Tim, Sarah and Jon Lovett, co-host of Pod Save America, join together for a big, beautiful, gay-as-hell fundraiser during WorldPride to support Andry José Hérnandez Romero and other individuals wrongfully disappeared to El Salvador without due process.
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Jon, Tim and Sarah open the floor to two people doing the hard, important work for justice: Andry’s lawyer and President of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Lindsay Toczylowski, and Congressman Robert Garcia. Then Lovett takes us to the library for some good old fashioned reads of the Trump administration with help from the audience.
Later, they are joined by the incredible Tara Hoot to finally answer the age-old question: Who’s better at trivia—gay or straight people?
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Join them as they laugh, they listen, and they learn a lot bout lesbians. Like, a lot. And in the end, isn’t that what Pride Month is all about?
Watch Tim, Jon and Sarah’s speeches from our Free Andry rally at the steps of the Supreme Court
Want to help to support Andry and the other detained immigrants? Donate here :
FreeAndry.org
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This week on Bulwark on Sunday, Bill Kristol talks with Adrian Carrasquillo about the mass arrests in Southern California, the communities fighting back, and the dangerous precedent of military force in American cities.
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The first counterintuitive fact one has to understand is that American Jewish left was kind of an autochthonous development; it was not an import from foreign shores. Indeed, I might turn the question around a little and ask: Why did a Jewish left emerge in the United States? It may seem unlikely, given that the US isn’t typically known for its progressivism.
Yet it’s also important to remember that May Day begins in the United States. Karl Marx, for instance, wrote very movingly about the American labor movement; the 1870s and 1880s in the US saw some of the most radical strikes and organizing anywhere in the world. The Haymarket martyrs and the eight-hour-day movement were hugely influential on the global left.
This is also a moment in which we see a huge influx of mostly working-class Jews fleeing the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe and arriving amid this maelstrom of labor union activity. These Jews were aware of the connection between Jewish emancipation and European democratic revolutions — they arrive in the United States and encounter German, Mexican, and other immigrant labor activists. These Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants came to America and joined the ranks of the proletariat and encountered German and other immigrant socialists. Many of them became socialists not in Europe, but once they arrived in the US.
The interesting question isn’t, “Why did Jews join the left?” Lots of ethnic groups in Europe had an outsize left presence for a time. Germans in the nineteenth century and, in the early twentieth century, Finns made up a huge portion of the Communist Party. The question is instead how and why the Jewish left in America took shape the way it did.
The Jews were actually very similar to other ethnic groups who either brought radicalism with them or became radicalized once they joined the American labor movement. But why did the radicalism persist?
For the Finns and the Germans, it basically lasted a generation, maybe two. But for Jews, it stuck around. If anything, until the 1950s, Jews who were members of the socialist movement became more radical the longer they stayed in America.
The narrative you’ll hear from many Jewish historians is this canard that radicals came from Europe, but as soon as they assimilated, they became proper liberal Democrats. That’s not actually what happened. Instead, these millions of Jewish immigrants became socialists on arrival. The longer they stayed, the more confidence they had in expressing their radical politics.
Mike Gold was a second-generation immigrant. Most of the Communist Party, as historian Michael Denning makes clear in The Cultural Front, was made up of second- and third-generation ethnic Americans — and a huge part of that was Jewish. The Jewish left made up a major portion of white ethnics in the Popular Front.
One reason Jews stayed in the Left longer is that, unlike the European left, the American left had to learn the language of anti-racism. America isn’t just a diverse society — it’s a country built on slavery and indigenous genocide. African Americans were a huge part of the labor movement, particularly in northern cities. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, labor organizers realized that bosses used racism to divide the labor movement. The more progressive and forward-looking factions of the labor movement — like the Wobblies, some wings of the Socialist Party, and the Communist Party — understood that they not only had to be anti-racist, they had to actively embrace the black working class. That was the only way to build a left-wing movement worth anything.
For American Jews, this was the first time that being part of an ethnic, minority left wasn’t at odds with left-wing politics. In Europe, as Enzo Traverso discusses in The Marxists and the Jewish Question, the European left often struggled with what to do with autonomous Jewish movements. The Bund, for example, frequently clashed with other leftist organizations. But in the US, the Left became the first political space where you truly had a multiethnic, left-wing movement in which Jewish ethnic politics wasn’t anti-leftist; it was an integral part of left-wing American culture. As Stuart Hall observed of another settler country, “race was the modality through which class was lived,” and for generations of Jews who still remembered the experience of second-class citizenship in Europe, this was a modality that spoke to their common sense.
