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French court orders release of Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah

French court orders release of Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah

Independent4 days ago
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Ice chief says he will continue to allow agents to wear masks during arrest raids
Ice chief says he will continue to allow agents to wear masks during arrest raids

The Guardian

timean hour ago

  • The Guardian

Ice chief says he will continue to allow agents to wear masks during arrest raids

The head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said on Sunday that he will continue allowing the controversial practice of his officers wearing masks over their faces during their arrest raids. As Donald Trump has ramped up his unprecedented effort to deport immigrants around the country, Ice officers have become notorious for wearing masks to approach and detain people, often with force. Legal advocates and attorneys general have argued that it poses accountability issues and contributes to a climate of fear. On Sunday, Todd Lyons, the agency's acting director, was asked on CBS Face the Nation about imposters exploiting the practice by posing as immigration officers. 'That's one of our biggest concerns. And I've said it publicly before, I'm not a proponent of the masks,' Lyons said. 'However, if that's a tool that the men and women of Ice to keep themselves and their family safe, then I will allow it.' Lyons has previously defended the practice of mask-wearing, telling Fox News last week that 'while I'm not a fan of the masks, I think we could do better, but we need to protect our agents and officers', claiming concerns about doxxing (the public revealing of personal information such as home addresses), and declaring that assaults of immigration officers have increased by 830%. While data from January 2024 to June 2024 does show 10 reported assaults on Ice officers compared to 79 during the same period last year, those six months have also seen Ice agents descend in record numbers on streets, businesses, farms and public spaces, rounding up and detaining mostly Latino people as part of a massive Trump administration push to rid the US of as many as 1 million immigrants every year. Videos have flooded social media showing Ice agents wearing masks over their faces, detaining people without immediately identifying themselves, refusing to answer questions or explaining why people are being detained, and pushing them into unmarked cars with tinted windows. 'I do kind of push back on the criticism that they don't identify themselves,' Lyons said. 'Men and women of Ice, and our DoJ partners, and local law enforcement partners who do help us are identified on their vest.' The only identification many agents wear is body armor marked with the word 'police', despite not being police officers. The interview was described as the first major network sit-down at Ice headquarters in Washington. Lyons also confirmed in the interview that Ice obtained and is using Medicaid data to track down immigrants believed to be in the US unlawfully, despite undocumented people not being eligible to receive Medicaid. White people comprise the largest share of Medicaid recipients, at 39.6%. A June report from the Pew Research Center found that 84.2% of Medicaid recipients are born in the US, 6.6% are naturalized citizens and 9.2% are foreign-born non-citizens authorized to be in the US. As well as the tens of thousands of arrests, there have been several reported cases of masked criminals posing as Ice officers, such as a man in Raleigh, North Carolina accused in January of kidnapping and raping a woman, threatening to deport her if she didn't comply, or a man in Brooklyn attempting in February to rape a 51-year-old woman. In April 2025, a Florida woman posed as an immigration officer to briefly kidnap her ex-boyfriend's wife from her job. Ice agents have also been reported to overstate assaults, such as in New York City mayor candidate Brad Lander's arrest by immigration officers, where Lander was accused of assaulting officers despite charges being dropped later that day. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Critics say using a mask allows Ice agents to obscure accountability and avoid transparency for their actions. 'The use of masks is one among a panoply of legal issues presented by the administration's recent actions against immigrants and visitors (and some citizens) but a significant one that can – and should – be immediately addressed and remedied,' said the New York City Bar Association in a statement on the practice. A coalition of 21 state attorneys general, including New York's Letitia James, wrote to Congress last week urging it pass legislation prohibiting 'federal immigration agents from wearing masks that conceal their identity and require them to show their identification and agency-identifying insignia'. In California, state legislators last month proposed the No Vigilantes Act, which would require federal agents to provide identification, including their last name and badge or ID number. 'We have a Los Angeles Police Department that has to deal with crime in this city every single day – and they're not masked, and they stay here,' said the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, in a Sunday interview with ABC News. 'I don't think you have a right to have a mask and snatch people off the street.'

