Iran war drives India’s cockroaches out, but can Modi crush them?

LONG READ


When an Indian student at a US university used AI to create the “Cockroach Janta Party (CPJ)”, a parody political party, it sparked a viral sensation, hitting the zeitgeist in a country that has been particularly affected by the Iran war. As India's youth circumvent bans to express their economic discontent online, it could pose a threat to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.


Issued on: 28/05/2026 
FRANCE24
By: Leela JACINTO
Video by: Vedika BAHL

An AI-generated illustration shows the parody Cockroach Janta Party’s logo. © AI-generated image/ Cockroach Janta Party
05:46


Barely three weeks after he launched a parody political movement that took India by storm, Abhijeet Dipke is being hunted and hounded by trolls, facing online extermination by the government, and his AI-generated satirical mascot, the cockroach, is as reviled in ruling party circles as the real thing is in kitchens across the country.

The movement was sparked by Indian Chief Justice Surya Kant’s controversial statements comparing the country’s unemployed youth to cockroaches. “Disheartened by those comments, I made a tweet on X that, what if all cockroaches come together? And on that personal X post, I received tremendous traction,” explained Dipke, an Indian political communications strategist and student at Boston University, in an interview with FRANCE 24.

SPOTLIGHT © FRANCE 24
13:28

Soon, a spoof party, the "Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)", or the People’s Party of Cockroaches, was born online. The name, a parody of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was digested immediately – and gleefully – by netizen critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies.

The satirical party hit the zeitgeist in a country that has been particularly impacted by the fallout of the Iran war. The Middle East conflict has also put a spotlight on Modi’s policies, exposing India’s vulnerabilities, highlighting New Delhi’s lack of clout on the diplomatic stage, and increasing the squeeze on significant sections of the population that have been overlooked in the Hindu nationalist government’s “economic miracle” discourse that has dominated India’s political stage for over a decade.

As millions flocked to the cockroach satirical cause, the movement’s social media accounts broke records, gained national and international media attention and even saw demonstrators don cockroach masks and display the parasite mascot at street protests.

It wasn’t long before the cockroach social media accounts came under attack, with Dipke alleging hacking and threats to his family. “I have been getting death threats for the last three days. Now, even my family is getting death threats,” said the 30-year-old native of the western Indian state of Maharashtra who is currently enrolled in a Master’s programme in the US. As digital rights groups condemned the violation of free speech, Dipke claimed there was a “full-blown attack against us to suppress this movement”.

Since Modi came to power in 2014, India has been slipping down press freedom indexes, with NGOs such as Reporters Without Borders warning that the Indian media “has fallen into an unofficial state of emergency”. But with the latest crackdown generating new waves of media coverage, the lid on the discourse of discontent has been prised open, and the scuttling cockroaches may be hard to contain.
Rising youth unemployment, falling US university admissions

While Kant has clarified that his observations from the bench slamming “youngsters like cockroaches” were misquoted and directed only at people obtaining "fake or bogus degrees”, his explanation failed to contain the uproar primarily because his remarks touched wounds that have been festering for years. But they have been suppressed by India’s political elites, according to analysts.

“There's been a lot of anger among the youth the world over,” noted Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University. “But I think fundamentally the trigger was the safety valves of the Indian state – which is the Supreme Court and the parliament and the Indian media – are no longer acting as safety valves or speaking when the executive overreaches. They're not providing the kind of correction that they're supposed to provide, which is where the frustration is building up in a certain sense among the youth.”

India has the world’s largest youth population, with about 65% of the 1.4 billion population under the age of 35, making youth unemployment a major issue for policymakers. Joblessness among India's urban youth stands at 14%, which is far higher than the overall unemployment of about 5%, official data ⁠show. That figure soars among graduates, with nearly 40% among those below 25 years unemployed, according to the 2026 State of Working India Report by the Azim Premji University.

The world’s most populous nation produces around 8 million graduate students a year, a hefty figure for the job market to accommodate. India also accounts for the largest percentage of foreign students in US universities, which in turn has supplied the US economy with a highly skilled workforce and an aspirational goal for students and their families back home.

But the American Dream in India is fading fast in President Donald Trump’s second term.

