Oscar Chacón is executive director of Alianza Americas, an immigrant rights group addressing the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants to Chicago from buses and planes sent by Texas governor Greg Abbott. Without the ability and protection to work legally and access social services in the United States, thousands of asylum-seekers currently lack adequate food, clothing and shelter.

Last week, Israel demolished Al-Israa University south of Gaza City. According to a post on the school’s Facebook page, Israeli troops had seized the campus months ago and had turned it into a military base where Israel interrogated detained Palestinians. In the United States, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller was questioned about the Gaza demolition by the Associated Press reporter Matt Lee. “If there was a threat from this particular facility, they wouldn’t have been able to do it,” Lee remarked. “And you have nothing to say? You have nothing to say about this?”

Israel has withheld millions in taxes collected by the Palestinian Authority earmarked for Gaza since November. Although the PA was ousted from Gaza in 2007, many of its public sector workers kept their jobs, and, up until November, were still being paid with transferred tax revenues. This revenue, however, comes from export taxes that must first be collected by Israeli authorities at the border before it can be handed over to the PA. This arrangement has resulted in what economist Raja Khalidi calls "economic warfare," in which Israel deducts costs for essential services like electricity, water, sewage treatment and even medical referrals to Israeli hospitals before it releases these diminished funds to the PA. In recent years, Israel has also been deducting revenue to match the sum of social welfare paid to the families of Palestinian prisoners and martyrs — a precedent that Israeli authorities are now using to justify deducting what they claim is the equivalent of the salaries of public sector employees in Gaza. This all comes as the West Bank devolves further into economic crisis thanks to a major reduction in trade during wartime, and as Palestinians who've sought better wages in Israel face an increasingly hostile and discriminatory labor market that seeks to block them from working there.

Following allegations from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs that some of its staff were involved in the October 7 attack on southern Israel, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the main United Nations agency that provides humanitarian aid in Palestine, has reportedly fired multiple members of its staff. The U.S. State Department announced it has also paused funding to the agency while the allegations are investigated. Up to 1.9 million refugees are sheltering at UNRWA facilities amidst Israel's ongoing military assault of Gaza.

Israel has demonstrated a clear intention of both genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, says Palestinian human rights lawyer Diana Buttu, a former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

BREAKING — A federal jury on Friday ordered former President Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll for serially defaming her after she accused him of rape. She won a separate $5 million settlement against him last year. During Trump’s term as president, Carroll went public with her account of how she says Trump assaulted her in the dressing room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s. Trump denied the accusation and made numerous insulting statements about Carroll, sparking the defamation suit. Friday's judgment includes $65 million in punitive damages.

Alabama prison officials have ended the life of 58-year-old Kenneth Smith via nitrogen gas asphyxiation in the nation’s first-of-its-kind execution.The case has garnered international condemnation. Kenneth Smith’s spiritual adviser Jeff Hood witnessed the execution and rebuked Alabama’s attorney general, who had predicted Smith would lose consciousness within seconds and die within minutes. In his final statement, Smith said, “Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards. I’m leaving with love, peace and light.”

Here’s what you need to know about the ICJ’s interim ruling in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.

A new study has found tens of thousands of pregnancies have resulted from rape in states where abortion was banned following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Over the past 18 months, researchers estimate there were nearly 65,000 pregnancies from sexual assaults, with most, if not all, survivors, including girls, forced to carry them to term. Texas topped the list with 45% of the rape-related pregnancies. Abortion bans have been enacted in 14 states over the past 18 months.

France's top court ruled that large parts of a new, highly contested immigration bill were unconstitutional. The court threw out nearly half of the 80 measures in the legislation, including restrictions on access to welfare benefits for noncitizens and the denial of citizenship for children born in France. Immigrant rights activists and their allies took to the streets to welcome the move and vowed to keep fighting.

The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide in Gaza. The World Court announced it has jurisdiction over the case brought by South Africa and dismissed Israel's bid to throw it out. The court says Israel must punish any incitement to genocide and ensure its military doesn't break the Genocide Convention. This is not a call to stop military attacks but an order to adhere to the convention on genocide. The interim verdict is a major blow to Israel and the US which have undermined the case despite overwhelming evidence presented by South Africa. The court will not rule today on whether Israel has committed genocide; that verdict could take years. For more on this story, tune into democracynow.org

The United Arab Emirates hired U.S. mercenaries to carry out over 100 assassinations in Yemen beginning in 2015. "The deadly atmosphere has discouraged the permanent return of Yemen's internationally recognised government," writes Nawal al-Maghafi in a recently-published BBC investigation.