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Mint Press News: Trump’s Break with Israel: Genuine Shift or Political Theater?

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Even if the administration’s current sidelining of Tel Aviv in favor of the Gulf states is temporary and conducted purely for expediency, given current geopolitical contexts, never before in Israel’s history have its leaders’ wishes and wills been so flagrantly and concertedly overlooked or outright contravened in American corridors of power.

Trump’s Break with Israel: Genuine Shift or Political Theater?

When Donald Trump was re-elected president in November 2024, expectations were widespread that Israel’s assault on Gaza would intensify, and that the incoming administration would take a much more active role in neutralizing Tel Aviv’s regional adversaries. The affinity between Benjamin Netanyahu, many Israelis, and Trump is well-established. As Foreign Policy noted in October 2024, “Israel is Trump country, and Trump’s No. 1 supporter is its prime minister,” the magazine wrote. Trump’s victory was widely celebrated in Israel, both publicly and at the state level.

Just days later, former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta predicted the president would give Netanyahu a “blank check” to cause havoc across the Middle East, up to all-out war with Iran. After taking office in January, the president did little to dispel such forecasts—quite the opposite. In February, Trump outlined plans for “Gaza Lago”—a total displacement and forced resettlement of Gaza’s Palestinian population and the creation of a so-called “Riviera of the Middle East” in its place.

In March, Trump renewed hostilities against Yemen’s Ansar Allah, after the group reinstated its Red Sea blockade in response to Israel’s flagrant breaches of its cease-fire agreement with Hamas. Battering Yemen far harder than Biden ever had, U.S. officials boasted that the air and naval effort against Ansar Allah would continue “indefinitely.” Trump also claimed that Washington’s “relentless strikes” would leave the resistance decimated.

In early May, however, Trump declared the mission over after agreeing to a cease-fire under which Ansar Allah would stop targeting U.S. ships in return for free rein in its war against Israel. Tel Aviv was reportedly kept out of the loop, learning of the deal via news reports. Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, responded to backlash over the deal by stating that the U.S. “isn’t required to get permission from Israel” to make deals.

Huckabee, an ultraconservative evangelical and outspoken Zionist who vowed upon his nomination to refer to Israel in biblical terms such as the “Promised Land,” and who has frequently claimed that Jews hold a “rightful deed” to Palestinian land, surprised observers with the statement. Yet it seemed to mark the beginning of a dramatic shift in direction by the Trump administration, which, as MintPress News has previously documented, is stacked with pro-Israel hawks.

Since then, Trump has embarked on a tour of the Middle East, with Israel conspicuously absent from his itinerary. Instead, he has traveled to states in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Meanwhile, the president negotiated the release of the last living U.S. hostage held by Hamas and convened direct peace talks with the resistance group—in both cases without Tel Aviv’s involvement. There are rumors that Hamas may end hostilities in return for U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state, an offer Trump is reportedly open to.

Negotiations with Iran over a new nuclear deal have been underway since Trump took office. On May 15, it was widely reported that the two sides were finally on the verge of reaching an agreement. Once again, Israel was apparently entirely excluded from these talks, and any accord that does result will likely not take into account Tel Aviv’s bellicose stance toward Iran. In a remarkable speech in Riyadh on May 13, Trump appeared to backtrack on decades of American policy in the Middle East.

Successive U.S. administrations have considered normalization of relations between all Arab and Muslim states—particularly Saudi Arabia—and Israel a paramount objective to the extent of making continued U.S. defense guarantees to Riyadh contingent upon its recognition of Tel Aviv. However, Trump explicitly deprioritized this goal, saying that while he hoped the Saudis would eventually sign the Abraham Accords, he understood the current context made it unfeasible and added, “You’ll do it in your own time.” He mentioned Israel only once.

Washington went on to sign a slew of deals with Riyadh across various sectors, including the largest-ever defense agreement between the two countries, valued at nearly $142 billion. In sum, a string of seismic developments strongly suggests that Trump’s administration is breaking with the previously unshakable U.S. policy of lockstep support for Israel and serving its interests in nearly every regard—an arrangement in place since the country’s founding in 1948. But is this previously unthinkable rupture real, or just for show?

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Trump Snubs Israel in Middle East Pivot

Purported rifts in the U.S.-Israel relationship are nothing new. Throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, multiple mainstream reports suggested the relationship was “strained,” especially due to sharp personal differences between the then-president and Netanyahu. Similarly, from the start of the Gaza genocide, major news outlets intermittently reported that Joe Biden was “privately” angry with Netanyahu’s behavior. Meanwhile, White House spokespeople and prominent Democrats, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, publicly insisted that the administration was committed to securing a cease-fire.