Trump calls for Obama's arrest with jaw-dropping Truth Social post after Tulsi Gabbard claimed ex-president was behind 'years-long coup'
Trump calls for Obama's arrest with jaw-dropping Truth Social post after Tulsi Gabbard claimed ex-president was behind 'years-long coup'

Daily Mail​

timean hour ago

  • Daily Mail​

Trump calls for Obama's arrest with jaw-dropping Truth Social post after Tulsi Gabbard claimed ex-president was behind 'years-long coup'

President Trump has called for Barack Obama to be arrested after spy chief Tulsi Gabbard claimed the former leader was behind a 'years-long coup' against him. Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, declassified hundreds of documents on Friday related to the investigation in to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. She claimed the emails reveal a conspiracy by Obama to try and subvert Trump's win by using 'manufactured and politicized intelligence' to make it seem like bad actors may have influenced the result. 'Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people,' Gabbard said. Her claims were reiterated by Trump who republished her interviews with Fox and several others about the issue on Truth Social. And on Sunday, he escalated things further by reposting an AI-generated TikTok which showed Obama being apprehended and placed in handcuffs along with the message, 'No one is above the law'. Gabbard released an 114-page document she says shows the Obama administration was aware that there was no threat of Russia 'directly' manipulating the vote in 2016. She called for an investigatio n into and potential criminal prosecution of anyone who took part – which may include the ex-President and James Comey, the former FBI director. The documents revealed insider discussions among top Obama officials about Russia's much-debated role in the 2016 US elections. Although many of the documents are highly redacted or completely blacked out, they show conversations among favorite Trump targets including former intel chief James Clapper, as officials debated how to describe Russian election activity. The documents found that there was 'no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count through cyber means'. But Gabbard says the documents show that Democrats chose to ignore that - or even promote the opposite narrative - to try and take down Trump. 'Their egregious abuse of power and blatant rejection of our Constitution threatens the very foundation and integrity of our democratic republic,' Gabbard in a blistering statement accompanying the document release. 'No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.' Several of the documents put out by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) show officials found that Russia either wouldn't try or wouldn't be able to shift the outcome of a US vote. 'Russia probably is not trying to going to be able to? [influence] the election by using cyber means to manipulate computer-enabled election infrastructure,' reads one draft line by the then-deputy director of ODNI. Documents show officials crafting a document saying there wasn't an indication Russia could manipulate the vote count The administration unsealed the documents amid the fury over the Jeffrey Epstein files By December 9, following Trump's stunning win over Democrat Hillary Clinton, a document to top intelligence officials tasked them with creating an assessment 'per the President's request' about 'tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election' 'We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election,' according to a January 2017 report titled 'Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections.' The report then mentioned Russian cyber operations against both political parties. Of the material Gabbard released, one new August 31, 2016 document by an official with their name blacked out states that the 'thrust of the analysis is that there is no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count through cyber means.' Democrats have responded by claiming that Gabbard's declassification is designed to deflect from the Department of Justice's decision to close its investigation into the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. In response Trump has instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to disclose grand jury testimony files, pending court approval.

What the culture war over Superman gets wrong
What the culture war over Superman gets wrong

