A photographed, posted by the artist himself, of a new Banksy mural that appeared outside the High Court in London on Monday, September 9, 2025. (Photo: Banksy)
“When the law is used as a tool to crush civil liberties, it does not extinguish dissent—it strengthens it,” said the group who faced nearly 900 arrests over the weekend for peaceful protest.
A mural by the world-renowned street artist Banksy depicting a judge magistrate beating a bloodied demonstrator on the ground with his gavel appeared Monday morning outside the Royal Courts of Justice building in London—a piece of commentary on the ongoing controversy surrounding the right to free speech in the UK when it comes to Palestinian rights.
The new artwork, which the artist confirmed was his in an Instagram post, comes amid uproar over a UK government law that has been used to ban individuals and entire groups from protesting under anti-terrorism laws.
On Saturday, nearly 900 people were arrested during a protest led by a group called Defend Our Juries, which has been calling for the lifting of a blanket ban on a separate group, the nonviolent Palestine Action, deemed a terrorist supporter in relation to its advocacy of Palestinian rights and a demand for an end to the genocide in Gaza.
The Met Police reported that 890 people were arrested in total on Saturday. Of those, 857 were arrested for the sole offense of voicing their support for Palestine Action, now a crime in the UK. The other 33 arrests were for various infractions, including 17 for assault of police officers.
Banksy’s artwork was seen as a keen commentary on the subject.
London-based journalist Barry Malone called the piece “extremely powerful,” especially given the context. “The timing, the placement,” he said. “It’s perfect.”
In a statement Sunday about the weekend’s arrest, Amnesty International’s director of campaigns and communications, Kerry Mascogiuri, said the “staggering number of arrests” by police at a “peaceful protest marks a new low for protest rights in this country.”
“It’s completely ridiculous for police to be targeting and arresting people for sitting down, quietly holding a sign,” Mascogiuri said.
Banksy, Royal Courts of Justice, London
Yesterday 857 people were arrested for showing support for Palestine Action – a protest group which has recently been banned in the UK.
Most sat peacefully holding a sign which read “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” pic.twitter.com/WNSVN55eaP
She said observers from Amnesty witnessed how the crowd was “entirely peaceful,” despite some people hurling insults at officers. She said it was a misrepresentation to say that protesters became violent, though some did try to prevent those targeted for arrest from being carried away.
“Police officers, on a number of occasions, were aggressive towards supporters of the protest,” Mascogiuri added. “This included violently shoving people away and pulling out batons to make space whilst protesters were arrested and hauled into police vans.
“Peaceful protest is a fundamental right,” she concluded. “The scenes yesterday were a shocking demonstration of how the UK’s overly broad terrorism laws are being used to suppress free speech.”
Meanwhile, outside the High Court in London on Monday, security guards and metal barriers were promptly dispatched to cover up the mural.
Did we just get a Banksy?
New Banksy showing judge hitting protester with gavel appears on High Court.https://t.co/fuSlsBW4tu
In a statement, a spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said the work by Banksy “powerfully depicts the brutality unleashed” on peaceful protesters by the former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who led the prohibition against Palestine Action.
“When the law is used as a tool to crush civil liberties, it does not extinguish dissent–it strengthens it,” the spokesperson continued.
“As Banksy’s artwork shows, the state can try to strip away our civil liberties, but we are too many in number and our resolve to stand against injustice cannot be beaten—our movement against the ban is unstoppable and growing every day,” they said. “We hope everyone who is moved by Banksy’s inspiring work of art will join our next action, which will be announced soon.”
Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Calling the bill a “failure of process and policy,” an MLI paper advocating for abolishment states that it has had a “dramatic silencing effect” on many nationwide businesses and associations that want to communicate their environmental goals. It also says the amendment’s wording exposes companies to frivolous lawsuits.
Canada’s Parliament adopted the omnibus Bill C-59, officially known as the Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023, in June 2024. The bill included anti-greenwashing amendments to the Competition Act, which came about as a result of public meetings held in the spring of 2023.
The bill says that companies found deliberately misleading the public with false environmental claims could be fined up to $10 million.