In both cases, though, the U.S. financial and military aid that is fundamental to Israel’s continued existence and erasure of the Palestinian people continued unabated, if not increased. In late April, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Herzog, who served from 2021 to 2025, proudly declared that “the [Biden] administration never came to us and said, ‘Cease-fire now.’ It never did.” As such, skepticism about the sincerity and substance of the Trump administration’s abrupt break from its traditionally pro-Israel trajectory is well-founded.

Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Gulf State Analytics, tells MintPress News that there may be a real shift underway in U.S. foreign policy, driven in large part by Trump’s determination to counter China’s rising global influence, particularly in the Middle East. It is this agenda that, for now, is pushing Washington to conduct “a foreign policy increasingly friendly to deep-pocketed states on the Arabian Peninsula, at the expense of the historic U.S.-Israel alignment.” As Cafiero put it:

Trump wants to pull Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE et al closer to U.S. geopolitical and geo-economic influence, while pulling them away from China to some extent. He likely won’t have much success in slowing down the momentum of Arab-Chinese relations in energy, investment, trade, logistics, commerce, AI, digitization, and so on. But in terms of defense and security, the U.S. will continue to dominate, and Trump will make clear these are uncrossable ‘red lines’ in terms of the Gulf’s relationship with China from Washington’s perspective.”

Trump’s large trade and investment deals with Gulf states play heavily into his “Make America Great Again” agenda and self-mythologizing as a dealmaker at home and abroad. The Gulf states are “ripe for lucrative deals” for U.S. companies, Cafiero says, adding that these agreements will create jobs and generate “good optics” for the administration at home.

Geopolitical risk analyst Firas Modad agrees that economic factors are central to Trump’s current course shift, and are alienating Tel Aviv. “Trump needs to sell F-35s. The U.S. defense industry needs the funds. The sale of F-35s to Turkey and perhaps to Saudi Arabia… a new deal with Iran, a Saudi civilian nuclear program — these will all be big bones of contention with Israel,” Modad said.

If nuclear negotiations succeed, Trump will likely seek to open Iranian markets to U.S. firms too. Israel doesn’t want this either. Trump is showing Netanyahu how much Israel needs the U.S., not the other way around.”

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Gulf States Rise as Israel Loses Clout

Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a Tehran-based political analyst and professor at the University of Tehran, tells MintPress News that a “rift” between the U.S. and Israel does indeed exist, but that it is “difficult to say how significant or deep it truly is.”

Marandi believes the broader U.S. power structure recognizes that its support for what he calls the “Gaza Holocaust” since October 2023—“a 24/7 televised genocide”—has seriously damaged the West’s international image and soft power, telling MintPress News that “By default, this has greatly enhanced the soft power of China, Iran and Russia. The Global South looks to them, not the U.S. or its European vassals, for leadership, direction and partnership.”

Modad agrees, noting that in March 2023, Saudi Arabia unexpectedly reconciled with Iran “under Chinese auspices, without meaningful consultation with Washington.” Now that Arab and Muslim states view China and Russia as viable economic and military partners, the prospect of political scientist Samuel P. Huntington’s “Sino-Islamic alliance” becoming a reality is increasingly likely.

“The Americans will do whatever it takes to avoid resource-rich or militarily capable Muslim countries falling into Beijing’s orbit, even if that’s at Israel’s expense,” Modad tells MintPress News.

Marandi sees potential for shifts in U.S. relations with the region, saying “the space is there for progress”—though such progress remains “limited in scope and purely prospective for now.” He believes the current divide between Washington and Tel Aviv is largely tied to Netanyahu’s leadership.

“There’s a chance he’ll be sacrificed to preserve and rehabilitate Israel’s image internationally, with blame for everything since October 7 placed squarely on him,” Marandi says. “It would be like blaming Hitler alone for World War II and the Holocaust, instead of the system he led and everyone who enabled it.”

Marandi doubts a broader U.S.-Israel split will occur, saying the relationship is “so substantial, it’s not going to completely wither and die” over current events. “The Zionist lobby in the U.S. remains very powerful,” Marandi notes, adding that while Israel “has been discredited worldwide and is internationally despised, with people across the West condemning and abhorring the Zionist regime, the lobby still exerts enormous influence over Washington’s domestic and foreign policy.”

Modad is likewise under no illusions about the Israeli lobby’s clout in Washington. He expects its affiliated groups—and the many lawmakers they generously fund—to aggressively push back against Trump’s shift. He also suggests the administration could respond to the pressure by forcing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to register as a foreign agent. Given AIPAC’s political clout, such a move would be unprecedented.

U.S. political scientist John Mearsheimer has described AIPAC as “a de facto agent for a foreign government” with “a stranglehold on Congress.” Indeed, the powerful lobbying organization has a disturbing success rate in helping to elect hardcore proponents of  Israel to Congress and the Senate, and aggressively works to unseat anyone on Capitol Hill who expresses solidarity with Palestinians. This effort has only intensified since October 7, and the organization is so confident in its impunity that it openly advertises its activities.