The Guardian

time2 hours ago

  • The Guardian

What the culture war over Superman gets wrong

We've entered the era of the superhero movie as sermon. No longer content with saving the world, spandex saviors are now being used to explain, moralize and therapize it. And a being from Krypton has shown up once again in a debate about real life; about borders, race and who gets to belong. Superman. Of all symbols. I've read reactionary thinkpieces, rage-filled quote tweets and screeds about the legal status of a fictional alien – enough to lose count. This particular episode of American Fragility kicked off because James Gunn had the audacity to call Superman 'the story of America'. An immigrant, by definition, as he was always meant to be. What set things off wasn't just the sentiment – it was who said it, and how plainly. Gunn, now headlining DC's cinematic future, told the Sunday Times that Superman was 'an immigrant who came from other places and populated the country'. He spoke of Superman's inherent kindness as a political statement in itself, noting that the film would play differently in some parts of America before adding, bluntly, that 'there are some jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness'. 'But screw them,' he added. It was that line – less the immigrant metaphor, more the unapologetic framing – that sent the usual outrage machine into motion. Enter Dean Cain, a former TV Superman. Cain accused Gunn of politicizing the character, which is remarkably foolish, considering Superman's been swatting at fascism since 1941. Meanwhile, over at Fox News, it's been a full meltdown over the idea that Superman, canonically not of this Earth, might be played as … not of this Earth. Liberal brainwashing, they suggested. Identity politics in a cape. But have they actually looked at David Corenswet? The man looks like he was made to sell oat milk in a Ralph Lauren ad. All cheekbones and cleft chin. If this is the foreign body in question, no wonder middle America has historically shrugged over Supes being an immigrant by definition. Even still, there's something telling about any collective gasp over a white, blue-eyed man with an immigrant backstory. The scramble to defend him says more than intended. For all the hand-wringing over Superman's alienness, what rarely gets named is how meticulously his story was crafted to cushion the unease of the topic at hand: otherness itself – the very thing people pretend was always central to his character. There are plenty of ways to frame the ridiculousness of this argument, clever ways to connect the dots, but the real fracture in Superman's myth hits, oddly enough, during a quiet scene in Tarantino's meditation on vengeance, Kill Bill: Vol. 2. In the scene, the villain, Bill (David Carradine) unpacks what makes Superman different from every other hero. 'What Kent wears – the glasses, the business suit – that's the costume,' Bill says. 'That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us.' It's one hell of a tell – the kind of observation that pulls back the curtain on how Superman was engineered to understand the world, and how the world, in turn, reinforced how he should fit within it. From the start, Superman was never meant to be an outsider. His creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – sons of Jewish immigrants – didn't craft him as a symbol of difference but as a projection of pure Americanness. They gave him a midwestern upbringing, an Anglo name in Clark Kent, and that square-jawed charm. Siegel and Shuster were working against the backdrop of unchecked antisemitism, at a time when Jewish immigrants faced hostility. But instead of exploring immigrant 'otherness', the artists imagined a version of America where that alienness could be easily discarded via an outfit change. Superman wasn't an outsider – he was the ideal immigrant, effortlessly slipping into a world that required no resistance. His story wasn't about struggling to belong, but about the fantasy of belonging, with the privilege of choosing whether or not to fight for it. That projection of safe, silent Americanness hasn't remained confined to the pages of comic books. Today's immigration politics run on the same fantasy. The myth of the 'good' immigrant – quiet, grateful, easy to assimilate – still runs wild. It's the same story that fuels the strange spectacle of politicians praising white South African farmers as victims of racial persecution, all while demonizing migrants from Latin America, the Middle East or sub-Saharan Africa. The notion of who deserves to stay has always been racialized, selective and violent. Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, has said that a person's physical appearance could be a factor in the decision to question them. He later said it could not be 'the sole reason'. But in April, Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a US-born citizen from Georgia, was detained in Florida even after his mother showed authorities his birth certificate. In New York, Elzon Lemus, an electrician, was stopped because he 'looked like someone' agents were after. Maybe he didn't wear his suit and glasses that day. Superman, the immigrant who makes people comfortable, has never been just a comic book character. He's been a metaphor and living testament to the kind of 'other' that wealthy nations have always preferred: those who blend in, assimilate and rarely challenge the systems that demand their silence. If you're still not convinced that Superman's assimilationist fantasy is alive and well, just look at a White House meme from 10 July 2025: Trump dressed as Superman, with the words 'Truth. Justice. The American Way.' It's a glaring example of how cultural symbols are repurposed – hijacked, really – to serve a narrow and self-congratulatory vision of America. That's the trick of Superman: he's been a blank canvas of a both-sides heroism, which makes everyone feel seen. You don't even need to like or dislike Superman for the Maga debate to pull you in, as it was always meant to. The culture war still appointed a celebrity to govern the most powerful nation on Earth. It still turned a corporate diversity initiative into a national crisis. And it took a serious conversation about immigration and made a polished, all-American character its face. The culture war distorts, and it continues, relentless as ever. Noel Ransome is a Toronto-based freelance writer

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