While Canada’s oil industry argued that the new anti-greenwashing regulations necessitated the removal of advocating for carbon capture efforts as much as their Net-Zero goals, other major Canadian corporations did not have a similar reaction. In addition, major tar sands producers and Pathways Alliance partners, such as Cenovus and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., blamed the regulations when they delayed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting to investors.
Critics argue CCS is an ineffective climate change mitigation technology because it habitually underperforms at capturing carbon dioxide emissions. It’s also historically been used to extend the lifespans of otherwise derelict oil wells, and – irrespective of emissions captured during production – produces fossil fuels that create new emissions when combusted for energy or electricity. Because of these reasons, critics argue CCS’s only purpose is to provide the appearance of social acceptability while continuing fossil fuel production.
Carbon capture has been widely promoted by the Pathways Alliance, which is seeking to develop a massive carbon capture project in Alberta that would link 13 tar sands facilities with 400 kilometers of carbon dioxide pipelines to a centralized carbon capture hub. CCS projects have historically underperformed in Canada; a 2020 report by Global Witness found that Shell Canada’s Quest hydrogen facility — which uses carbon capture — was actually emitting more carbon than it captured.
Recent research from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) reveals that the Pathways project is not financially viable, and is likely to be subsidy-dependent with limited revenue potential. The IEEFA also notes that Canada’s carbon capture projects have struggled to keep up with projected capture rates.
On the Offensive
Though Bill C-59 is designed to protect Canadian consumers from fraudulent advertising, just as other industries do, fossil fuel advocates — from conservative Canadian newspapers to Koch Brothers-affiliated Canadian think tanks and conservative Alberta politicians — immediately went on the offensive shortly after the bill became law in June 2024.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith described the new requirements as “draconian legislation that will irreparably harm Canadians’ ability to hear the truth about the energy industry and Alberta’s successes in reducing global emissions.” She also stated that the new law was “absurd authoritarian censorship.”
“Freedom for people to express themselves is crucial to a democracy,” said Emilia Belliveau, program manager, Energy Transition, Environmental Defence. “But giving businesses a free pass to spread disinformation and greenwashing isn’t.”
“Bill C-59 builds on the longstanding work of the Competition Bureau to protect fair business practices and ensure the public isn’t being lied to,” Belliveau said in a statement to DeSmog.
“People have a right to know the truth — whether it’s about a product, a service, or the companies behind them. That’s why it’s imperative that our democracy has rules in place to stop ultra-wealthy CEOs and multi-billion-dollar corporations from spreading misinformation and manipulating the public for their own profits,” she added.
The MLI paper contains its own inaccurate and misleading statements, including an assertion that there was no opportunity for discussions. Despite making this statement several times, and including it as a key talking point in the paper’s executive summary, the paper’s authors conceded that a consultation process did take place roughly a year earlier. They said greenwashing was addressed, but still argued that a last-minute amendment is much broader and therefore deserved its own, separate consultation process.
Efforts to contact Charlie Angus, the NDP MP who sponsored the bill, were unsuccessful, as were DeSmog’s efforts at contacting MLI for comment.
Chief among MLI’s concerns are that the wording of the amended competition law puts the onus of proof on the person or company making a representation (such as an oil company claiming carbon capture is a viable climate change mitigation technology). With the C-59 amendment, companies and individuals now have to demonstrate their claims based on an internationally recognized standard. The MLI paper further argues that this exposes companies — such as multi-billion-dollar oil and gas companies — to frivolous lawsuits. MLI also claims that the new regulations open the door to too many potential complainants, such as environmental activists and climate advocacy groups.
“Should companies be allowed to exaggerate, cherry-pick, or straight out lie to us in their advertising? No,” said Melissa Lem, family physician and president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) in a statement to DeSmog. “But this is exactly what companies have been doing with their environmental claims for too long.”
“This has had real impacts on our health due to unchecked pollution and escalating climate disasters,” she added.
“At its core, Bill C-59 is about truth in advertising — which ultimately protects us from corporate harm.”
Former Alberta energy minister Sonya Savage has said bill C-59 will result in ‘green hushing.’ Credit: CPAC / YouTube
The MLI paper’s authors are former Alberta energy minister Sonya Savage and Heather Exner-Pirot, the institute’s director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment.