For example, AIPAC publishes an annual report highlighting its “policy and political achievements.” The committee’s 2022 report boasts, among other things, of securing $3.3 billion “for security assistance to Israel, with no added conditions” and funding “pro-Israel candidates” to the tune of $17.5 million—the most of any U.S. PAC. A staggering 98% of those candidates went on to win, defeating 13 pro-Palestinian challengers in the process.

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AIPAC Faces White House Resistance

Trump is not unaware of the Israel lobby’s outsized influence over U.S. domestic and foreign affairs. As Marandi notes, on Jan. 15, Trump shared a video of Professor Jeffrey Sachs in which he blames Benjamin Netanyahu for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq—a war that Trump has long criticized. The crucial role that AIPAC and its allies played in laying the groundwork for that war has largely been forgotten.

That’s likely due in part to the organization’s large-scale online cleanup operations in which evidence of their early cheerleading for a full-scale U.S. invasion of Iraq was quietly erased. In December 2001, AIPAC published a briefing for U.S. lawmakers on the “major threat” it claimed that Saddam Hussein posed in the Middle East, to U.S. interests in the region and to “Israel’s security”—accusing him of producing weapons of mass destruction and harboring terrorist organizations.

Both claims were false, forming the basis of Washington’s case for the invasion. AIPAC later removed the briefing from its website. In 2015, a committee spokesperson told The New York Times that “AIPAC took no position whatsoever on the Iraq War.” Later that year, AIPAC President Robert A. Cohen went even further, claiming that “Leading up to the start of the Iraq War in March 2003, AIPAC took no position whatsoever, nor did we lobby on the issue.”

Today, Israel and its lobbying network are pushing for another major conflict in the Middle East—this time with Iran. In April, The New York Times, citing anonymous briefings, revealed that Tel Aviv had drawn up detailed plans for an attack on the Islamic Republic that would have required U.S. support—plans that were reportedly waved off by Trump. Israeli officials were said to be furious over the leak, with one calling it “one of the most dangerous leaks in Israel’s history.”

While Tel Aviv is purportedly still planning a “limited attack” on Iran, The New York Times report sent an unambiguous message to Netanyahu and his government that the Trump administration would not support any such action under any circumstances. Opposition to belligerence towards Tehran is in itself quite an extraordinary reversal for Trump and his cabinet, given their past rhetoric and stances. Before even taking office, it was reported that the administration was concocting plans to “bankrupt Iran” with “maximum pressure.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had long called for tightening already devastating sanctions on Tehran, was at the forefront of this push. He was eagerly supported by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, a Pentagon veteran who previously sat on the House Armed Services Committee. At an event convened by NATO adjunct the Atlantic Council in October 2024, Waltz bragged about how Trump had previously almost destroyed the Islamic Republic’s currency, and looked ahead to doling out even worse punishment following the president’s inauguration.

However, the reportedly positive progress of nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran today suggests Trump and his team have not only jettisoned these ambitions but are determined to avoid war. Cafiero believes this objective is one of the key geopolitical considerations driving the President’s current course in the Middle East. He notes such a conflict would inevitably be “messy, bloody, and costly,” and believes Netanyahu’s determination “to pull the U.S. into war” means Trump now sees Israel as a real liability:

Trump views West Asia as a region the U.S. has historically been sucked into, and he believes Washington shouldn’t be excessively entangled there anymore – no more costly and humiliating quagmires, diverting resources and attention away from other parts of the world, where China is making major economic and geopolitical gains. The Gulf monarchies are sources of regional stability – they’re diplomatic bridges and interlocutors, facilitating dialogue and negotiation, and assisting in winding down local and international conflicts, or at least U.S. involvement in them.”

A costly and humiliating quagmire conflict between the U.S. and Iran would certainly be – and were Israel to dare strike Tehran alone, Washington would likely suffer adverse consequences in any event. A September 2024 report from the powerful and secretive lobby group the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) spelled out in forensic detail that it would take “five minutes or less” for Iran’s ballistic and hypersonic missiles to reach most U.S. military bases in the Middle East and obliterate them.

Is US Support for Israel Ending?

Fears of such an eventuality, and the Empire’s repeatedly proven inability to prevail in battling Yemen’s Ansar Allah, surely lie behind Trump’s determined push for peace with Iran. Even if the administration’s current sidelining of Tel Aviv in favor of the Gulf states is temporary and conducted purely for expediency, given current geopolitical contexts, never before in Israel’s history have its leaders’ wishes and wills been so flagrantly and concertedly overlooked or outright contravened in American corridors of power.

Should this rocky period represent a mere transitory blip in the U.S./Israel relationship, the episode at least amply demonstrates that Washington isn’t as beholden to Israel as its leaders and the international Israel lobby like to think. With China’s rising influence and the newly anointed multipolar world going nowhere, U.S. leaders may think twice about being so deferential to Tel Aviv’s demands, its designs of endless territorial expansion, and its perpetual wars against its neighbors in the name of “security.”