The Trump administration’s student visa restrictions, increased visa revocations often linked to minor infractions such as speeding tickets, and an atmosphere of intimidation – including threats to deport international students over pro-Palestinian speech – have seen foreign admissions in US universities fall by 17% in the 2025 fall semester, according to the Institute of International Education. In India, that figure plummeted to 75%, according to Indian media reports, with around 8,000 student visas revoked before December 2025.

From India to US detention: Trump's campus crackdown sends warning to foreign students

“The kind of people who go and study in the US, or who work in the US, are mostly Mr. Modi's staunch supporters because they come from the kind of socio-economic background which staunchly supports Mr. Modi,” explained Singh. “For them, being hurt [by Trump’s immigration policies], and Mr. Modi not being able to prevent the damage to them, is going to in some way damage Mr. Modi.”
A bromance sputters, then dies

While the Trump administration’s policies have sparked alarm in several world capitals, in India, it has heightened the scrutiny on Modi’s foreign policy and its rupture from New Delhi’s historic non-aligned position.

The Hindu nationalist prime minister made a splashy display of his tilt to the US during Trump’s first term, including a massive 2019 “Howdy Modi” rally in Houston, where, the New York Times noted, Modi “broke with protocol to campaign for a second term” for Trump.

President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the "Howdy Modi" event in Houston, September 22, 2019. © Evan Vucci, AP


But when Trump returned to the White House, he killed the bromance with a whopping 50% tariff announcement on Indian goods last year. The US president then topped it with his persistent claims of personally engineering an end to a brief cross-border war between India and Pakistan, the latest conflict between the two nuclear armed states over the disputed Kashmir region.

It was a win for Pakistan since it has long sought international mediation to resolve the Kashmir crisis, while India maintains it is a strictly bilateral issue. Islamabad repaid Trump by nominating him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Modi, meanwhile, bristled amid persistent news reports of the Indian prime minister avoiding a phone call with the US president, which were denied by both sides.

Iran war makes India ‘irrelevant’

The Iran War has heightened the perception of New Delhi’s sidelining on the diplomatic stage, as Islamabad emerged as a key mediator, with Trump dubbing Pakistan’s powerful military chief General Asim Munir his "favourite field marshal".

China, India’s biggest Asian rival and more threatening neighbour, has also welcomed Pakistan’s efforts to negotiate and renew a shaky ceasefire.

China and Pakistan are historical allies, while India has been viewed in Western capitals as a strategic partner to contain Chinese expansionism in the Indo-Pacific. But the Iran war has rattled the pieces on the Asian geostrategic chessboard, with New Delhi noting Trump’s high-profile state visit this month to China, where the US president proclaimed he held “very successful talks” with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

Earlier this week, Xi hosted Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and praised his guest’s “positive efforts” to bring peace to the Middle East. India, meanwhile, hosted US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for a visit that was widely viewed as a bid to defuse tensions between the world’s most populous democracies.

At the end of Rubio’s visit, most South Asia analysts concluded that the outcome of the visit was edifying, but not substantive. “There's been a little bit of optics. But I think the real issue is what concretely has been achieved that is in India's favour or which shows that the Trump administration is thinking differently about India. And we haven't seen progress on that,” explained Singh.

The Modi administration’s failure to condemn the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, a historic Indian ally, while forging close ties with Israel has also depleted India’s standing in the Global South and among the BRICS grouping, analysts say.

“India is just missing from the whole geopolitical debate in West Asia or the Middle East. And it’s not that India is just absent. Being absent is fine, but India's absence is not even being noticed. Which means that India is irrelevant,” Singh noted.
A Gen Z – and cockroach – threat

The absence on the diplomatic front is heightened by the serious strains the Iran war has placed on the Indian economy.

The South Asian giant is heavily dependent on fuel imports from the Middle East, and the soaring cost of gasoline, diesel and cooking fuel has put a dent in the Indian rupee, with the currency slumping to a record low last week against the dollar.

“In terms of the shock this has had, not just on energy, but now the ramifications, which are coming on all sorts of fronts, including gold imports, the diamond and all sorts of different industries, that’s not really a good position for India,” said Sandeep Bhardwaj, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS).

