In Spain, dozens of ships carrying civilian activists and loaded with humanitarian aid departed Barcelona on Monday, bound for the Gaza Strip. The Global Sumud Flotilla is the largest attempt yet to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg helped to organize the flotilla.

Greta Thunberg: “Israel are very clear about their genocidal intent. They want to erase the Palestinian nation. They want to take over the Gaza Strip. And if that doesn’t make people act, if that doesn’t make people go out of their couch and take action, fill the streets, get organized, then I don’t know what will.”

In Australia, peace activists held a nonviolent protest Monday blocking the entrance of Port Melbourne, demanding Australia suspend trade with Israel. Meanwhile, in Colorado, dozens of Jewish peace activists and allies rallied on Friday outside the Denver office of Senator Michael Bennet.

Billy Bragg has released a new original song to show his support for the people of Palestine. The title of Hundred Year Hunger was inspired by a new book of the same name by E Mark Windle about the history of chronic malnutrition and deprivation in Gaza and will raise money for the Amos Trust’s Gaza Appeal.

Writing on Instagram, the British protest singer said that the song “looks at the current famine that Israel has created in Gaza through the lens of a century of enforced food insecurity and malnutrition imposed on the Palestinian people, firstly by British imperialism, then as a weapon of mass displacement by the state of Israel”.

The song was released to coincide with a new humanitarian aid flotilla – with Greta Thunberg among their number – setting sail from Barcelona to try to “break the illegal siege of Gaza”, organisers said. The intention is to open a humanitarian corridor and deliver aid to an area gripped by famine. It is expected to arrive in mid-September. Israel previously blocked two attempts by activists to deliver aid by ship to Gaza.

The arrest of a US army veteran who protested against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has raised alarms among legal experts and fellow veterans familiar with his service in Afghanistan.

Bajun Mavalwalla II – a former army sergeant who survived a roadside bomb blast on a special operations mission in Afghanistan – was charged in July with “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Spokane, Washington.

Legal experts say the case marks an escalation in the administration’s attacks on first amendment rights. Afghanistan war veterans who know him say the case against Mavalwalla appears unjust.

What the ever-loving fuck. With the man-child's megalomania spiraling - rampant troops, despot banners, Ugandan exile, his "Consultational" right to hire and fire (especially black women) and the unctuous gifting of a big boy badge to rule them all - "a lot of people are saying" we've reached the "Mad Cow Dictator" phase. What to do. JB Pritzker on the "arrogant little man": "We are watching, and we are taking names." And humbly, on the curve toward justice of MLK's moral universe: "It doesn't bend on its own."

The Alaska fiasco exposed his "idiotic, incoherent, incompetent foreign policy...The man playing at being president has no idea what he is doing"; still, he boasted, the seven European leaders who then visited the White House to support Zelensky actually came from 38 countries - "We've never had a case where 7, plus really 28, essentially 35, well, 38 countries were represented here" - and, "They call me the president of Europe."

What the ever-loving fuck. With the man-child's megalomania spiraling - rampant troops, despot banners, Ugandan exile, his "Consultational" right to hire and fire (especially black women) and the unctuous gifting of a big boy badge to rule them all - "a lot of people are saying" we've reached the "Mad Cow Dictator" phase. What to do. JB Pritzker on the "arrogant little man": "We are watching, and we are taking names." And humbly, on the curve toward justice of MLK's moral universe: "It doesn't bend on its own."

The Alaska fiasco exposed his "idiotic, incoherent, incompetent foreign policy...The man playing at being president has no idea what he is doing"; still, he boasted, the seven European leaders who then visited the White House to support Zelensky actually came from 38 countries - "We've never had a case where 7, plus really 28, essentially 35, well, 38 countries were represented here" - and, "They call me the president of Europe."

Creating what critics are equating to "AI death panels" elderly Americans in need of care, the Trump administration is launching a pilot program in six states that will use artificial intelligence to determine whether Medicare recipients should qualify for certain procedures.

As reported by The New York Times on Thursday, the pilot program will hire private firms to deploy AI to make what are known as "prior authorization" decisions regarding whether Medicare should pay for certain procedures, including spinal surgeries and steroid injections. The program is set to run first in Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington.