DeSmog previously reported on Savage’s public statements about her belief that the anti-greenwashing law was “silencing” Canada’s oil and gas sector. Savage was formerly a senior executive with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), as well as Enbridge, a multinational pipeline company. Exner-Pirot is well-known for her fossil fuel advocacy as much as for her campaigns on behalf of the MLI against everything from an emissions cap to electric vehicles.
Both Savage and Exner-Pirot have made misleading statements in the past concerning various legislative efforts to control carbon emissions. For example, Exner-Pirot published op-eds criticizing the federal government’s electric vehicle (EV) mandate and characterized it as a quota, among several inaccurate statements about EVs in general. Savage has described C-59 as part of a global effort to silence Canada’s energy sector and that the regulations constituted an indirect ban on fossil fuel advertising, neither of which are true.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute presents itself as a non-partisan and independent think tank, but is, in fact, part of the Atlas Network. Like Atlas, it has received funding from the Koch Brothers, and generally opposes government regulations — particularly on environmental issues or as they relate to the energy sector. MLI counts among its donors CAPP, Imperial Oil, Canadian Energy Pipeline Association and the Canadian Fuels Association, among others.
MLI has considerable access to mainstream Canadian media and routinely criticizes the environmental movement, attacking efforts to curb emissions as responding to climate change “alarmism.”
Protesters rally against U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk outside the Michigan Capitol in Lansing, Michigan on February 5, 2025. (Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)
“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” said one legal expert. “We never have seen anything like this.”
The Trump administration’s defiance of court orders that threaten to hamper the president and unelected billionaire Elon Musk’s assault on federal agencies and basic rights has legal experts and other observers warning of a perilous new phase in the United States’ rolling constitutional crisis.
On Monday, the Revolving Door Project (RDP) launched an effort to track the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with orders from the federal judiciary and detail the impact that obstinance is having across the country.
The watchdog group pointed to several specific examples, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal to “disperse already-awarded grants funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, in apparent defiance of” federal judges’ orders against the Trump administration’s sweeping funding freeze.
“NOTHING is more important than civil society pressuring judges to have a spine in the face of Musk and Trump’s intransigence,” Jeff Hauser, RDP’s executive director, wrote on social media late Monday. “Judicial orders must be enforced!”
Journalists Judd Legum and Noel Sims highlighted another example on Tuesday, noting that the administration is “prohibiting National Institutes of Health (NIH) staff from issuing virtually all grant funding” despite two federal court injunctions against the freeze.
David Super, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told Legum and Sims that the Trump administration is “in contempt of court,” calling the continued freeze on NIH grants “completely unlawful.”
“The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore. These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent.”
Super is among a growing number of legal experts sounding the alarm about the nation’s descent into a full-blown constitutional emergency.
“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert and dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, told The New York Times late last week. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.”
“Systematic unconstitutional and illegal acts create a constitutional crisis,” Chemerinsky added.
Both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have levied criticism at the federal judiciary in recent days as it has put up roadblocks that have hindered the new administration’s ability to lawlessly impose its will.
“Certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop,” Trump wrote in a social media post early Tuesday, just days after Musk floated allowing “elected bodies” to terminate “the worst 1% of appointed judges.”
In a statement on Monday, American Bar Association (ABA) president William Bay noted that “in the last 21 days, more than a dozen lawsuits have been filed alleging that the administration’s actions violate the rule of law and are contrary to the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
“The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore,” said Bay. “These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent. We must stand up for the values we hold dear. The ABA will do its part and act to protect the rule of law.”
“We urge every attorney to join us and insist that our government, a government of the people, follow the law,” he added. “It is part of the oath we took when we became lawyers. Whatever your political party or your views, change must be made in the right way. Americans expect no less.”
Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
A Palestinian medic carries an injured child from an ambulance as the wounded being transported to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital for treatment following an Israeli attack on the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza City, Gaza on January 01, 2025. (Photo by Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Organizing together under the name Taxpayers Against Genocide, constituents served notice that no amount of rhetoric could make funding of genocide anything other than repugnant.
On the last day of 2024, the deputy general counsel for the House of Representatives formally accepted delivery of a civil summons for two congressmembers from Northern California. More than 600 constituents of Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson have signed on as plaintiffs in a class action accusing them of helping to arm the Israeli military in violation of “international and federal law that prohibits complicity in genocide.”
Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, it conveys widespread anger and anguish about the ongoing civilian carnage in Gaza that taxpayers have continued to bankroll.
By a wide margin, most Americans favor an arms embargo on Israel while the Gaza war persists. But Huffman and Thompson voted to approve $26.38 billion in military aid for Israel last April, long after the nonstop horrors for civilians in Gaza were evident.
Back in February — two months before passage of the enormous military aid package — both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that, in the words of the lawsuit, “the Israeli government was systematically starving the people of Gaza through cutting off aid, water, and electricity, by bombing and military occupation, all underwritten by the provision of U.S. military aid and weapons.”
When the known death toll passed 40,000 last summer, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights said: “Most of the dead are women and children. This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with the rules of war.” He described as “deeply shocking” the “scale of the Israeli military’s destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and places of worship.”
No one should put any trust in the court system to stop the U.S. government from using tax dollars for war. But suing congressmembers who are complicit in genocide is a good step.
On Dec. 4, Amnesty International released a 296-page report concluding that Israel has been committing genocide “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity” — with the “specific intent to destroy Palestinians,” engaging in “prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention.”
Two weeks later, on the same day the lawsuit was filed in federal district court in San Francisco, Human Rights Watch released new findings that “Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide.”
Responding to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Thompson said that “achieving peace and securing the safety of civilians won’t be accomplished by filing a lawsuit.” But for well over a year, to no avail, the plaintiffs and many other constituents have been urging him and Huffman to help protect civilians by ending their support for the U.S. pipeline of weapons and ammunition to Israel.
Enabled by that pipeline, the slaughter has continued in Gaza while the appropriators on Capitol Hill work in a kind of bubble. Letters, emails, phone calls, office visits, protests and more have not pierced that bubble. The lawsuit is an effort to break through the routine of indifference.
Like many other congressional Democrats, Huffman and Thompson have prided themselves on standing up against the contempt for facts that Donald Trump and his cohorts flaunt. Yet refusal to acknowledge the facts of civilian decimation in Gaza, with a direct U.S. role, is an extreme form of denial.
“Over the last 14 months I have watched elected officials remain completely unresponsive despite the public’s demands to end the genocide,” said Laurel Krause, a Mendocino County resident who is one of the lawsuit plaintiffs.
Another plaintiff, Leslie Angeline, a Marin County resident who ended a 31-day hunger strike when the lawsuit was filed, said: “I wake each morning worrying about the genocide that is happening in Gaza, knowing that if it wasn’t for my government’s partnership with the Israeli government, this couldn’t continue.”
Such passionate outlooks are a far cry from the words offered by members of Congress who routinely appear to take pride in seeming calm as they discuss government policies. But if their own children’s lives were at stake rather than the lives of Palestinian children in Gaza, they would hardly be so calm. A huge empathy gap is glaring.
In the words of plaintiff Judy Talaugon, a Native American activist in Sonoma County, “Palestinian children are all our children, deserving of our advocacy and support. And their liberation is the catalyst for systemic change for the betterment of us all.”
As a plaintiff, I certainly don’t expect the courts to halt the U.S. policies that have been enabling the horrors in Gaza to go on. But our lawsuit makes a clear case for the moral revulsion that so many Americans feel about the culpability of the U.S. government.
To hardboiled political pros, the heartfelt goal of putting a stop to the arming of the Israeli military for genocide is apt to seem quixotic and dreamy. But it’s easy for politicians to underestimate feelings of moral outrage. As James Baldwin wrote, “Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.”
Organizing together under the name Taxpayers Against Genocide, constituents served notice that no amount of rhetoric could make funding of genocide anything other than repugnant. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson are the first members of Congress to face such a lawsuit. They won’t be the last.
In recent days, people from many parts of the United States have contacted Taxpayers Against Genocide (via classactionagainstgenocide@proton.me) to see the full lawsuit and learn about how they can file one against their own member of Congress.
No one should put any trust in the court system to stop the U.S. government from using tax dollars for war. But suing congress members who are complicit in genocide is a good step for exposing — and organizing against — the power of the warfare state.
