Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250509115019/https://apnews.com/article/tyre-nichols-police-reform-memphis-4be9f28531bb70e4be07c12dd8431d84

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250509111038/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/08/south-carolina-firing-squad-execution

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Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250509114704/https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-05-01/homeland-security-agents-are-now-doing-wellness-checks-on-immigrant-children

For more than two years, Badar Khan Suri was a little-known postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University trying to land a book project, colleagues and family say.

The 41-year-old Indian national, who was on a J-1 visa for academic and exchange visitors, spent much of his time researching minority rights in his home country, visiting the campus mosque with his wife and three young children, and teaching a class on his research, they say.

But earlier this year, two groups that oppose campus antisemitism published articles about Suri and his wife’s support for Palestinians and their family ties to Hamas: His father-in-law was an adviser to the group’s former political leader, Ismail Haniyeh.

The Department of Homeland Security detained Suri soon after, alleging that his presence in the United States could have “adverse foreign policy consequences.” A DHS spokesperson accused him of spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism, and pointed to his “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist.” Suri hasn’t been charged with any crime, nor has his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, and the government has not released any evidence in the case.

After more than a month in a detention facility in Texas, Suri had an initial immigration hearing this week as the government seeks to deport him.

Archived at https://archive.is/Quoxa

BEIRUT/AMMAN, May 7 (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates has set up a backchannel for talks between Israel and Syria, three people familiar with the matter said, as Syria's new rulers seek regional help to manage an increasingly hostile relationship with their southern neighbour.

The indirect contacts, which have not been previously reported, are focused on security and intelligence matters and confidence-building between two states with no official relations, a person with direct knowledge of the matter, a Syrian security source and a regional intelligence official said.

The first source described the effort, which began days after Syrian President Ahmed Sharaa visited the UAE on April 13, as currently focused on "technical matters," and said there was no limit to what may eventually be discussed.

Archived at https://archive.is/ghYdf

The indictment came months after a legal fight over Texas’ voter security law Senate Bill 1 and a September 2024 ruling from U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez.

He found that a key part of the Texas 2021 omnibus voter legislation is confusing, vague, overly broad, violates freedom of speech along with the 14th Amendment and there is no actual problem of illegal “vote harvesting.”

Republican lawmakers have argued the provision is meant to prevent voter fraud. Under the ruling, the Texas Attorney General’s office could not conduct investigations based on the provision.

Paxton appealed the ruling, which allowed him to continue the Frio County case.

The AG’s office cited it when it conducted a series of raids on the homes of Latino voting rights activists and a Democratic candidate for the Texas House.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250509114620/https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/texas/2025/05/08/520838/county-judge-five-others-indicted-for-vote-harvesting-in-frio-county/

Archived at https://archive.is/PrJwt

The Coalition should resist seeing Trump as a natural disaster over which they had no control. Peter Dutton made many other missteps that doomed his party’s chances.

In what appears to be the early stages of the FBI criminal investigation, prosecutors have impaneled a federal grand jury to hear evidence in the eastern district of Virginia after the head of the federal housing agency, William Pulte, last month made the referral to the justice department, the people said.

The investigation appears to be multipronged, the people said, with involvement from the FBI in New York in addition to Virginia. The investigation appears to have gathered pace only in recent weeks with news of the grand jury filtering through Trump’s orbit in the last few days of April.

The criminal referral rehashed claims touted online by Trump allies that James may have committed fraud by attesting in paperwork in 2023 that she would make a house in Norfolk, Virginia, which she was helping a relative to buy, as her principal residence while she was New York’s attorney general.

Whether the allegations are substantial enough to result in criminal charges remains unclear. But its existence, which has not been previously reported, regardless raises the legal stakes for James in what appears to be the first criminal inquiry into one of Trump’s foremost political adversaries.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250509111040/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/08/trump-fbi-investigation-letitia-james

For the past 45 years, Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood has celebrated Cinco de Mayo with a parade featuring Mexican bands, floats and dancers, and a festival at a local park.

But this year’s celebration, which attracts up to 300,000 people annually, has been canceled.

... According to charging documents, a longtime activist named Adam Eidinger was among a group that went to the front steps of the National Archives on Jan. 10, climbed ladders to the top of its Corinthian columns and raised a 40-foot banner urging then-President Joe Biden to recognize the Equal Rights Amendment.

After police arrived, six demonstrators were arrested for unlawful entry, similar to the charge that faced 95 percent of Jan. 6 participants. The arrests happened without incident; the activists never went inside the building. “I followed all orders” from law enforcement, Eidinger told me. There were no tasers, bear-spray canisters or purloined metal barriers involved.