The reported pilot program also drew harsh reviews from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), as president Randi Weingarten and the union's Retirees Program and Policy Council co-chair Tom Murphy issued a joint statement accusing the Trump administration of "attempting to transform Medicare into the very worst of private insurance."

The US’s top public health agency was plunged into chaos on Wednesday after the Trump administration moved to oust its leader Susan Monarez, sworn in less than a month ago, as her lawyers said she would not resign and that she was being “targeted” for her pro-science stance.

Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was ousted on Wednesday evening, according to a statement from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that offered no explanation its decision.

Monarez, who was confirmed by the Senate just last month, appeared to have run afoul of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, after she declined to support sweeping changes to US vaccine policies, according to reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The US’s top public health agency was plunged into chaos on Wednesday after the Trump administration moved to oust its leader Susan Monarez, sworn in less than a month ago, as her lawyers said she would not resign and that she was being “targeted” for her pro-science stance.

Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was ousted on Wednesday evening, according to a statement from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that offered no explanation its decision.

Monarez, who was confirmed by the Senate just last month, appeared to have run afoul of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, after she declined to support sweeping changes to US vaccine policies, according to reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Those hoping that Democratic Party leaders have finally learned some lessons in the political thrashing they received in last year's elections are not yet done fighting for a resolution they argue would put the party back on the right side of moral history and also improve its prospects going forward against an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party led by President Donald Trump.

A day following a failed vote in the resolutions committee, members of the Democratic National Committee and grassroots groups demanding the DNC to take a stronger stand against US complicity with Israel's genocide in Gaza are not giving up—pushing now for a full floor vote to take place Wednesday on a resolution which calls for an immediate ceasefire, an arms embargo, and suspension of military aid to Israel.

In Israel, thousands of protesters have blocked roads around the country, including a major highway in Tel Aviv, burning tires, calling for the return of the hostages still held in Gaza and an end to Israel’s war on the besieged strip. The protests were led by families of hostages, and part of a nationwide “Day of Disruption.”

A crowd of community members who had gathered outside an immigration office in Baltimore on Monday chanted, "Shame!" as a lawyer for US resident Kilmar Ábrego García announced that he had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents once again—days after he was finally released from prison after a monthslong ordeal.

Ábrego García's lawyers are arguing in the Federal District Court of Maryland that ICE re-arrested him without allowing him to express "fears of persecution and torture in Uganda”

The team is asking the court to ensure that Ábrego García "is not put on any flight to any country whatsoever, whether it's Uganda, South Sudan, what have you, unless and until he has had a full and fair trial in an immigration court as well as his full appeal rights," said attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg.

Donald Trump has been accused of “turning the military on American citizens” after a Pentagon official confirmed that planning is under way to send National Guard troops to Chicago.

Illinois attorney-general Kwame Raoul also told CBS News that the president’s actions are both “un-American” and “unwise strategically”.

Accusing the president of “turning our military on American citizens in his ongoing attempts to move our nation toward authoritarianism,” he added:

His actions are not just un-American. They are unwise strategically. Our cities are not made safer by deploying the nation’s service members for civilian law enforcement duties when they do not have the appropriate training.

To be clear: We have made no such request for the type of federal intervention we have seen in Los Angeles or Washington DC. There is no emergency in the state of Illinois.

The declaration on Friday of widespread famine in Gaza by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) should mark a turning point in the war. The IPC, which represents a fastidious survey of available data, is regarded as the international gold standard in nutritional crises.

Long-criticised by humanitarians in other emergencies for its overabundance of caution, the IPC’s declaration of Level 5 – “catastrophic” hunger – in Gaza is a significant moment. Famine, under the IPC’s exacting criteria, requires three critical thresholds to be passed: extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition and starvation-related deaths, all of which are now visible in Gaza.

A quarter of all Palestinians in Gaza are starving – more than 500,000 people – with that number expected to rise to more than 640,000 within six weeks.

The more genetic history that is done, the more it is clear that ancient ethnonyms, the names given supposed ethnicities, put a variety of peoples under a single rubric. I talked recently about how the Phoenicians, long thought to be what we would now call Lebanese, were actually a multi-ethnic trading diaspora in which Greeks and Italians took a leading role in North Africa and Spain — even if they worshiped the god Baal and adopted a Semitic lingua franca.

