The smashed window of mayor Badoux’s car. Photograph: Emma Graham-Harrison/The Guardian
French mayor and archbishop also attacked during violent attempt to stop Palestinians harvesting olives
Israeli settler militants have attacked European diplomats, a French mayor and the archbishop of Cambrai in Taybeh, in the occupied West Bank, injuring three people and damaging a car, in the latest violent attempt to prevent Palestinians from harvesting olives on their own land.
Bernard Baudoux, mayor of Aulnoye-Aymeries, was wearing his red, white and blue sash of office and attempting to enter a vehicle with diplomatic plates when he was assaulted and knocked to the ground on Saturday.
The masked militant shouted “Vive la France” as he launched the attack, a witness said. Badoux’s wife, and Vincent Dollmann, archbishop of Cambrai, were also threatened by the group of seven men, some armed with clubs.
The group had joined the olive harvest on lands belonging to the Christian town of Taybeh, along with the French consul general in Jerusalem, his wife and other diplomats, and the Belgian and Polish consuls.
Settlers first attacked a group working on the lower slopes of hills near Taybeh. As well as stealing olives, they kicked, abused and assaulted a Palestinian woman in her 70s and beat a man so badly he needed six stitches for a head injury.
Then they approached the diplomats and Badoux, who was in Taybeh for the launch of a twinning agreement with his town in northern France. During the attack, the militants smashed the window of an armoured car belonging to the Belgian mission.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
A view of a school destroyed in an attack by the United States is seen in Minab, Iran on September 11, 2026. (Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)
One policy analyst wrote sardonically that the administration doesn’t “want to remind voters before the midterms of the mass killing of schoolchildren on the first day of Trump’s glorious war.”
The Pentagon is reportedly planning to withhold until after the midterm elections the completed findings of its investigation into a devastating US strike on an elementary school in southern Iran, which killed more than 150 people—including 120 children—on the first day of President Donald Trump’s illegal and deeply unpopular war.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that “top Pentagon officials have expressed their intention to hold off on releasing an internal report into the attack” on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab until after next month’s midterms “at the earliest.” The internal assessment is believed to have been effectively complete for months, and preliminary findings reported in early March determined that American forces hit the school with a Tomahawk missile due to “outdated” targeting information.
According to Bloomberg, Pentagon investigators “discovered that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery, and an overreliance on AI contributed to the attack,” which is regarded as one of the US military’s worst atrocities against civilians in decades. Trump brushed off the massacre in remarks to reporters in June, saying: “Mistakes are made. War is nasty.”
Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), said in a statement that “the refusal to come clean about the attack on Minab is not just a shameful exercise to dodge accountability for a horrific war crime; it is actively risking these errors being repeated again.”
“As the administration has dodged accountability on Minab and [a deadly strike on a sports hall hours later], it has engaged in further attacks that may be war crimes, including the bombing of a civilian home on Qeshm Island that killed a family and the bombing of a wedding party in Kuhestak that killed five, including two children,” said Costello. “Ensuring these tragedies don’t repeat starts with accountability on Minab.”
International policy analyst Brian Finucane wrote sardonically that the Pentagon doesn’t “want to remind voters before the midterms of the mass killing of schoolchildren on the first day of Trump’s glorious war.”
Bloomberg’s reporting came as CNN published a story detailing internal US “strike plans” that include possibly dropping the so-called “mother of all bombs” on Iranian energy infrastructure.
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) is the largest nonnuclear bomb in the US arsenal. In 2017, Trump became the first US president to deploy the weapon, authorizing the military to drop it on Afghanistan.
Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, warned that using the bomb against Iran would risk “triggering another major escalatory spiral, potentially including Iranian attacks on critical regional energy infrastructure, with consequences for global markets and the US economy.”
“This only reinforces the fundamental problem: Trump has no viable military solution to the Iran conflict,” Toossi wrote. “Is he looking for one spectacular strike to project strength and declare victory? Or is he prepared to plunge the US into an even deeper, potentially endless war that could devastate the rest of his presidency, legacy, and the economy?”
Costello of NIAC said that “the Trump administration’s threats to commit war crimes in Iran cannot be normalized.”
“President Trump acts on many of his threats, necessitating more urgent action to bring this illegal war of choice to a definitive end,” he added.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Demonstrators hold up mock cryptocurrency coins with President Donald Trump’s image during the “America Is Not for Sale” rally at Trump National Golf Club in Washington, DC on May 22, 2025. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Public Citizen)
“Donald Trump promised to lower costs for American families,” said the co-chair of the Not Above the Law Coalition. “Instead, he turned the presidency into his family’s most profitable business.”