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

 

The Trump Administration’s Attempt to End Discrimination against White Men

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We’ve all seen the ramping up of anti-White hate in recent years. First, Tucker Carlson interviews Harmeet Dhillon, “War on the Discrimination Against White Christians and DOJ Corruption” where it becomes clear that the Civil Right Division of the DOJ was composed of a bunch of left-wing activists who are now having crying sessions and quitting in droves.

Harmeet Dhillon [00:01:35] Well, Tucker, first, I’ll say thank you for having me here. The Civil Rights Division is the sort of the the the color revolution wing of the Department of Justice, okay? You know, whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat administration, there are career lawyers who are very focused on a particular agenda there. And so when I showed up or when I was when the president was elected, I should say there are over 400 attorneys in the Civil Rights Division. And about 200 staff, so a total of about 600 people. And, you know, Kristin Clark, my predecessor, anti-police, you now, open racist, you know got in trouble during her term for not being candid with the Senate during her confirmation hearings on some issues. And so she had a particular agenda. She got in there and she pursued that agenda aggressively and she had all the staff to do it. Now under the first Trump administration. The my predecessor in that job pretty much left it untouched. You know, he told me kind of like there were the career people there, if you wanted to get something done, they went to the US attorney’s offices. Well, you know, I came in with a different perspective. I think it’s part of the promise of this administration under president Trump to fundamentally reform the government in the way that the people voted for. And so that means In the civil rights division, we should be standing up for the civil rights of all Americans, not just some Americans. We shouldn’t be weaponizing the law in a particular way. We should apply those federal civil rights statutes that many of which were passed by and signed by Republican presidents and Republican administrations evenly. And the government shouldn’t be putting its heavy thumb on the scale in most cases. But in egregious instances, we should step forward and right these wrongs. But what I found there was… A number of lawyers, I mean, hundreds of lawyers who were actively in resistance mode, you know, there were memos out there by former government lawyers telling current government lawyers in my department how to resist if you’re given a direct order, ask for clarification, send 20 emails, question it, slow down your response time, say it can’t be done, you know. So I was actually looking out for that when I came and I did my week of training after getting confirmed by the Senate and then. The next week, I was like, okay, guys, it’s time to get to business. I want everyone to be very clear what the agenda is here. So there are 11 sections in civil rights, and I drafted memos for each of those 11 sections for the lawyers and telling them these are the statutes. So for example, Americans with Disabilities Act, this is a statute that we enforce or Title VII, anti-discrimination or some of the other federal civil rights statutes and then that’s the baseline. And then this is the president’s agenda. These are his executive orders that he’s put out there about anti-discrimination, about anti-DEI, about enforcing our laws equally, and that’s the job. You’re going to apply these statutes within the framework of anti-Discrimination even-handedly and without fear or favor. And this catalyzed hundreds of lawyers to quit the Civil Rights Division, so.

…

I mean, there were career lawyers there who were doing the same thing, no matter who’s a president. And so suddenly, their little fiefdom that had remained untouched, like Shangri-La, was suddenly having to be responsive to elections.

Tucker [00:05:37] So that’s the definition of the deep state, what you just described. It really is. Elections have no effect. It’s like, there’s no way to control these people. They act totally independently from the democratic system. I mean, that’s, that the problem right there.

Harmeet Dhillon [00:05:49] Well, that’s what I found. And so, you know, in response to my memos, of course, they began leaking to the press. They began having unhappy hours, which they would invite supervisors, political supervisors to, to make their point that they were unhappy. We got the point. And they had crying sessions, struggle sessions, crying sessions in the DOJ. They cried? Oh, there was, there was open crying in the halls, crying, crying. Crying, yes. And then one of my colleagues described to me, it was the last day, a couple of weeks ago for some of them, they lined up in a phalanx and approached the elevator together and then they left the building together, you know, to show their solidarity for one another there as if they were persecuted. How old are these? High school students or adults? These are 30, 40, and 50-year-old career attorneys in the Department of Justice.

So the NYTimes responds. For Trump, Civil Rights Protections Should Help White Men.

I loved this line from Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson who “praised the number of Black people in top city jobs during remarks at a local church. Speaking to congregants, Mr. Johnson said some of his detractors had claimed he only ever talks about “the hiring of Black people.” “No,” he continued. “What I’m saying is when you hire our people, we always look out for everybody else. We are the most generous people on the planet.” Good to know that Black-run societies are completely fair because Blacks are totally altruistic. I had no idea.

And: “last month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission launched an investigation at Harvard University, alleging that the school had engaged in discriminatory hiring because it showed a significant increase in the percentage of minority, female and nonbinary faculty earning tenure over the past decade while the rates for white men declined [to 32% of tenure-track faculty].” But that’s just fine with The Times. Couldn’t possibly be discrimination against White men.