Another important factor was that many Jewish leftists identified with African Americans as a way to confront and process their own experiences with antisemitism. Jews who came to America could see the connection immediately, particularly the Eastern European immigrant Jews who joined nascent socialist and Communist movements. When Jewish immigrants in the US saw African Americans being lynched, burned alive, and subjected to all kinds of bodily violations, many immediately recognized it. Many American Jews turned away from cross-racial solidarity; but many who joined the Left understood cross-racial solidarity as being not only the core principle of socialism in the US, but also diasporic Jewish identity.
One could say this was a left-wing form of assimilation. They tried to translate their Jewish experience into what they saw as an American idiom. And within the labor left, that American idiom was anti-racism — just as other Jews, seeking to assimilate into mainstream American whiteness, interpreted the American idiom as racism.
For better or worse, Jews have long had the experience of seeing themselves as a community — a diasporic community — wherever they go. There’s a shared expectation that wherever Jews settle, they gather together, organize, and maintain communal life. That sense of collective identity and community-building didn’t go away in the US. Left-wing Jews did the same thing. There were holidays, rituals, community events, and a sense that wherever you go, you get together as Jews. That wasn’t necessarily the case for other white ethnic diaspora groups.
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DONALD TRUMP SAYS HIS PUSH to cut off federal support for electric vehicles was a big impetus for Elon Musk’s dramatic turn against him this week.
Whether that’s really true is anybody’s guess.
On the one hand, Trump’s determination to end federal support of EVs couldn’t have taken Musk by surprise. “Ending the EV mandate” has been a Trump rallying cry since before he officially started running for president again. The obvious threat that posed to Tesla—which Musk runs, and which sells more EVs in the United States than any other company—didn’t stop him from endorsing Trump, or from spending more than $250 million to help elect him.
In fact, when Tesla investors on an earnings call last summer asked about Trump’s hostility to EVs, Musk said “long term, it probably actually helps” the company, as eliminating subsidies and incentives would put domestic competitors like Ford and GM at a competitive disadvantage.
But that was a year ago.
Now ending federal EV support isn’t just a slogan, it’s a set of real policy changes in the works, including provisions in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that the House passed last month and the Senate is debating now. That legislation would eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of tax credits to support EV production and purchases that Joe Biden and the Democrats put in place back in 2022.
And far from helping the company, Tesla stands to lose big. More than a billion dollars in revenue a year is at risk if those tax credits go away, J.P. Morgan projects. The timing couldn’t be worse, because Tesla sales have been plummeting, thanks in no small part to the way Musk’s embrace of Trump has tarnished the brand.
So while it doesn’t take a ton of imagination to come up with alternative explanations for Musk’s pique—Trump nixing his choice for NASA leader? assumptions that administration officials dished to the New York Times about his personal life?—it’s hard not to believe that Trump’s war on EVs is somewhere on Musk’s list of grievances.
But you don’t have to like Musk, or approve of what he’s done in (and to) government, to think he might have a point about EV subsidies. Here’s why.
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John Avlon and strategic advisor John Henes discuss the Democratic Party’s deep messaging crisis and identity politics pitfalls. Henes argues Democrats must return to clear, relatable messages about public safety, economic opportunity, and everyday concerns. They explore Jons experience with Harris, why voters feel alienated, the dangers of extreme rhetoric, and lessons from Bill Clinton’s successful approach.
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This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, a 2023-2024 LRN partner. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.
For half a century, through scandals, investigations, failed state inspections and even the illegal use of seclusion to punish children, Richard L. Bean remained in his perch of power as the superintendent of the juvenile detention center that bears his name.
Throughout nearly all of his tenure, there was only one body that could remove him from his post: a board of trustees unlike any other in the state. New reporting by WPLN News and ProPublica shows that for decades the voting members of that board were close friends and allies of Bean’s.
Even for Knoxville, Tennessee, a city known for its old-school politics, the relationship Bean has had with board members past and present stands out. His former secretary, his personal lawyer, the judge for whom he served as a campaign treasurer and a pallbearer of his wife’s casket all sat on the board over time as voting members.
“He’s just been allowed to go unchecked,” said Democratic state Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville, a critic of Bean’s. “It was just a bad situation compounded by a rubber-stamp board that really was trying to protect him and not protect our children.”