The cockroach movement, Bhardwaj notes, is “basically coming out of a lot of this economic anxiety, which is coming out of the persistent job crisis, which has been exacerbated by the economic crisis right now,” he said. “There is a real threat of that economic pressure snowballing into something real in terms of a political cost for the government.”

The political cost of downplaying youth discontent has been keenly felt in India’s neighbourhood in recent years. Gen Z protests have unseated governments in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, leading some to question if India could witness a similar experience.

But Bhardwaj is cautious about predicting a Gen Z replay in the world’s most populous nation. “India is so big. There are so many variations. For a non-political party, led a grassroots movement like this to engulf India, it's going to take a very long time and a lot of things to happen for it to become a major crisis in Indian politics,” he noted.

For the founder of the "Cockroach Janta Party", the meteoric rise of his online protest has led him to question how to take the momentum forward, but he’s taking his time. “None of this was intended. It was born out of satire,” said Dipke carefully. “I think the biggest mistake that all political parties in India have made is that they have stopped engaging with the youth. They no longer have a dialogue. They no longer listen to them. So that's what we are going to do,” he explained. “After getting those ideas and the data from them, that is when we will decide our next course of action.”

Dipke may not be sure of the next course of action for his viral movement, but he’s certain he will not abandon his resilient parasite mascot. “Of course, cockroach is going to be the name of this movement going forward because people are loving it, especially the youth and the Gen Z,” he said. “What was thrown at them as an insult, they are now carrying this name with pride. So, we are going to continue with the cockroach name.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Christians decry persecution in India's heartland

N Hannan in Shahjahanpur

DW

With Christians in India increasingly targeted by Hindu vigilantes, victims say police often side with the attackers.

In Uttar Pradesh, over a hundred pastors were detained (and eventually released) over claims linked with the state's anti-conversion laws

 (file photo)Image: Prabhat Kumar Verma/ZUMA/IMAGO

On a humid Sunday afternoon in July last year, a small gathering of Christians inside a modest home in India's Uttar Pradesh state was interrupted by a mob.

"At least 50 to 60 people associated with a Hindu right-wing organization came when people were receiving a religious message," said Jaynendra (name changed), the pastor leading the prayer.

What followed, he said, was chaos. The mob "created a ruckus and closed the prayer hall," Jaynendra said.

The gathering, held inside his home in the Shahjahanpur district, was not unusual. Like many Christians in northern India, Jaynendra hosts what is known as a house church, a quiet form of worship common among small and impoverished Christian communities. But in recent years, such gatherings have increasingly drawn the attention of Hindu right-wing vigilante groups who accuse Christians of carrying out forced conversions.

India's Christians make up just over 2% of the country's population, compared to around 79% for Hindus and over 14% for Muslims, according to the 2011 census.

Data compiled by rights groups indicates a disproportionate rise in violence against Christians over the past decade. In 2025 alone, local monitoring groups documented nearly 900 incidents across multiple Indian states, including physical assaults, disruptions to church services, and threats targeting worshippers, as per a report by Christian Solidarity International, a global Christian rights organization based in Switzerland.

New laws in India fuel attacks on Christians  03:07

Pastor arrested after attack on home church

Jaynendra's account is one among many that suggest a recurring pattern. Mobs descend on prayer meetings, raise allegations of forced conversion, and then the police are called. Often, victims say, it is the worshippers rather than the violent mob who are detained.

Following the attack in Uttar Pradesh, the police "took around 10 to 11 people to the police station and detained them," Jaynendra said. "They kept my family and others the whole day." Among those detained, he said, was a 13-year-old girl.

"The police questioned them and found out that they had no money or pressure to attend the gathering. Everyone came here to pray with their own will," he said. "But still they kept them."

The pastor himself was later arrested. He spent more than four months in jail under charges related to Uttar Pradesh's anti-conversion law. The law is a controversial state legislation that criminalizes religious conversions deemed to be carried out through force, fraud, or inducement. Critics say the law is often weaponized to target minority communities. Courts in the region have also noted a similar "disturbing trend" in false claims.

"There was no evidence against me," he said. "But there was a lot of pressure." DW did not receive a response from Uttar Pradesh police, despite several requests for comment.