It’s great that “Mr. Trump issued an executive order banning the use of ‘disparate impact,’ a legal theory that helps determine whether certain policies disadvantaged certain groups, even unintentionally. Conservatives have denounced disparate impact because it relies on outcome data to allege and prove discrimination — the basis on which Ms. Lucas lodged her charge against Harvard.” Of course disparate impact  ignores things like race differences in IQ, proneness to criminality, and different tendencies to be disruptive in school settings.

Listen to this article · 8:31 min Learn more

By Erica L. Green

Erica L. Green covers the White House and reported from Washington.

Administration officials pick and choose which civil rights protections they want to enforce, and for whom.

In his drive to purge diversity efforts in the federal government and beyond, President Trump has expressed outright hostility to civil rights protections.

He ordered federal agencies to abandon some of the core tenets of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on the basis that they represented a “pernicious” attempt to make decisions based on diversity rather than merit.

But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has turned to those same measures — not to help groups that have historically been discriminated against, but to remedy what he sees as the disenfranchisement of white men.

The pattern fits into a broader trend in the administration, as Trump officials pick and choose which civil rights protections they want to enforce, and for whom. Across the government, agencies that have historically worked to fight discrimination against Black people, women and other groups have pivoted to investigating institutions accused of favoring them.

“The plain message that they are conveying is: If you even think about, talk about or claim to be in favor of diversity, of equity, of inclusion, of accessibility, you will be targeted,” said Maya Wiley, the president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “They’re conveying that white men are the most discriminated against people in American society,” she added, “and therefore entitled to affirmative action.”

Maya Wiley

The White House has defended its actions as part of an effort to put merit ahead of diversity.

“The Trump administration is dedicated to advancing equality, combating discrimination and promoting merit-based decisions, upholding the rule of law as outlined in the U.S. Constitution,” said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman.

During his campaign for president, Mr. Trump expressed concern about what he called “a definite anti-white feeling in this country.” Now in his second term, he has made quick work of addressing it. He has made a major push to root out programs that promote diversity, which he has suggested lead to the hiring of incompetent people.

In recent weeks, agencies have launched investigations that signal the administration’s shift in its civil rights enforcement.

On Monday, the administration said it had opened a civil rights investigation into the city of Chicago to see if its mayor or others had engaged in a pattern of discrimination by hiring a number of Black people to senior positions.

The investigation came after Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, praised the number of Black people in top city jobs during remarks at a local church. Speaking to congregants, Mr. Johnson said some of his detractors had claimed he only ever talks about “the hiring of Black people.”

“No,” he continued. “What I’m saying is when you hire our people, we always look out for everybody else. We are the most generous people on the planet.”

The head of the civil rights division at the Justice Department, Harmeet K. Dhillon, said the comments justified investigating the city’s hiring practices to see if they discriminated against people who are not Black.

The Office for Civil Rights at the Education Department is investigating whether Chicago’s public school system is violating the Civil Rights Act with its “Black Students Success Plan,” alleging that it favors one group of academically underperforming students over others.

And last month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission launched an investigation at Harvard University, alleging that the school had engaged in discriminatory hiring because it showed a significant increase in the percentage of minority, female and nonbinary faculty earning tenure over the past decade while the rates for white men declined.

In a letter sent to the university on April 25, the acting chairwoman of the E.E.O.C., Andrea R. Lucas, said she had started the investigation based on the university’s expressed desire for “demographic diversification of the faculty.”

Ms. Lucas said she believed the university may have violated the Civil Rights Act by intentionally treating individuals of certain groups differently from another protected class.

While she wrote that other groups could have been discriminated against, including Asians, men, or straight people who applied for jobs or student training programs, her justification was focused almost exclusively on the outcomes of white men.

In her letter, Ms. Lucas cited now-deleted statistics retrieved from the university’s archives that showed that the percentage of tenured white male faculty dropped from 64 percent in 2013 to 56 percent in 2023. She also noted that while white men made up 56 percent of tenured faculty, they represented only 32 percent of tenure-track faculty.

The data, she wrote, gave her “reason to believe that these trends and the underlying pattern or practice of discrimination based on race and sex have continued in 2024 and are ongoing.”

The E.E.O.C. investigation, which was first reported by the conservative news site The Washington Free Beacon, is one of several the administration has launched in its battle to get the nation’s oldest university to bend to the president’s agenda.

In a letter sent to Harvard University, the Trump administration said it was investigating whether the school discriminated against white men in its hiring and promotion practices. 

Both the E.E.O.C. and Harvard declined to comment for this article.

Ms. Lucas’s letter to Harvard was sent two days after Mr. Trump issued an executive order banning the use of “disparate impact,” a legal theory that helps determine whether certain policies disadvantaged certain groups, even unintentionally.