Bean, who did not respond to requests for comment, abruptly announced last week that he is resigning in the wake of a new scandal. Had he not chosen to leave himself, McKenzie said, the board never would have unseated him.
“Watchdogs Over Richard”
Tennessee has 16 other county juvenile detention facilities similar to the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center. Oversight of all of those falls to county agencies, like the sheriff’s department, juvenile court or commissioners. And a few are run by private companies.
In 1972, when Bean started as superintendent, the juvenile detention home in Knoxville was a city-run facility. In the mid ’70s, it became a regional facility that had 40 beds and has since grown to three times that. The creation of the board, through a legislative act, was a way for both city and county officials to maintain some say in the facility’s functioning.
The board’s mandate, as laid out in the Knox County code, is to have “administrative control” over the center, its budget and its superintendent. Though it was constituted to include 10 members, only three have voting power. The county commission appoints two of the voting members. The county juvenile court judge, who also sits on the board as a nonvoting member, appoints the third.
None of the current board members responded to a request for comment. Neither did six current commissioners who helped appoint the voting members now on the board. The juvenile court judge, Tim Irwin, declined to comment.
Knox County lawyer Chris Coffey was a voting board member from 1999 to 2020, according to the Knoxville city website. He remembers the quarterly meetings as small — usually attended by a handful of board members, the juvenile court judge and Bean, plus occasional staff members from the facility.
A cell in the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center. Tennessee has 16 other county juvenile detention facilities similar to the Bean Center.
Credit:
William DeShazer for ProPublica
The board only knew what Bean told them about the facility, he said. The superintendent would give a presentation during each meeting about how many kids were in the facility, what kinds of meals they served or how many books were donated.
Coffey does not recall any serious discussions about issues at the detention center or with Bean’s leadership.
“It just never really dawned on me that we were watchdogs over Richard,” Coffey said. “It never really was explained to me that way.”
“Friends of Richard’s”
Local lawyers John Valliant, Billy Stokes and Sherry Mahar are the current voting members of the center’s board. When Bean’s wife, Lillian, died last year, Valliant and Stokes were listed as her pallbearers. The latter was also an officiant at her funeral.
Stokes worked for Bean at the center for three years, calling some of the children there “dangerous thugs” in a 1991 letter to the editor defending Bean against The Knoxville News Sentinel’s criticism of his leadership. Later, Stokes represented Bean as his personal lawyer when he was sued in his capacity as superintendent of the center in 2003.
Valliant, appointed to his seat on the board by the county commissioners, has represented county commissioners as their lawyer. After WPLN and ProPublica reported on Bean’s documented illegal use of seclusion at the facility in 2023, lawmakers called for his resignation. But Valliant told a local TV news station that he thought the Bean Center was “the best facility in the state of Tennessee.”
Mahar is a longtime lawyer in Knox County representing kids in juvenile court. On New Year’s Day 2025, screenshots provided to WPLN show that she wrote to Bean on Facebook, “Just wanting to say Happy New Year and I love you” with a red heart emoji.
Bean’s close relationships with the voting members of his board go back years, said Betty Bean, a longtime political journalist in Knox County who said she’s a distant relative of the superintendent.
“Richard made his own rules back in the day, and it hasn’t changed a lot,” she said. “Most of the board are good people. But they’re all friends of Richard’s.”
One former board member was Bean’s secretary, who had donated money to his wife’s campaigns for Knox County circuit, general sessions and juvenile court clerk, according to Betty Bean and local news reports at the time. And for decades, another voting board member was Gail Jarvis, a lawyer and former Knox County General Sessions Court judge. Richard Bean was campaign treasurer for Jarvis when she was running to become the criminal court judge in 1998.
Jarvis did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment.
“He had a lot of political influence in town,” former board member Coffey said. “Back in those days, almost anybody that ran for anything — whether it was judicial or political — wanted his blessing and endorsement.”
Photos of people posing with Bean blanket the wall of his office.
Credit:
William DeShazer for ProPublica
Some of the people listed as appointees to the center’s board didn’t know they were members until receiving a call from WPLN and ProPublica for this story.
At least two people listed on a Knoxville city website as being nonvoting appointees from 1999-2020 said they had no idea they had been members. And the East Tennessee Development District Law Enforcement Advisory Committee, which is listed as having appointed the pair, has not existed for at least 15 years, according to the head of the development district.
