave their embattled countries and emigrate to Europe and the United States. There, they find a rising tide of anti-immigrant racism that reproduces a modern version of old-fashioned colonial racism. Europe and the United States, of course, reserve the right to deny entry, or grant only partial, temporary, revocable, and limited status to many of those seeking refuge in their countries. Those different statuses mean that they are subject to different legal systems once they’re there. In Donald Trump’s America, for instance, the United States reserves the right to detain and deport even green card holders at will, merely by claiming that their presence poses a threat, as in the case of Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, arrested in New York but quickly sent into custody in Louisiana.

Colonial racism helps explain the Trump administration’s adulation of Israeli violence against Palestinians. In good colonial fashion, Israel relies on laws that grant full rights to some, while justifying the repression (not to mention genocide) of others. Israeli violence, like the Barbadian slave code, always claims to “restrain the disorders, rapines, and inhumanities to which [Palestinians] are naturally prone and inclined.”

South Africa, of course, is still struggling with its colonial and post-colonial legacy—including decades of apartheid, which created political and legal structures that massively privileged the white population there. And while apartheid is now a past legacy, ongoing attempts to undo its damage like a January 2025 land reform law have only raised President Trump’s ire in ways that echo his reaction to even the most modest attempts to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or that dreaded abbreviation of the Trump era, DEI, in American institutions ranging from the military to universities.

Israel, though, remains a paragon of virtue and glory in Trump’s eyes. Its multiple legal structures keep Palestinians legally excluded in a diaspora from which they are not allowed to return, under devastating military occupation, with the constant threat of expulsion from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and in occupied East Jerusalem, where they are Israeli residents but not full citizens and subject to multiple legal exclusions as non-Jews. (Donald Trump, of course, had a similar fantasy when he imagined rebuilding Gaza as a Middle Eastern “Riviera,” while expelling the Palestinians from the area.) Even those who are citizens of Israel are explicitly denied a national identity and subject to numerous discriminatory laws in a country that claims to represent “the national home of the Jewish people” and to which displaced Palestinians are forbidden to return, even as “Jewish settlement is a national value.”
Good Discrimination, Bad Discrimination

Lately, of course, right-wing politicians and pundits in this country have been denouncing any policies that claim special protections for, or even academic or legal acknowledgement of, long marginalized groups. They once derisively dubbed all such things “critical race theory” and now denounce DEI programs as divisive and—yes!—discriminatory, insisting that they be dismantled or abolished.

Meanwhile, there are two groups that those same right-wing actors have assiduously sought to protect: white South Africans and Jews. In his February executive order cutting aid to South Africa and offering refugee status to white Afrikaner South Africans (and only them), Trump accused that country’s government of enacting “countless… policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business.” No matter that such a view of South Africa is pure fantasy. What he meant, of course, was that they were dismantling apartheid-legacy policies that privileged whites.

Meanwhile, his administration has been dismantling actual equal opportunity policies here, calling them “illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).’” The difference? President Trump is proud to kill policies that create opportunities for people of color, just as he was outraged at South Africa’s land reform law that chipped away at the historical privilege of white landowners there. His attack on DEI reflects his drive to undo the very notion of creating de facto equal access for citizens (especially people of color) who have long been denied it.

Trump and his allies are also obsessed with what his January 30 executive order called an “explosion of antisemitism.” Unlike Black, Native American, Hispanic, LGBTQIA+, or other historically marginalized groups in the United States, American Jews—like Afrikaners—are considered a group deserving of special protection.

What is the source of this supposed “explosion” of antisemitism? The answer: “pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals” who, Trump claims, are carrying out “a campaign of intimidation, vandalism, and violence on the campuses and streets of America.” In other words, the ever-present barbarian threat is now embodied by “aliens” and “radicals” who challenge Israeli colonial violence and a U.S.-dominated global order.

And—this is important!—not all Jews deserve such special protection, only those who identify with and support Israel’s colonial violence. The American right’s current obsession with antisemitism has little to do with the rights of Jews generally and everything to do with its commitment to Israel.

Even the most minor deviation from full-throated support for Israeli violence earned Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) the scorn of Trump, who called him “a proud member of Hamas” and added, “He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian.” Apparently for Trump, the very word “Palestinian” is a slur.
Israeli Violence Is “Stunning,” While Palestinians Are “Barbaric”

The American media and officials of both parties have generally celebrated Israeli violence. In September 2024, The New York Timesreferred to Israel’s “two days of stunning attacks that detonated pagers and handheld radios across Lebanon” that killed dozens and maimed thousands. A Washington Post headline called “Israel’s pager attack an intelligence triumph.” Former President Joe Biden then lauded Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah in September as “a measure of justice” and called its assassination of Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar a month later “a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.” On Israel’s murder of the chief Hamas negotiator, Ismael Haniyeh, in the midst of U.S.-sponsored cease-fire negotiations in August, Biden could only lament that it was “not helpful.”