A report released Thursday details how the family of President Donald Trump “pocketed more than $2.9 billion”—including “in cash and gifts from crypto ventures, legal settlements, a luxury jet from a foreign government, and corporate deals”—while Republican cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program left millions of Americans without critical food aid.
The report, “Let Them Eat Cake: Cost of Corruption,” was published by the Not Above the Law Coalition—a group of more than 150 advocacy organizations mobilized against the Trump administration’s corruption—and cites data from the Center for American Progress revealing over $2.9 billion in cash and gifts received by the Trump family since the 2024 election.
The bulk of that amount—more than $2.4 billion—comes from the cryptocurrency industry. Trump has boasted about how his administration won’t investigate alleged crypto-related crimes.
Not only has Trump embraced crypto deregulation, he also pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2023. Binance has provided critical support for World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture enriching the Trump family.
“The Trump family cashed in on the presidency while American families paid the price,” Not Above the Law said in a statement. “Over the same period, Trump signed a budget law that cut almost $187 billion from SNAP, leaving 5.2 million fewer people with help buying groceries.”
That law, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ushered in the biggest cuts to both SNAP and Medicaid in those programs’ histories.
According to the report, “The Trump family’s take alone could cover a full year of groceries for about 1.3 million people on SNAP.”
“At the same time, Trump’s pardons let wealthy allies and fraudsters walk away from nearly $1.7 billion owed to victims and taxpayers,” the publication adds.
The report highlights that “Trump also accepted a roughly $400 million luxury jet from Qatar.”
Not Above the Law said that, in addition to groceries for 1.3 million people for a year, the $2.9 billion could buy “more than 600 million free school lunches, or three months of groceries for the 5.2 million people who lost SNAP benefits.”
In addition to the nearly $3 billion the report says Trump’s family pocketed, the coalition noted “companies backed by Trump’s sons have collected $3.2 billion in federal funds, including a fast-tracked $620 million Pentagon loan” to a business in which Donald Trump Jr. invested.
“Donald Trump promised to lower costs for American families. Instead, he turned the presidency into his family’s most profitable business,” said Lisa Gilbert, Not Above the Law co-chair and co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “While the Trumps collected nearly $3 billion from crypto schemes, foreign governments, and corporations seeking favors, millions of Americans lost help putting food on the table. Congress must stop the self-dealing and hold this administration accountable.”
The new analysis follows a report published earlier this year by a group of Democratic US senators accusing the president and his family of turning “the power of the presidency into eye-popping profits,” with Trump increasing his personal net worth by more than $2 billion during his second term alone, according to official disclosures.
Also on Thursday, The Washington Postreported on companies and billionaire CEOs who donated a combined $333 million to Trump’s White House ballroom project, as well as previously undisclosed donors who have benefited from a presidential pardon, government contracts, and at least one closed federal investigation.
“This is what corruption is all about,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in response to the Post report. “We don’t want a government of, by, and for the billionaire class. FIGHT BACK.”
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) speaks at the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party Convention in the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, Minnesota on May 30, 2026. (Photo by Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)
“Stripping the citizenship of opposition elected officials is really, really far down the road to fascism.”
“I have rarely wanted to be wrong more,” said one journalist Wednesday night after The Wall Street Journal confirmed what many supporters of US Rep. Ilhan Omar had suspected: that the Department of Homeland Security’s raid on her home this week was part of an investigation that is ultimately aimed at deporting her.
The Journal reported that US officials confirmed the Trump administration aims to revoke Omar’s (D-Minn.) citizenship, which she obtained in 2000, five years after she arrived in the US with her family from a refugee camp in Kenya. Omar is originally from Somalia, and President Donald Trump has made Somali Americans a key target of his mass deportation agenda and his racist attacks on immigrant communities.
Agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), part of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), seized Omar’s passport, cellphone, personal computers, and notebooks, according to the WSJ, when they searched her home in Washington, DC.
Authorities have also issued more than a dozen subpoenas and are seeking testimony from people including Omar’s family members before a grand jury.
A Justice Department official told the WSJ that the agency plans to build its case on allegations that Omar lied about her age when she became a citizen.
Federal investigators have been examining whether Omar’s father, who died in 2020, altered her age to say she was 17 instead of 18 on immigration paperwork when he applied for citizenship. Doing so would have allowed Omar to acquire citizenship through her father.