“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” said Terry Frank, who is now the mayor of neighboring Anderson County. “Something definitely as important as a juvenile board, I would definitely appear if I knew that I was a sitting member.” Bill Brittain, the former mayor of Hamblen County, said the same.
According to the public list, the board has also had a Knox County GOP appointee, but it has had a vacancy for a Democratic appointee since at least 1999.
U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett was also a nonvoting member of the board, listed from 1999 to 2017 as the city mayor’s appointee. When reached by phone he estimated he only attended two meetings during that time.
“Somebody Was Going to Die in There”
It would have been hard for the board to miss that the Bean Center was troubled.
A 1991 grand jury said the facility had rat problems and no toilet paper. A 2000 grand jury called the detention center a “disgrace” to the county, citing that the facility was dirty to the point of stinking.
In 2003, allegations of sexual harassment and assault by an employee at the center made the papers. The Department of Children’s Services said it was investigating the employee and considering a probe of the center. Three female staffers, and one of their husbands who also worked at the center, filed a lawsuit — later dismissed — against Bean, Knox County and the employee. The county later settled with the husband, who claimed he was demoted when his wife threatened legal action.
A 2023 investigation by WPLN and ProPublica found the facility was illegally using seclusion as punishment and was consistently out of compliance with DCS, according to public records.
Stephani Clowers, the nurse whose firing set in motion Bean’s resignation, said she never considered going to the board for help. She said Bean openly told people they were his “best friends.”
“Absolutely not. Because they would have told him,” she said. “It would’ve made things much harder.”
Clowers reported the alleged mishandling of medication by the staff to Bean, but nothing changed, she said. She hit her breaking point in 2024 when a child at the center was clearly in need of medical attention “and that child was hidden from me,” Clowers said. When she was able to see him, she called and consulted a doctor who determined that the boy should be transferred to the emergency room. Clowers said the child was never taken there. She reported these incidents to the DCS workers assigned to those children and then to the state comptroller’s office.
“I knew then that if something did not change, somebody was going to die in there,” she said.
Teenagers watch a movie at the Bean Center.
Credit:
William DeShazer for ProPublica
WPLN and ProPublica reached out to board members and the detention center for comment about Clower’s allegations. Irwin, the juvenile court judge who is also on the board, declined to comment. The others did not respond.
Bean’s decision to fire Clowers was the apparent last straw for Irwin. He went to Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs.
Irwin, a former NFL player, and Jacobs, a former professional wrestler, wrote a letter to the 84-year-old superintendent demanding he reinstate the nurse and another fired employee. And Jacobs looped in the governor and called for the facility to be taken out from under Bean and the board.
A day later, Bean announced that he plans to leave on Aug. 1. He didn’t reply to requests for comment, but in 2023 he told WPLN and ProPublica that he would stay in his position as “long as Judge and my board put up with me.” He predicted that Irwin would “run him out” for bad publicity.
“I am dismayed and disappointed by the rush to judgement by the Mayor, Judge Irwin, and other county leaders,” Bean wrote in his resignation letter to board member Valliant.
Clowers said she was surprised that Bean decided to resign.
“I thought he was gonna get away with it. This whole time I knew it would be me or him,” Clowers said. “And when it was me it was kind of devastating. I was like, wow, he wins again.”
The Board’s Unknown Future
Even with Bean’s departure, the question of the board remains.
Jacobs is asking the commissioners to pass an emergency ordinance dismantling the board. He wants them to delete sections of the Knox County code about the board, its meetings and duties and replace them with a new section that would give operation and control to the Knox County sheriff.
Commissioners who came into office after the last board was appointed told WPLN they want an investigation before they reassign control of the center to anyone. That includes the sheriff, who told WPLN in a statement that he was willing to work with the mayor and the state “to find solutions in the best interest of the juveniles in custody.”
McKenzie, the Democratic state representative, said he doesn’t think giving the detention center to the sheriff’s office is the answer. He pointed to a recent incident in which sheriff’s office SWAT deputies shot and killed a Black high school student during a raid.
“I don’t think that office is built or equipped to handle juvenile justice,” he said.
The sheriff’s office said it takes “the safety and security of juveniles in our care very seriously,” but it declined to comment further on McKenzie’s statements.
McKenzie said giving the facility to the sheriff would be like saying “we want to sweep this under the carpet,” keeping “Knox County business inside Knox County.”
That type of insular “good old boys” attitude, he said, created this problem in the first place.