Conservatives have denounced disparate impact because it relies on outcome data to allege and prove discrimination — the basis on which Ms. Lucas lodged her charge against Harvard.

Even those who have criticized the use of disparate impact in the past said the E.E.O.C. investigation smacked of hypocrisy and retribution.

“This is obviously hypocritical on its face,” said Michael J. Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank and a vocal critic of disparate impact analyses. “Here the administration is using statistics to launch an investigation, and just two weeks ago, they said that they were going to ban this practice. So, which is it?”

The E.E.O.C., the nation’s primary litigator of workplace discrimination, has become a powerful tool for the Trump administration as it tries to pressure institutions that do not align with the president’s agenda.

Last month, it began questioning the hiring practices of 20 of the country’s biggest law firms, claiming that their efforts to recruit Black and Hispanic lawyers and create a more diverse work force may have discriminated against white candidates.

The E.E.O.C. investigation into Harvard was also unusual, former E.E.O.C. officials said.

Using diversity statements and data as evidence is extremely rare, as was a charge of this nature being initiated by a commissioner rather than an individual claiming workplace discrimination.

Jenny R. Yang, a former chairwoman of the commission, said that the basis for the investigation would not make for a strong case on either disparate impact or disparate treatment theory.

“Aspiring to promote diversity is not the same at all as considering race and gender in an individual hiring decision,” Ms. Yang said. “They’re essentially doing what they falsely disparaged disparate impact of doing.”

In a statement, Mr. Fields, the White House spokesman, reiterated the administration’s position on Mr. Trump’s civil rights goals, and the president’s grievances against Harvard.

“The Trump administration is committed to advancing equality, combating antisemitism, promoting merit-based decisions and enforcing the basic terms of government contracts,” Mr. Fields said.

But civil rights experts said the administration’s goals are clear.

Catherine E. Lhamon, who previously served as the head of the Office for Civil Rights at the Education Department, said the investigations showed a pattern of “performative misapplication of federal civil rights law.”

“The Trump administration’s transparently vendetta-driven investigations categorically do not focus on fulfilling Congress’s guarantee that federal nondiscrimination protections apply equally,” Ms. Lhamon said. “Civil rights, properly understood, do not pit one group against another but protect all of us.”

LEO FRANK – Governor Slaton’s Clemency Decision: from death to imprisonment for life

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LEO FRANK – Clemency Decision

Leo Frank Case Archive – World’s largest Leo Frank resource

Joe Biden’s $93 Billion Scandal That No One’s Talking About Yet. And then there are the Trump scandals

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Trump’s corruption is all over the news–the jet from Qatar, his crypto coin project, his sons making deals.

With more than a dozen lucrative deals for his family and partners, … “Mr. Trump is estimated to have added billions to his personal fortune, at least on paper, since the start of his new term, much of it through crypto.”

The corruption is seeping across the Potomac.

Don Jr. and investors are opening a pricey private club in Georgetown called “Executive Branch,” where business and tech moguls can cozy up to administration big shots.

The infamous $400 million gift for Trump from the Qataris, a luxury jumbo jet, has arrived in San Antonio. This alluring “pre-bribe,” as “S.N.L.” dubbed it, instantly wiped out Trump’s old concerns that “the nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”

But not much about Biden’s corruption. This is amazing.

“There were commitments made from businesses that provided no business plan, no numbers about their own financial solvency, or how this project actually worked.”

The senator appeared almost incredulous and asked for clarity: “So, so you’re telling me that the Department of Energy in the 76-day period [after the election] before their boss was gonna leave office, gave or loaned money to, to entities that had no business plan?”

Of course, Biden was non compos mentis at least by then, so we can’t blame him for anything. But what a great opportunity for the people around him.

Joe Biden’s $93 Billion Scandal That No One’s Talking About Yet

Matt Margols
   
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
During a blistering Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) was visibly floored after Energy Secretary Christopher Wright dropped a bombshell: the Department of Energy handed out a staggering $93 billion in loans and commitments during the final 76 days of the Biden administration, a figure that more than doubled the loan total from the previous 15 years combined.

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Kennedy, in classic fashion, drilled in with precision. “The 76-day period you’re talking about, that’s the period between the time that President Trump was elected and President Biden left office. Is that right?”

“That is correct,” Wright confirmed.

Kennedy didn’t mince words when he asked how any agency could properly vet such massive spending in such a short window. “How do you do due diligence on one loan, much less $93 billion?” he asked.

Wright’s answer was damning.

“I think it’s probably pretty clear it wasn’t done in many cases,” he said. “There were commitments made from businesses that provided no business plan, no numbers about their own financial solvency, or how this project actually worked.”

The senator appeared almost incredulous and asked for clarity: “So, so you’re telling me that the Department of Energy in the 76-day period before their boss was gonna leave office, gave or loaned money to, to entities that had no business plan?”

“Correct,” Wright replied bluntly.