The congresswoman, who is currently running for a fifth term, has previously denied committing immigration fraud, which Vice President JD Vance has openly accused her of. Other Republican elected officials have explicitly attacked Omar for her criticism of Israel and for being a Muslim, with Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) calling her a “terrorist.”
Ilhan Omar came to the United States in March of 1995, when she was 12 years old. She became a citizen 5 years later, while she was still a minor.
Ilhan is now 44 years old and the Trump administration wants to deport her for political opposition to the president and Israel. https://t.co/4jFiuFj9zW
Trump has suggested the progressive lawmaker should be deported for “always complaining” and has called to “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility.”
Journalist Peter Sterne said Wednesday evening that “many on the left suspected” the administration was attempting to deport Omar, “but it’s still wild to see the WSJ confirm it.”
Many on the left suspected this was the case, but it’s still wild to see the WSJ confirm it.
Needless to say, stripping the citizenship of opposition elected officials is really, really far down the road to fascism. https://t.co/tFBVjvn59E
Dylan Williams of the Center for International Policy emphasized that the raid and investigation—carried out just weeks before the midterm elections and as Americans are already voting, though the Justice Department typically does not take actions against candidates just before an election—are “an attempt by the Trump administration to stir up its flagging base ahead of elections that are going to be brutal for them.”
“Nonetheless, we need to fight this fascist, un-American abuse of power, hold those responsible accountable, and stand with Ilhan Omar,” said Williams.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, noted that “a case of this magnitude would take years to wend its way through the courts,” and said DHS would have to initiate deportation proceedings after Omar was denaturalized.
Still, a number of observers wondered why many prominent Democrats—like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and vocal Trump critic Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) have stayed quiet about the raid on Omar’s house.
“Democrats, nice time to do a press conference united in defense of Ilhan Omar and condemning the Islamophobia against Muslim candidates,” said commentator Wajahat Ali.
New York state Assembly Member Diana Moreno (D-36) said of the WSJ’s reporting, “This is either the breaking point of our democracy or the moment we start fighting like hell to win back this country from the authoritarian demons in the White House. I stand with Ilhan Omar.”
Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
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A view of Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, in Rafah, Egypt on March 19, 2026. [Ahmed Sayed – Anadolu Agency]
Israel has continued to close the Rafah land crossing for a second week, preventing patients from leaving the Gaza Strip for treatment abroad and causing a “dangerous buildup” of critical cases, the Gaza Health Ministry said Thursday.
In a statement, the ministry warned that the continued closure had led to a “dangerous and rapidly growing accumulation of critical cases,” with waiting lists for treatment abroad increasing by the day.
It said the number of people awaiting evacuation far exceeds the capacity of Gaza’s deteriorating and besieged hospitals to accommodate them or provide even the minimum level of treatment.
The ministry described the continued closure as a “grave violation of international humanitarian law and a deliberate deprivation of patients and wounded people of their right to treatment.”
It called on relevant parties to “exert serious and urgent pressure on Israel to reopen the Rafah crossing and all other crossings and facilitate the departure of critically ill patients for treatment abroad.”
The continued closure comes as more than 20,000 patients and wounded people in Gaza await evacuation for treatment abroad, amid severe shortages of medicines, medical equipment, and specialized medical services following Israel’s destruction of the healthcare system during its genocidal war on the enclave.
More than 1,344 patients have died while waiting for treatment since the ceasefire agreement took effect on Oct. 10, 2025, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
On Feb. 2, 2026, Israel reopened the crossing on a limited basis, allowing small numbers of patients and wounded people to leave under tight restrictions.
According to Health Ministry statistics, a total of 2,480 patients and wounded people left Gaza through the crossing between Feb. 2 and Sept. 2.
This amounts to an average of about 12 patients and wounded people per day, compared with the agreed arrangement of 50 patients and 50 companions daily.
According to Health Ministry figures from October 2025, Israel’s war destroyed or rendered inoperable 25 of Gaza’s 38 hospitals, leaving 13 operating partially under difficult conditions.
The Israeli army also destroyed 103 of the enclave’s 157 primary healthcare centers during the genocide, while the remaining 54 continued to operate partially.
Israeli violations of the ceasefire had killed 1,501 Palestinians and injured 5,323 others as of Monday, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Since October 2023, more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 175,000 injured in Gaza in Israel’s genocide, while around 90% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Ed Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