This photo, taken in 2024, shows the grave of a Christian who died when mobs rampaged through parts of India's eastern state of Odisha after the murder of a Hindu priestImage: DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP

'They started beating people'

Across northern and central India, similar stories are emerging. In Madhya Pradesh's Chhindwara district, Vinay Patil (name changed) described an attack on his congregation during a Sunday service earlier this year.

"About 35 to 40 people came," he said. "They were young boys. They started talking in abusive language and said that 'you are doing forced conversions here.'" Some of the attackers, he said, were intoxicated. Many carried sticks.

"They started beating people. Women, children, everyone," he said. "Someone's shoulder was fractured. Someone's head was bleeding." By the time police arrived, the attackers had fled. But instead of pursuing them, Patil said, officers detained the victims and accused them of carrying out "forceful conversions."

"The police picked us up and took us away," he said. "Our people had made videos. It was visible that they were beating. After that, the police did not take any action."

Patil said that fear has become part of daily life. "Today a Christian, especially a pastor, cannot even sit at another person's house," he said. "We have to think before stepping out. Even going to someone's birthday can become a problem."

Violence rising under Modi's BJP

Rights advocates say such incidents are no longer isolated. Michael Williams of the United Christian Forum said the organization recorded 134 incidents of anti-Christian violence in 2014, the year India elected Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, compared to around 900 in 2025.

"What you can see now, which we could not see earlier, is that the people who are doing these crimes have no fear on their faces," he said. "They are stopping in broad daylight, in public spaces, with no fear. This is a growing trend."

Williams and others link the rise in violence to the political climate following the ascent of the BJP in 2014. The party, which promotes a Hindu nationalist ideology, governs in several states where anti-conversion laws have been enacted.

These laws, intended to prevent forced or fraudulent conversions, have been criticized by rights groups for their vague definitions and potential for misuse.

One of the Easter traditions practiced in India's city of Guwahati is the reenactment of Jesus' crucifixion

Image: Anupam Nath/AP Photo/picture alliance

Attackers act with 'sense of impunity'

Jaynendra was charged under one such law about forced conversions. "They applied the same charge twice," he said, denying the allegation. "We do not have money to pay our own rent. How can we give money to someone to convert them?"

The Indian Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, including the right to practice, profess, and propagate one's faith. But activists argue that this right is not being protected.

"People are walking inside a church and breaking things," Williams said. "They have no right to take any law into their own hands."

John Dayal, a veteran human rights activist, said the violence follows a consistent pattern that dates back decades but has intensified in recent years. "The actors involved have consistently stayed the same," he said. "But when the BJP is in control, there is a sense of impunity."

Dayal said the widespread use of cellphones has also changed the nature of these attacks. "Almost all crimes are committed on camera now," he said. "The filming is part of the crime. It is to show power, to get support."

Videos of such incidents have circulated widely on social media, sometimes sparking outrage but rarely leading to swift accountability, victims say.
'The police took their side'

In many cases, police response has come under scrutiny. "There is this peculiar thing that people are attacked and the cases are registered against the victims," Dayal said. Patil echoed that sentiment.

"The mob that had come, their associates came to the police station and talked to the officer," he said. "Our people were thrown out. The police took their side."

AC Michael, another leader of the United Christian Forum, said the lack of action has emboldened perpetrators. "They have no fear of law because they have protection behind them,” he said. "In so many places, no action has been taken."

"Last year, we had close to 900 incidents. That means there are more than two incidents of attacks against Christians every day."

India: Hindu nationalists force religious conversions  04:04

More than 100 pastors in Uttar Pradesh arrested, then acquitted

Back in Shahjahanpur, Jaynendra said tensions in his area were not always so high. "There were small problems over time, but not so big," he said. Now, he said, the message to his community is clear: "There is no freedom for you here. India is only for Hindus."

Government officials have repeatedly said that India remains committed to protecting all religions. They have also defended anti-conversion laws as necessary to prevent exploitation.

But critics argue that the laws have created an environment where accusations alone can trigger violence. "Even serving one cup of tea and two biscuits can be called allurement in some places," AC Michael said. "How can someone convert for that?"

He added that in many cases, those accused of forced conversion are eventually acquitted due to lack of evidence: "More than 100 pastors were arrested in Uttar Pradesh. All of them have been acquitted."