In a Washington still haunted by images of a frenzied pro-Trump mob beating up cops and trashing the Capitol, this isn’t exactly the stuff of nightmares. In short order, the offending banner was gone, the original one was back and there was no indication that anything had happened. If Jan. 6 was Mardi Gras, the Archives incident was a sleepy Sunday morning in Lent.

And yet Eidinger, unlike the pardoned mob that stormed the Capitol, still faces the possibility of jail time for this much more sedate stunt just a few blocks away.

In February, Martin’s office let the other arrestees take deferred-prosecution deals that should lead to dropped charges, a common outcome for arrests at demonstrations. Eidinger, with a record of left-wing protests and civil-disobedience arrests, didn’t get the deal. He goes to trial in October.

Archived at https://archive.is/vXEQK

Elbows up!

BTW, why the fuck does every leader have to go to the White House and get berated in front ont of that gaudy as shit background?

This English article doesn’t seem to mention it, but this happened during practice for an airshow.

Let’s face it: a new generation of scholarship has changed the way we understand American history, particularly slavery, capitalism, and the Civil War. Our language should change as well. The old labels and terms handed down to us from the conservative scholars of the early to mid-twentieth century no longer reflect the best evidence and arguments. The tired terms served either to reassure worried Americans in a Cold War world, or uphold a white supremacist, sexist interpretation of the past. The Cold War is over, and we must reject faulty frameworks and phrases. We no longer call the Civil War “The War Between the States,” nor do we refer to women’s rights activists as “suffragettes,” nor do we call African-Americans “Negroes.” Language has changed before, and I propose that it should change again.

Legal historian Paul Finkelman (Albany Law) has made a compelling case against the label “compromise” to describe the legislative packages that avoided disunion in the antebellum era.1 In particular, Finkelman has dissected and analyzed the deals struck in 1850. Instead of the “Compromise of 1850,” which implies that both North and South gave and received equally in the bargains over slavery, the legislation should be called the “Appeasement of 1850.” Appeasement more accurately describes the uneven nature of the agreement. In 1849 and 1850, white Southerners in Congress made demands and issued threats concerning the spread and protection of slavery, and, as in 1820 and 1833, Northerners acquiesced: the slave states obtained almost everything they demanded, including an obnoxious Fugitive Slave Law, enlarged Texas border, payment of Texas debts, potential spread of slavery into new western territories, the protection of the slave trade in Washington, DC, and the renunciation of congressional authority over slavery. The free states, in turn, received almost nothing (California was permitted to enter as a free state, but residents had already voted against slavery). Hardly a compromise!

Likewise, scholar Edward Baptist (Cornell) has provided new terms with which to speak about slavery. In his 2014 book The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books), he rejects “plantations” (a term pregnant with false memory and romantic myths) in favor of “labor camps”; instead of “slave-owners” (which seems to legitimate and rationalize the ownership of human beings), he uses “enslavers.” Small changes with big implications. These far more accurate and appropriate terms serve his argument well, as he re-examines the role of unfree labor in the rise of the United States as an economic powerhouse and its place in the global economy. In order to tear down old myths, he eschews the old language.

I suggest we follow the lead of Finkelman and Baptist and alter our language for the Civil War. Specifically, let us drop the word “Union” when describing the United States side of the conflagration, as in “Union troops” versus “Confederate troops.” Instead of “Union,” we should say “United States.” By employing “Union” instead of “United States,” we are indirectly supporting the Confederate view of secession wherein the nation of the United States collapsed, having been built on a “sandy foundation” (according to rebel Vice President Alexander Stephens). In reality, however, the United States never ceased to exist. The Constitution continued to operate normally; elections were held; Congress, the presidency, and the courts functioned; diplomacy was conducted; taxes were collected; crimes were punished; etc. Yes, there was a massive, murderous rebellion in at least a dozen states, but that did not mean that the United States disappeared. The dichotomy of “Union v. Confederacy” is no longer acceptable language; its usage lends credibility to the Confederate experiment and undermines the legitimacy of the United States as a political entity. The United States of America fought a brutal war against a highly organized and fiercely determined rebellion – it did not stop functioning or morph into something different. We can continue to debate the nature and existence of Confederate “nationalism,” but that discussion should not affect how we label the United States during the war.

Why should we continue to employ wording that is biased, false, or laden with myth? Compromise, plantation, slave-owners, Union v. Confederacy, etc.: these phrases and many others obscure rather than illuminate; they serve the interests of traditionalists or white supremacists; they do not accurately reflect our current understanding of phenomena, thus they should be abandoned and replaced. I call upon historians in all fields to reexamine their language and terminology. Let us be careful and deliberate with our wording; though we study the past, let us not be chained to it.

(emphasis added)