“No financials?” Kennedy asked.

“Correct,” Wright told him. “I’ve come in with great concern about how this institution, this great American institution, has been run and how American taxpayer money has been handled.”

Wright also acknowledged that his department is now conducting a sweeping review of those loans and grants.

“We are… and yeah, my blood pressure is rising just thinking about what we have seen and what did happen at the department.”

Continues …

 

UK Welcomes South African Activist Who Chants About Killing White Farmers

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Authored by C.J.Strachan via DailySceptic.org,

The British Government recently barred French writer Renaud Camus from entering the UK.

His crime?

Not actual incitement, not violence, not lawbreaking, but a controversial idea.

Camus, originator of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory, was scheduled to speak at a Big Remigration Conference organised by the Homeland Party, as well as at the Oxford Union. His Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) had been approved. Then, abruptly, it was revoked. The Home Office declared that his visit was “not conducive to the public good”.

Meanwhile, Julius Malema, a South African political figure who openly sings “Kill the Boer” at rallies, glorifies racial violence and promotes land expropriation without compensation, was welcomed.

This is not a metaphor. Malema was allowed into the UK in May 2025 to address his supporters in London. The only reason for his delayed arrival was the May Day bank holiday. When he protested, the British High Commission issued a grovelling apology, assuring him the visa holdup was merely bureaucratic, not moral.

The message could not be clearer: ideas from the Right are criminalised, but hate from the Left is indulged.

Toby Young has recently laid this out in detail in his excellent interview on GB News in the wake of the Lucy Connolly appeal decision. His conclusion: the UK no longer defends free speech as a principle, it defends only approved speech. You can chant about killing white farmers, provided your politics check the right boxes. But offer a sociological theory about demographic change? You’re banned.

Let’s be clear: Renaud Camus’s theory is provocative. It raises uncomfortable questions about identity, culture and immigration. One can challenge or reject it. But to silence it entirely, while welcoming actual political violence wrapped in revolutionary chic, is not only hypocritical. It’s dangerous.

Continues …

Remigration Summit 25 and the New Reconquista

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Remigration Summit 25 and the New Reconquista

“We Were Born Just in Time to Save European Civilization” – A Conversation with Lead Organizer Alfonso Gonçalves

Assistant editor Chris of Arktos Journal had the pleasure of interviewing Alfonso Gonçalves, the driving force behind the resounding success of the recent Remigration Summit 25, which has sent ripple effects throughout Europe and the world.

Please support Alfonso Gonçalves and his continued work here.

Chris: The Remigration Summit in Milan, an international gathering of identitarians from Europe and guests from the United States has sparked controversy. It drew global attention and mobilized voices from across the continent and beyond. And I’m sitting here with its main organizer, Afonso Gonçalves from Portugal, welcome.

Alfonsoe: Hi Chris, thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here with you. I really appreciate your work also with Arktos. So it’s really a pleasure to be with you today.

Chris: Oh, thank you for taking the time. I’m sure you are quite busy and literally on the move as we speak as well.

Alfonso: Yes, exactly. I have always time for a project like this. It’s a project I deeply appreciate, so it’s no problem.

Chris: Thank you so much. And I wanted to focus a bit more about you as a person, because I’m sure there’s people who are curious who you are, where you’re coming from, your visions and what’s going on in the future. I think most people who listen to this have heard about the summit and we’ve written an article or published an article about it as well.

So I’m just gonna ask you: what did organizing this summit meant to you personally?

Alfonso: Thanks for the question; it’s a really important question. Sometimes I don’t really stop too much to think about what I’ve been through and what I’ve been doing and why it all started and where I’m going. So it’s always good to take a couple moments to reflect and analyze what I’ve been doing and where I would like to move towards in the future.

So it’s a really important exercise and thank you for the opportunity to do that. So I would say that preparing this summit was a really important moment for me, for our team and also for everyone else who was involved, from Andrea Ballarati to Dries van Langenhove and Martin Sellner. These are three great guys and from which I have also learned a lot; especially Martin and Dries have great experience and they’re two of my role models, I would say, in political activism. And this summit was really well organized. It’s really a testament to what Europeans and young idealistic Europeans can achieve when they work together towards a certain vision. Our idea was to do a great political event in the political calendar, let’s say, capable of rivaling in terms of media attention and importance and influence with the likes of CPAC and their conferences or the conferences related to them.

But at the same time, we wanted it to not be only a spectacle and a show and an entertainment, but also a remigration lobby or the start thereof, a remigration lobby and an effort to really connect people and network people around the idea of remigration. And I think these two main goals were very adequately achieved. We managed to do a great event that was fully praised by everyone who attended and we also managed to create or start creating a network of remigrationists and people who network around the idea and the concept of remigration.