Still, the process itself can be punishing. Jaynendra spent months in jail awaiting bail. "My wife also went to jail on July 25 and was released in October," he said. "I was released on December 13." The case against him is still ongoing.
Christian children stay out of schools

For many, the impact extends beyond legal battles. Patil said fear of violence is now interfering with the education of Christan children.

"My own children are so terrorized that they have not gone to school for 15 days," he said. "Some people were beaten and forced out of their houses. They had to leave their villages."

Despite the risks, both men say they intend to continue their work. "Our job is to spread the message," Patil said. "It is on the people to decide whether they want to listen."

For Jaynendra, the experience has been transformative but not deterring. "The atmosphere has changed a lot," he said. "I have been living here since birth. This is the first time I had to go to jail."

The reporting for the story was supported by a grant from the HRRF Journalism Grant Program.

Edited by Darko Janjevic

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Vance torn apart for insulting his own wife — and a billion other people

Second Lady Usha Vance listens during the St. Patrick's Day breakfast in Washington, U.S., March 17, 2026. Roberto Schmidt/Pool via REUTERS

Matthew Rozsa

May 07, 2026  

ALTERNET

An anti-woke WSJ columnist is taking issue with President Donald Trump’s vice president, JD Vance's demeaning attacks on his own wife Usha Vance and roughly a billion other Hindus all over the world.

“Vice President JD Vance caused an uproar this past fall when he expressed his wish that his wife, Usha, a practicing Hindu, would one day follow his spiritual path,” Avatans Kumar, president and trustee of the nonprofit INDICA, wrote Thursday. “Many in the billion-strong global Hindu community were outraged at his declared hope that Mrs. Vance would convert to Catholicism.”

Kumar is still stinging months later, however, complaining that while the so-called religious freedom movement advocates for proselytizing religions like Catholicism and evangelical Christianity, it seems to deprioritize faiths that do not focus on converts.

“The root of this general dismissal of nonproselytizing religions is the dominance of Christianity and Islam,” Kumar explained. “The former is known for promoting evangelism, as seen in Jesus’ directive in Mark 16:15: ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.’ Islam emphasizes dawah, instructing Muslims to invite people to Islam. Muslims ruled large parts of India from the early 13th to the 19th century, and during this era Muslim preachers and Sufi mystics actively proselytized for Islam. The pattern of seeking converts is manifested in the missionary work of both Christianity and Islam.”

He added, “As these forms of faith came down to the present day, they tended to ignore the strain of religions that are mostly nonproselytizing—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto and tribal indigenous traditions. In these nonproselytizing religions, actively seeking new converts serves no theological purpose.”

From there Kumar asserted that Americans who wish to promote religious freedom should not zero in on the conversion-focused faiths to the neglect of others. Not only did this leave certain individuals feeling excluded, but it reeks of the West’s imperialist past.

“Colonialism is closely linked to religious conversion, as British missionaries sought to convert Hindus,” Kumar wrote. “Many British Christians believed their religion was more advanced and enlightened than those of the people they ruled, motivating their missionary activities.”

Kumar’s advocacy of Hindu representation arguably conflicts with his previous opposition to what he described in India Currents as “wokeism.” In his 2024 editorial, he argued that supposed “woke” culture contributed to President Donald Trump’s reelection that year.

“The Democrats, the U.S. legacy media, and wokeism have become synonymous with each other over the past few years,” Kumar wrote. “When the 2024 US election results came out, they all ended up on the losing side, individually and collectively. The thrashing was so comprehensive that it left the Democrats and their surrogates in US media, as well as the out-of-touch Hollywood celebrities, in a state of shock.”

Like Kumar, the Second Lady has publicly associated with right-leaning views. As The Verge’s Gaby Del Valle reported in April, Vance’s recent podcast “Storytime with the Second Lady” seemed to subtly reaffirm conservative gender roles.

“She’s … the latest conservative spouse to pivot to content creation,” Del Valle wrote. “It’s a new front of the ongoing culture wars: Instead of trying to win back supposedly liberal institutions, the right is hell-bent on creating its own. And if these institutions reinforce conservative gender norms, that’s all the better.”

