IndustryStandard

“We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” wrote U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on X on Sunday, linking to The Associated Press’s coverage of Khalil’s arrest.

There is no going back from this point: President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to deport a man solely for his First Amendment-protected activity, without due process. By all existing legal standards, this is illegal and unconstitutional: a violation of First Amendment protections, and the Fifth Amendment-protected right to due process. If Khalil’s green card is revoked and he is deported, no one can have any confidence in legal and constitutional protections as a line of defense against arbitrary state violence and punishment. Khalil’s arrest marks an extraordinary fascist escalation.

It is all the more vile that Khalil has been targeted for engaging in protected protest activity calling for an end to the U.S.-backed slaughter of his people. The Trump administration has consistently framed all pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist activists as Hamas supporters. It is worth stressing, though, that even if a protester did express support or sympathy for Hamas in a public speech, or on social media (and I’m not saying Khalil did), such expression is also protected by the First Amendment, a protection extended to citizens and noncitizens alike. This is settled constitutional law: The Supreme Court’s decision in Texas v. Johnson in 1989, for example, reaffirmed the principle that the First Amendment protects even the most controversial and provocative forms of speech.

Donald Trump on Sunday refused to rule out the possibility that the US economy will head into recession this year and that inflation will rise, as his chaotic trade tariffs policy cause uncertainty and market turbulence.

The US president predicted that his economic goals would take time and a period of transition to bear fruit. But when asked in an interview with the Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures “are you expecting a recession this year?” he demurred.

“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of, it takes a little time. It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us,” Trump said.

On 23 January, faculty and staff from the City University of New York’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union voted 73-70 in favour of a resolution to divest from Israeli companies and government bonds and recommended the teacher’s pension divest $100m from Israeli companies and bonds.

However, less than a month after the resolution passed, union leadership organised a re-vote on the divestment resolution - which led to a 113-63 vote against it on 20 February.

Now, members of a university labour union have expressed concern that months of hard work to pass a resolution to boycott and divest from Israel had been undemocratically overturned by leadership.

CUNY’s PSC union is said to have around 30,000 members and is one of the largest academic unions in the country.

Speaking to the Middle East Eye about the union leadership’s move to hold a re-vote and revoke the resolution, Evan Rothman, sponsor of the resolution in the delegate’s assembly to boycott and divest, said union leadership had cited two aberrations - which impacted a total of four votes - as the key reason for conducting a second vote.

However, Rothman believed that the union leadership’s intense scrutiny of the electoral process and the decision to “fix” procedures was unusual and unprecedented.

“To me, this is another instance of the Palestine exception where we saw colleges and universities across the country bring out all of these policies that were understood to be formalities but never enforced,” Rothman said.

The villa is stunning. The private swimming pool; the lush, landscaped terrace with firepit; the long dining table with its expansive balcony view; the pingpong table; the piano. But the jewel in the crown, according to the Airbnb listing, is the experience of watching the sun rise over the nearby mountains from the luxury of the generous master bedroom.

The villa with views of the Judean mountains is in a settlement located on land seized from Palestinians and considered illegal under international humanitarian law. Only a handful of Palestinians are allowed to enter this, and other, Israeli settlements in the West Bank, usually as labourers with special permits.

Exclusive analysis carried out by the Guardian found 760 rooms being advertised in hotels, apartments and other holiday rentals in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, on two of the world’s most popular tourism websites.

A Canadian activist and author was released after five days in prison following accusations by an anti-Palestinian media personality that he had harassed her, and his refusal to stay quiet about his case.

Yves Engler was taken into custody on the morning of 20 February in Montreal and spent five days in Bordeaux prison in Montreal before being released Monday after a court appearance.

“I think the key issue is I had to go to jail for five days to win the right to (publicly) criticise charges brought against me. The police, and then the crown, wanted to restrict my right to write about my case. When I wrote about it, they claimed I was harassing the police. I was in jail for five days over a technical condition. When I went on Thursday morning, they could have processed and let me go.”