This point is worth underlining at a time when the United States is seized with a paroxysm of white nationalism. “Whiteness” is meaningless as an ethnicity. Some 5% of self-professed whites in the South have recent African heritage. Courts recognized Arab-Americans as white in the early twentieth century when the category was essential for basic legal and property rights. Apartheid South Africa recognized the Japanese as “white” when they became for a while the world’s second largest economy. Most “national” “ethnicities” can be deconstructed. So it is important to recognize that “nations” are constructs. Certainly, the diverse Scythians were.

The secret of the greatness of the Scythian Empire was, like the secret of the greatness of the United States, its very ethnic diversity and ability to bring in new populations under a broadly similar culture.

The University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights is warning that federal immigration action has crossed a new boundary and is now breaking international humanitarian law.

The report zeroes in on 16 cases where people have been arrested by government agents and held for extended periods of time without access to a lawyer, or to the outside world. The legal term for such detentions is “enforced disappearance.”

”What I'm talking about is cases where days or even weeks go by that families still don't know where their loved one is,” said Center for Human Rights Director Angelina Godoy.

After a tumultuous 25 year immigration battle, ICE detained decorated, disabled veteran Zahid Chaudhry at his naturalization hearing Thursday morning, ripping him away from his two small children and his wife of 20 years. According to his family, Chaudhry is being held at the Northwest Detention Center for unknown reasons and unclear intentions. For now, his wife Melissa Chaudhry encourages community members to flood the Department of Homeland Security and the Northwest Detention Centers phone line and inboxes with the demand to free Chaudhry and naturalize him.

”He is eligible for citizenship by marriage and fatherhood, as well as long-term peaceful residence, but he claims his right by military service," a press statement reads. "He has already sworn an oath to protect and defend this country, and broken his body in service to that oath. Veterans are eligible for immediate, expedited naturalization, and Zahid deserves no less."

Construction on upgrades to the King County Metro Route 40 are well underway through the heart of Fremont, as any resident or recent visitor to the neighborhood can easily attest. With the $20.7 million bus improvement project also tackling the replacement of a 100-year-old water main along with sidewalk improvements and new curb ramps, work has been creating major disruptions for people using all modes of travel. Throughout this work, opponents have continued their push to scale back plans to create dedicated bus lanes for the Route 40 as part of the project.

A high-profile project from the 2015 Levy to Move Seattle, Route 40 upgrades originally had been promised to voters as a full upgrade to a RapidRide corridor.

The southbound BAT lane through Fremont remains one of the only mechanisms speeding up buses through the area and ensuring that riders don’t wait behind a line of general-purpose traffic when the Fremont drawbridge is raised. Even with these modest bus upgrades, the project is expected to decrease travel times from Ballard to Downtown by 14% to 17%, a big benefit for the fourth-busiest route in King County Metro’s network that sees nearly 9,000 riders every weekday.

On the issue of suddenly announcing that it would now arm the federalized troops in DC, the defense department did not immediately offer any other details about the new development or why it was needed.

The step is an escalation in the federal government’s rare intervention into policing in the nation’s capital and came as nearly 2,000 national guard members are stationed in the city.

“Thank you again, thank you again,” Trump said, taking Roberts’s hand into both his own and shaking it vigorously. Then, as he began to step away, the president tapped Roberts on the arm in a gesture of buddy-buddy intimacy, and said: “Won’t forget.”

Supreme court watchers have wondered why Trump thanked the chief justice so effusively. Was it because the Roberts court had, exactly a year earlier, allowed Trump to stay on the electoral ballot even though he had inspired a violent mob attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021?

Could it have been that Roberts had written the ruling that immunised Trump from criminal prosecution for that January 6 insurrection and for any other criminal misdeed he might commit while in the White House?

Hundreds of immigrants have been arrested in recent days as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are now accompanying D.C. police officers on traffic stops targeting delivery workers on mopeds. ICE agents are reportedly using driver’s license, registration and insurance information to determine the immigration status of people stopped by police. Over 200 immigrants have been arrested since Trump’s federal takeover of D.C., according to the White House. The shift violates D.C.'s sanctuary policies, which restrict collaboration between local police and federal immigration agencies.