SATANISTS DONT PROSELTYZE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Indian Muslims say they're being targeted as millions of voters deleted from rolls

Issued on: 29/04/2026 - FRANCE24
06:20 min From the show

Last year, the Election Commission of India launched a "Special Intensive Revision", or SIR, describing it as an exercise to eliminate duplicate or deceased voters. So far, 13 states and federally administered territories have completed the task, leading to the deletion of over 55 million voters from the electoral rolls. But this exercise has become a political flashpoint in West Bengal, where 9 million voters have been deleted ahead of a crucial state election.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party, the BJP, is hoping to win that state election. Opposition leaders and former officials argue the scale and timing of deletions could undermine democratic fairness and tilt the election result.

The controversy has become one of the defining issues of the West Bengal election, exposing deeper fault lines in voter rights and the integrity of India's electoral system.

FRANCE 24's Navodita Kumari, Zubair Dar and Mohammad Sartaj Alam report.

BY: Navodita KUMARI

 LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor…

Liz Theoharis

 April 21, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Image by Steve Knutson.

In late March, I sat in the gallery of the Supreme Court for the first time in my life. Throughout my 30 years of grassroots anti-poverty work, I’ve joined countless protests and vigils outside the Court. In 2018, I was even arrested and held in detention for praying on its palatial steps. Now, I was seated with a clear view of the nine justices of the nation’s highest court. I was there as a guest of immigrant rights lawyers, as their team made oral arguments in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the most significant case on the right to asylum in decades.

In February, the Kairos Center (the organization I direct) authored an interfaith amicus brief on that very case, alongside 31 denominations and organizations representing faith traditions practiced by billions worldwide. Those groups, including the Alliance of Baptists, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Hindus for Human Rights, the Latino Christian National Network, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Reconstructing Judaism, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, and the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, joined together to declare that our societal obligation to provide for persecuted outsiders is a universally shared moral principle.

Although the case has largely flown under the public radar, there is indeed a lot at stake. Filed on behalf of asylum seekers, Noem v. Al Otro Lado focuses on the legality of a 2018 Trump border policy blocking access to the U.S. asylum process for people arriving at the border with Mexico. Immigrant rights advocates argue that such a turnback policy, under which immigration officers physically stop people seeking safety at official border crossings from setting foot on U.S. soil, flouts decades of settled federal immigration law and our society’s most deeply held legal and moral values.

For more than a century, the government has been required to undertake a legal process of inspection when people seek asylum at official ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border (as they must inspect all noncitizens seeking admission to the United States). That requirement is supposed to ensure that this country doesn’t send vulnerable people back into danger without first allowing them to seek protection. A wide range of immigration lawyers and legal experts argue that the first Trump administration’s turnback policy, euphemistically called “metering,” directly undermined the government’s responsibility to process such asylum claims. As a result, vulnerable children, families, and adults were regularly forced to remain indefinitely stranded in perilous conditions in Mexico.

Although the turnback policy has not been in effect since 2021, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared it unlawful, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to review the case. Should the government win (which is all too possible given the hyperpartisan nature of the current Court), the consequences are sure to be grave and far-reaching. The Department of Homeland Security would have the legal backing to turn away untold thousands of desperate people at the border, potentially clearing the way for even more expansive border closures, while further intensifying the jingoistic nationalism that defines the Trump administration. Alongside other landmark cases this term, like Trump v. Barboza, in which the government seeks to undo the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, the results of Noem v. Al Otro Lado are likely to reveal the lengths to which the Supreme Court is willing to backstop the president’s assault on democracy, including accelerated attacks on the rights of vulnerable populations.

The day I was there, the existential stakes of that case and the larger societal crisis in which it was unfolding did not seem to concern the court’s conservative justices. I had the words of George Washington (written in 1788 to the radical Dutch republican Francis Van der Kemp) in my mind as I sat in the gallery: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.”

Unfortunately, having heard the statements and reactions of some of the judges, I fear that the majority of the Supreme Court may no longer agree with that foundational vision for this country.