Compare this to the outrage professed when Columbia Middle East Studies professor Joseph Massad wrote, in an article on Arab world reactions to Hamas’s October 7 attack, that “the sight of the Palestinian resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding.” For that simple reflection of those Arab reactions, Columbia’s then-President Minouche Shafik denounced him before Congress, announcing that she was “appalled” and that Massad was being investigated because his language was “unacceptable.” He never would have gotten tenure had she known of his views, she insisted. Apparently only Israeli violence can be “stunning” or a “triumph.”

In reality, however, the United States, Israel, and white South Africa exist as colonial anachronisms in what President Joe Biden, echoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, described (with respect to Israel) as an “incredibly dangerous neighborhood.”

Meanwhile, at Harvard on October 9, Palestine solidarity student groups quoted Israeli officials who promised to “open the gates of hell” on Gaza. “We hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” they wrote. Despite the fact that multiple Israeli sources were saying similar things, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik posted: “It is abhorrent and heinous that Harvard students are blaming Israel for Hamas’ barbaric attacks.” Note the use of the word “barbaric” from the slave code, repeatedly invoked by journalists, intellectuals, and politicians when it came to Hamas or Palestinians, but not Israelis.

In November 2024, when the U.S. vetoed (for the fourth time) a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, the world was aghast. The U.N. warned that, after a year of Israel’s intensive bombardment and 40 days of the complete blockade of humanitarian supplies, 2 million Palestinians were “facing diminishing conditions of survival.” The U.N. director of Human Rights Watch accused the U.S. of acting “to ensure impunity for Israel as its forces continue to commit crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.” The American ambassador, however, defended the veto, arguing that, although the resolution called for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, it did not provide enough “linkage.” And of course, U.S. arms, including staggeringly destructive 2,000-pound bombs, have continued to flow to Israel in striking quantities as the genocide continues.
Connecting Immigrants, Palestinians, and South Africa

Closer to home, Trump’s full-throated attack on immigrants has revived the worst of colonial language. The Marshall Project has, for instance, tracked some of his major claims and how often he’s repeated them: “Unauthorized immigrants are criminals [said 575+ times], snakes that bite [35+ times], eating pets, coming from jails and mental institutions [560+ times], causing crime in sanctuary cities [185+ times], and a group of isolated, tragic cases prove they are killing Americans en masse [235+ times].” Clearly, draconian laws are needed to control such monsters!

Trump has also promised to deport millions of immigrants and issued a series of executive orders meant to greatly expand the detention and deportation of those living in the United States without legal authorization—“undocumented people.” Another set of orders is meant to strip the status of millions of immigrants who are currently here with legal authorization, revoking Temporary Protected Status, work authorizations, student visas, and even green cards. One reason for this is to expand the number of people who can be deported since, despite all the rhetoric and the spectacle, the administration has struggled so far to achieve anything faintly like the rates it has promised.

This anti-immigrant drive harmonizes with Trump’s affection for Jewish Israel and white South Africa in obvious ways. White South Africans are being welcomed with open arms (though few are coming), while other immigrants are targeted. Noncitizen students and others have been particularly singled out for supposedly “celebrating Hamas’ mass rape, kidnapping, and murder.” The cases of Mahmoud Khalil, Rasha Alawieh, Momodou Taal, Badar Khan Suri, Yunseo Chung, and Rumeysa Ozturk (and perhaps others by the time this article is published) stand out in this regard. The Trump administration repeatedly denigrates movements for Palestinian rights and immigrants as violent threats that must be contained.

There are some deeper connections as well. Immigrants from what Trump once termed “shit-hole countries” are, in his view, not only prone to violence and criminality themselves but also inclined to anti-American and anti-Israel views, leaving this country supposedly at risk. Included in his executive order on South Africa was the accusation that its government “has taken aggressive positions toward the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel… of genocide in the International Court of Justice” and is “undermining United States foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our Nation”—almost identical wording to that used to justify the revocation of visas for Khalil and others. In other words, threats are everywhere.

Trump and his associates weaponize antisemitism to attack student protesters, progressive Jewish organizations, freedom of speech, immigrants, higher education, and other threats to his colonizer’s view of the world.

In reality, however, the United States, Israel, and white South Africa exist as colonial anachronisms in what President Joe Biden, echoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, described (with respect to Israel) as an “incredibly dangerous neighborhood.” And Trump has only doubled down on that view.

Strange to imagine, but the planters of Barbados would undoubtedly be proud to see their ideological descendants continuing to impose violent control on our world, while invoking the racist ideas they proposed in the 1600s.

© 2023 TomDispatch.com


Aviva Chomsky
Aviva Chomsky's most recent book is "Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal." She is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts.
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