Bean in his office in 2023. He plans to leave on Aug. 1.
Credit:
William DeShazer for ProPublica
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SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Chuckie Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, others claiming people will die if this “One Big Beautiful Bill” is in fact passed, when in reality, no such thing is true. If you look over ten years, for example, Medicaid spending will go up 78%. If you look at Medicare spending, it will go up 65%. If you look at Social Security, it will go up 73%. And if we don’t get interest rates down, that’s going to go up nearly 300%. So it is a real, clear, present danger, but that doesn’t stop them and won’t stop them from lying and trying to scare seniors.
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Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Russia’s latest drone and missile attack on Ukraine, U.S. President Donald Trump feuding with tech billionaire Elon Musk, and Washington sanctioning the International Criminal Court.
Retaliatory Attack
Russia launched one of its largest aerial bombardments against Ukraine on Friday. According to Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat, more than 400 Russian drones and 44 ballistic and cruise missiles struck areas in six Ukrainian territories. Kyiv’s forces shot down around 30 missiles and up to 200 drones, but the operation still killed at least four people, including emergency responders, and injured some 50 others.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Russia’s latest drone and missile attack on Ukraine, U.S. President Donald Trump feuding with tech billionaire Elon Musk, and Washington sanctioning the International Criminal Court.
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Retaliatory Attack
Russia launched one of its largest aerial bombardments against Ukraine on Friday. According to Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat, more than 400 Russian drones and 44 ballistic and cruise missiles struck areas in six Ukrainian territories. Kyiv’s forces shot down around 30 missiles and up to 200 drones, but the operation still killed at least four people, including emergency responders, and injured some 50 others.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the assault targeted Ukrainian military sites with “long-range precision weapons,” including arms depots and drone factories. However, locals reported that the bombardment also hit apartment buildings and other nonmilitary locations. Moscow has consistently targeted residential areas and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since launching its full-scale war in February 2022.
“Since the first minute of this war, they have been striking cities and villages to destroy life,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X on Friday. “Russia doesn’t change its stripes.”
The sweeping assault appears to be in direct retaliation for a massive Ukrainian drone attack, dubbed Operation Spider’s Web, against Russia’s long-range weapons capabilities last weekend. Using 117 aerial drones smuggled across enemy lines and positioned near Russian air bases, Ukraine damaged or destroyed several of Moscow’s strategic cruise missile carriers.
U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, during which Trump said the Russian leader vowed to respond to Ukraine’s attack; however, Trump did not say whether he tried to discourage Putin from doing so.
And on Thursday, Trump appeared to prioritize a more hands-off approach to the conflict. “Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart,” Trump said, comparing Russia and Ukraine to misbehaving children and suggesting that the United States could impose sanctions on both countries if efforts to secure a peace deal seem insincere.
Such a peace agreement does not appear to be in the cards—at least, not in the near future. Kyiv is demanding an unconditional 30-day cease-fire as well as a face-to-face meeting between Zelensky and Putin. But Moscow remains adamant that it will not agree to a truce deal unless Ukraine concedes on several major points of negotiation, including abandoning its bid to join NATO and allowing Russia to control large swaths of Ukrainian land.
“The Kremlin continues efforts to falsely portray Russia as willing to engage in good-faith negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, despite Russia’s repeated refusal to offer any concessions,” the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said on Thursday.
In an effort to push Moscow to the negotiating table, Ukraine has prioritized aerial attacks against Russia. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Moscow’s air defenses intercepted 174 Ukrainian drones across 13 regions on Thursday and Friday as well as three Ukrainian Neptune missiles over the Black Sea. The Ukrainian General Staff said the operation successfully struck airfields, fuel storage tanks, and transport hubs.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Relationship meltdown. The honeymoon period is over. After months spent touting a united agenda to remake Washington, Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s close relationship erupted in a dramatic—and public—feud on Thursday.
At the center of their dispute is a major Republican tax cut and spending bill—which Trump has dubbed the “big, beautiful bill”—that the White House is trying to get through Congress. Musk opposes the legislation because it would increase the federal budget deficit—by about $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office—and undo the cost-cutting efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative that Musk spearheaded.
Musk has made increasingly pointed posts on X, which he owns, slamming the bill and criticizing Republicans—and, implicitly, Trump himself—for supporting it. When asked about the posts on Thursday, Trump told reporters that he was “disappointed” by them and said he wasn’t sure if his good relationship with Musk would last.