Courtroom Friezes and Draconian Law

The first thing that struck me on entering the Supreme Court gallery were the stone friezes on the walls of the room. Designed by Adolf Weinman more than a century ago, those large marble reliefs, featuring what he called the “great lawgivers of history,” tower over the space. Among them are prominent religious figures like Moses (holding a scroll of the Ten Commandments), King Solomon, Confucius, and a rendition of the Prophet Muhammad (that is entirely unrecognizable). The friezes also include Roman Emperor Octavian (otherwise known as Caesar Augustus, Jesus’s great nemesis), French King Louis IX (leader of the seventh and eighth crusades), and Draco (a Greek jurist whose legacy lurks in the word “draconian” because of the extreme measures he took to punish minor offenses).

As I stared at those figures, I reflected on the message they convey about the complex civilizational lineages from which the Supreme Court and our legal system derive their authority. In our amicus brief, we reflected on those varied lineages as they pertain to the right to seek asylum:

“Our asylum laws are the modern embodiment of a deeply rooted religious, cultural, and historical heritage that has consistently affirmed society’s obligation to provide refuge for those seeking safety. Asylum reaches back to some of the earliest moments of recorded human history. It was practiced throughout the ancient civilizations that forged the foundation of Western society. This tradition can also be found in the form of church sanctuary asylum, a mainstay of European culture for over a millennium.

“Our very nation began as a haven for persecuted political and religious minorities. This tradition is present throughout our history, from the practices of Native Americans to the Underground Railroad to modern times. Congress adopted our current asylum laws in significant part due to the efforts of faith-based groups seeking to uphold deeply held societal, moral, and cultural principles.”

Despite such deeply held and ancient principles, I couldn’t shake a sense of impending doom as I scanned the faces on the friezes and those of the justices. I thought of the awesome and awful power of Rome, depicted throughout the gallery, and its draconian reign of “peace” (or what Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently termed “delivering peace through strength”). And I recalled the worsening anti-democratic and pro-oligarchic turn our own Supreme Court has taken in the Trump era.

Just consider the rulings from the past few years: the Court has essentially given immunity to the executive branch (although the Court is supposed to be a critical part of a federal system of checks and balances), criminalized homelessness (although the U.S. claims to be a nation of opportunity and prosperity for all), and degraded voting rights (cutting off the legs of our democracy).

Before oral arguments began in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, I was under no illusion that the Supreme Court delivers equality, freedom, and justice for all. And yet, on an issue as basic and legally sound as the right to seek asylum, I was still shocked by the flippancy of the court’s conservative judges. For hours, they rocked in their chairs, physically broadcasting their disinterest in the case. Rather than take seriously more than 100 years of legal precedent and hundreds more of long-established societal practice, they seemed to enjoy getting into hyper-specific and cherrypicked semantic and rhetorical arguments with Kelsi Brown Cochran, our lawyer.

In preparation for that day, I had brushed up on the history of U.S. asylum law. An important story in that history is the S.S. St. Louis, a ship that in 1939 was carrying 930 refugees from Hamburg, Germany, fleeing the Nazi regime, who were first denied entry to Cuba and then to the United States, only to be returned to Europe, where many of them were taken to the Nazi death camps.

Reflecting on that story at a pre-hearing press conference, Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, border rights project director at Al Otro Lado, a plaintiff in the case, offered this explanation:

“The right to seek asylum is not a policy preference or a loophole — it is a legal right and a moral commitment forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Seeking asylum is not like taking a number at a deli counter and waiting for your turn. You cannot ask someone fleeing rape, torture, or death threats to wait in danger indefinitely because a government has decided their lives are inconvenient. We filed this case because the United States has an obligation to follow its own laws — laws duly enacted by Congress. The question before the Court is whether those laws can be set aside by executive action, or whether they remain binding at the border, as written.”

In their apparent willingness to flout precedent and condemn modern-day asylees to harm or even death, the conservative justices unselfconsciously aligned themselves with American nativism and European fascism of the 1930s. If, in their final decision, they uphold Trump’s turnback policy, they will be affirming that, were the S.S. St Louis to sail again today, the ship would still be denied entry and its passengers asylum.

The Moral Crisis Is Not “Border Surges” But the Closing of the Border

The morning of those oral arguments, the Kairos Center and other faith organizations held an interfaith prayer vigil on the steps of the Supreme Court to call attention to the case. Reverend Michael Neuroth, director of the United Church of Christ’s Washington D.C. office, put the matter vividly: “Welcoming and protecting the stranger is not a minor tenet of our faith but is a foundational moral obligation in each of our traditions. Dismantling the right to asylum is morally wrong, strategically short-sighted, and increases insecurity here in our nation. We must be a nation of compassion, a place of refuge to those in need.”