Engler’s detainment is part of a larger crackdown on free speech in Canada, he says.

As the Trump administration and its cadre of Silicon Valley machine-learning evangelists attempt to restructure the administrative state, the IRS is preparing to purchase advanced artificial intelligence hardware, according to procurement materials reviewed by The Intercept.

With Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency installing itself at the IRS amid a broader push to replace federal bureaucracy with machine-learning software, the tax agency’s computing center in Martinsburg, West Virginia, will soon be home to a state-of-the-art Nvidia SuperPod AI computing cluster. According to the previously unreported February 5 acquisition document, the setup will combine 31 separate Nvidia servers, each containing eight of the company’s flagship Blackwell processors designed to train and operate artificial intelligence models that power tools like ChatGPT.

Australian radio station SEN announced on Tuesday that it had parted ways with Peter Lalor, The Australian newspaper's former chief cricket writer, in the middle of a test series between Australia and Sri Lanka after his commentary on his social media regarding Israel’s war on Gaza.

Lalor’s feed on X includes reshares of news stories about Israel’s attacks on Gaza and accusations of genocide against the Israeli government.

The radio station’s management told Lalor that accusations of antisemitism had been levelled against him, which he objected to. He had been working as a freelance commentator for the station.

On Monday night, Lalor released a statement saying that he had received calls from senior management at SEN and was informed the next morning that he would no longer work for them.

Microsoft is a major provider of cloud services and artificial intelligence for the Israeli military, according to internal documents related to the contracts between the Israeli Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Microsoft Israel obtained by Drop Site News. The leaked documents show that Israel’s usage spiked dramatically in the months following October 7, 2023 when Israel was using AI and other technology to wage its brutal war on Gaza.

The trove of documents reveals that Microsoft’s ties to the Israeli military are deeper and more lucrative than previously known, exposing the tech giant’s role in supplying advanced cloud and AI services during the war that multiple international bodies, including the International Court of Justice, ruled may plausibly constitute a genocide.

Leaked data show a dramatic spike in Microsoft cloud storage used by the Israeli military, jumping more than 155 percent between June 2023 and April 2024, and peaking just before the Rafah offensive in May 2024. Storage use is an important indicator showing the extent of AI usage, since storage usually grows along with the usage of other cloud products.

On BBC Newsnight the panel of journalists and politicians were discussing Elon Musk’s emphatic salute at US President Donald Trump’s triumphal inauguration rally in Washington.

Probably most people have seen Musk’s Dr Strangelove moment by now but none of the panel would say what it most clearly was: a Nazi salute.

Musk did not just involuntarily raise his right arm and point his fingers to heaven. He slammed his right hand into his chest, paused for a long moment, and then thrust his arm outwards as tens of millions watched nationwide, and thousands of Trump supporters in the auditorium cheered.

At this point, many people were no doubt watching stunned and wondering if they had just hallucinated Musk’s gesture, but helpfully, he then turned his back and did the same salute to those in the seats behind him.

And yet somehow Gabriel Gatehouse, a seasoned BBC observer of US politics and the far right, played down the moment, as did the great sword-carrying failed Conservative leadership contender Penny Mordaunt. Gatehouse suggested it could be a “Roman salute” and compared it to a cartoon frog that appeared in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Harvard University has agreed to accept the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, after settling a lawsuit from Jewish students who accused other students of harassment during pro-Palestine protests on campus in 2024.

The student group, Students Against Antisemitism, filed a complaint in January 2024 in a court in Boston, saying that Harvard was failing to protect them under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a law that prohibits any school from receiving federal funding from discriminating against anyone based on race, colour or national origin.

The complaint cited last year's pro-Palestinian protests against Israel's war on Gaza as the source of antisemitic rhetoric from other students.

Middle East Eye has previously reported on these accusations of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian protesters at US universities, which often conflate support for Palestinian rights with antisemitism.