Musk then fired back on X, and the jabs quickly escalated. Trump called Musk “CRAZY!” and suggested that the White House could terminate all government contracts with Musk’s companies; meanwhile, Musk took credit for Trump’s 2024 election victory and expressed support for impeaching him.
Their feud has already hurt Musk’s pocketbook; Tesla shares fell more than 14 percent on Thursday, and Trump is reportedly considering selling or donating his own red Tesla Model S.
ICC sanctions. The United Nations and European Union demanded on Friday that the United States lift new sanctions on four International Criminal Court (ICC) justices. “Attacks against judges for performance of their judicial functions, at national or international levels, run directly counter to respect for the rule of law and the equal protection of the law—values for which the U.S. has long stood,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk said.
The U.S. State Department froze the assets of the four ICC justices on Thursday in an effort to punish the court for undertaking investigations into whether Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has accused the international body of being “politicized” and using its powers to “infringe upon the sovereignty and national security of the United States and our allies, including Israel.” Neither Israel nor the United States are members of the ICC.
During Trump’s first term, he sanctioned individuals associated with the court for investigating alleged war crimes that U.S. troops reportedly committed in Afghanistan; U.S. President Joe Biden removed those sanctions in 2021. And in February of this year, the White House barred ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan from entering the United States and doing business with American partners.
Israel’s militia allies. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged on Thursday that the Israeli military has been working with “clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas” to help defeat the militant group. He did not specify which groups this includes.
However, some experts have accused Israel of coordinating with Yasser Abu Shabab, who leads a small militia group in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Abu Shabab is known for allegations that he has looted humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian civilians and resold them; he has denied these claims as well as any involvement with the Israeli military.
“We’re talking about the equivalent of ISIS in Gaza,” opposition lawmaker and former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said on Thursday. “No one can guarantee that these weapons will not be directed at Israel. We have no way of monitoring or following.”
Meanwhile, Israeli forces bombarded Gaza with heavy airstrikes on Friday, killing at least 38 people. Attacks were concentrated in the northern Gaza cities of Jabalia and Tuffah as well as the southern city of Khan Younis. Despite the Israeli- and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation telling Reuters that it distributed some aid on Friday, locals have reported a continued lack of access to food and medical supplies in those areas.
On the way home. A Maryland resident wrongfully deported more than two months ago is being returned to the United States, ABC News reported on Friday, citing “sources familiar with the matter.” Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was transferred to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center mega-prison in March, along with more than 200 people accused of being members of Venezuelan gangs. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele resisted the court order for weeks.
Once Abrego Garcia returns, he will face a two-count federal indictment accusing him of participating in a yearslong conspiracy to transport undocumented migrants within the United States. Abrego Garcia denies these allegations as well as accusations that he is a member of the MS-13 gang.
What in the World?
Wednesday, June 4, marked the anniversary of which major Chinese historical event?
A. The end of the Chinese communist revolution B. The Tiananmen Square massacre C. The beginning of Mao’s Great Leap Forward D. The end of the Boxer Rebellion
Odds and Ends
Accidents happen. The Australian navy acknowledged on Thursday that one of its largest ships, HMAS Canberra, accidentally disrupted internet and radio services across much of New Zealand’s North and South islands on Wednesday. “It’s not every day a warship takes your gear offline,” said Matthew Harrison, the managing director of Primo, a local wireless internet and telecommunications company. The disruptions are no longer active.
And the Answer Is…
B. The Tiananmen Square massacre
Material wealth and widespread digital surveillance have stifled grassroots democratic movements in China, argues Yang Jianli.
To take the rest of FP’s weekly international news quiz, click here, or sign up to be alerted when a new one is published.
Will Sommer joins Sonny Bunch to discuss the latest edition of False Flag. Will breaks down the messy, petty feud between MAGA influencers Scott Presler and Brandon Straka. From bogus Amish voter drives and Elon Musk’s $1 million donation to sex scandals, cosplay jail cells, and January 6 fallout, they dive into the clout battles and chaos fracturing the GOP’s influencer class.
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Tim and Cameron sit down with Aaron Parnas for a wild ride through Trumpworld family drama, Rudy Giuliani’s bizarre role, and Elon Musk’s explosive tweet alleging Trump is in the Epstein files. They unpack MAGA chaos, ICE abuses, Gen Z political shifts, and why Democrats are struggling with young men.
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