The vigil was organized in the heart of the “holy season” amid Ramadan, Passover, and Easter. As billions of people globally engage in rituals of remembrance, repentance, deliverance, and liberation, our prayers and petitions focused not only on the legal precedent for the right to seek asylum, but on the moral imperative to do so. For Christians, protecting and welcoming the immigrant is one of Jesus’s first and most powerful teachings. It’s also among the highest moral commands of the Torah. As the prophet Jeremiah reminds us, “Do no wrong to the foreigner and do not shed innocent blood.” Asylum and societal hospitality are well-recognized rights within Islamic law and theology, a fundamental Hindu and Buddhist tenet, and part of Native American spiritual teachings.

In our interfaith amicus brief, we wrote: “As the many faiths practiced by this country’s citizens teach, a society that does not protect the least among us is a failed society.” As faith leaders, we had in mind not only the right to seek asylum, but the many ways the Trump administration has deepened and intensified a moral crisis at the heart of our society. We were thinking about the ongoing attacks on immigrant communities — from ICE-led campaigns of terror to family and child detention in places like Dilley, Texas. There was also the stripping of life-saving healthcare and food support from millions of Americans through cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); the criminalization and forced deprivation of LGBTQ+ people; and the prosecution of anillegal war that threatens the lives of so many in Iran and the broader region, as well as the livelihoods of billions of us across this globe.

In Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the Trump administration is attempting to mask its cruelty and despotism through banal legal arguments. By focusing semantically on when protections start for asylum seekers and debating the meaning of the term “arrives in” (as in this country, of course), its lawyers were ignoring the illegality and immorality of border agents blocking asylum seekers from crossing the U.S.-Mexican border and the larger question of whether the United States can any longer be a place of safety and protection for all families “yearning to be free” of violence and persecution.

The government is, of course, hoping that we don’t make the connections between the stripping away of asylum rights, the larger issue of immigrant rights, and the many other ways that it’s targeting “the least among us.” That’s a mistake we can’t make and where the teachings of our many faith traditions have encouragement to offer. In Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and more, love, justice, and peace are not parceled out only for certain people in certain places. Across our religions, all life is sacred, full stop!

No Turning Back for Anyone

Intermixed with the important lawgivers of history in that marble frieze in the Supreme Court gallery are engraved winged personifications of “Peace,” “The Rights of Man,” “History,” “Authority,” “Fame,” and more. Those winged characters form what looked to me like a Greco-Roman “choir of angels,” proclaiming “law and order” at the expense of rights and dignity for us all.

Sitting there, I reflected on just who was not in that room listening to those arguments or forcing the Supreme Court justices to face the very lives impacted by their decision. I thought about all those who will never have access to that courtroom, or justice of any sort for that matter, the millions of people struggling to fight for their communities and a future where everybody is in and nobody is out.

Those people are — or at least should be — our hope. They are the true “choir of angels” who came out for the recent No Kings Day demonstrations and are standing up for the rights and dignity of communities all over the country. They are also the people who are increasingly giving Donald Trump historically low approval ratings. And here’s the truth of these times: this administration has nothing to offer everyday people, other than hardened borders and wars that nobody wants.

At such a moment in history, a movement that connects the dots between our many struggles is certainly the way forward. Therefore, it seems fitting that the coalition that came together to fight this case and protect the rights of asylum seekers calls itself “No Turning Back.” It reminds me of a song by Emma’s Revolution that I’ve sung many times at protests and gatherings. Its key lines are a reminder of what we all need to keep in mind in this deeply disturbing Trumpian moment of ours:

“Gonna keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Never turning back
Never turning back”

Because indeed, there can be no turning back for any of us. Either we get there together or we never get there at all.

This piece first appeared on TomDispatch.

Liz Theoharis, a TomDispatch regular, is a theologian, ordained minister, and anti-poverty activist. Co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, she is the author of Always With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor and We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People’s Campaign. Follow her on Twitter at @liztheo.