There were activists, and this was also our initial idea, there were activists, journalists, intellectuals, academics, politicians, members of parliament, et cetera. So it was really a full summit that ticked every box that we had envisioned beforehand. So it was a pleasure for me to organize it.

It’s also, let’s say, the highest moment in my short political activism career. I started about two years ago and this was a really good moment because also my team at Reconquista, our movement in Portugal, helped in a lot of, let’s say, departments of the event to put the event together. So now we only move forward and we do bigger and better things, but this was really great, also with the help of all the teams and all the people that coordinated and helped to prepare this event.

Chris: How did you first get involved in political activism?

Alfonso: Yeah, that’s a really interesting question again, because I do look back at when I started and when I did start, it wasn’t out of any specific methodology or any specific plan or any specific, very well-thought-out and thorough planning process. It was out of sheer will and sheer, I would say, desperation in a way, not in a very negative way, but desperation nonetheless with the state that the country was in. I could see my country changing for the worse around me every day.

I could see this arrogance of our technocratic, liberal, Marxist, globalist elites pretending that everything was according to plan and that it was just going smooth sailing and the youth were not supposed to get up and start reclaiming a future of their own. And I didn’t really agree with this plan.

I could see the arrogance of these elites looking at us, looking down at us as if the youth of Portugal was not supposed to rise and question this Machiavellian plan that they have for us and for our future. And so the start of our movement was born out of this spirit of refusal to accept a mediocre future of kneeling down and kicking the feet of the elites, and the invaders who want to explore our country.

So I started doing some posts and some videos on social media, also some minor actions and protests against the LGBTQ movement, against the mass immigration movement. And out of those protests arose an organic group that supported me in my efforts and that appreciated my work and they maybe saw some qualities in me and they started also to introduce me to some topics, to have interesting conversations with me. And that’s when I started to grow this movement out of this organic group of people that then moved into something bigger and bigger and here we are.

Chris: So Reconquista, what does it mean to you on a cultural, territorial and spiritual level?

Alfonso: Great question. Reconquista really means a lot to us. I normally say, and it’s true, that Portugal has already had two Reconquistas.

One that was finished in 1249, full reconquest of our territorial integrity when we conquered the Algarve, which is the south of Portugal. This was in 1249 and then 411 years later, in 1640, we also became independent again after 60 years of Spanish rule. So there have been two Reconquistas and now, 400 years after the first, there’s a need for a third one, a third Reconquista.

And this is the one we are currently in right now. And as you rightly pointed, it’s a cultural, social and spiritual Reconquista that we need to do again in our country if we are to be a country in Portugal and to keep on being our own country, our own nation. So this Reconquista needs to take multiple forms.

We should, of course, from a cultural level, refine and reinvent the values of our ancestors for the future. And from a social level, we should also find again the formulas of old that work in the new times, the family, the values of God and country. And then also from a spiritual level, by taking this courageous approach, leading with the enemies of our country, looking at them in the eyes and standing up for what is right. Even if the probability of winning is low, we will still win because also the probability of winning was very low when we were besieged in the Asturias a thousand years ago in a mountain in Covadonga with no hopes, no expectations, nothing to really fight for. And yet from there, we managed through sheer efforts and dedication and with God’s help to reconquer our lands. And this is also what we need to do now.

There’s a lot of technicalities to it, but spiritually that’s the main point.

Chris: About remigration, it has been described, and I think correctly, as a generational struggle. What’s your ideas about remigration and how do you respond to critics who say it’s politically unfeasible, morally indefensible, not practical?

Alfonso: Well, I would say that politically everything is feasible. If our enemies have managed to destroy the fabric of our European, Greco-Roman and Christian societies in a couple of generations, maybe less, then it is surely possible to implement the political reforms necessary to undo that damage. So it’s clearly politically possible that it’s all the resources at our disposal to peacefully, moderately and adequately remigrate people in the millions, in the tens of millions, if you consider the whole of Europe.

There’s every logistical condition to do that. It has been done in the past, in the 60s by the USA, in the 90s by the Fiji Islands, which are not a technological superpower as far as I know, and they managed to do it. There have been a lot of technological, scientific developments in the last decades.

So we have every condition and every resource available to us to do it. The only thing that’s lacking is the political will, because these elites don’t have the political will to defend the interests of their nation because they are incompetent and the traitorous political elites. Regarding the moral aspect, it’s totally moral.

In fact, what is immoral is legitimizing the demographic replacement, legitimizing the destruction of the specificity of a national cultural way of living, way of expressing of a certain group of people, rejecting that actively, undermining that through biological experiments, social experiments and through mass immigration. That is what is not morally defensible. Destroying the culture of the European peoples is not morally defensible.

Promoting immigration from countries that are net negative to the economy whilst at the same time contributing to the unsafety, the criminality, the lack of social cohesion in our streets, that is not morally defensible. The solution to those problems is morally defensible and is moral it’s adequate, and it’s also very moderate. It’s very moderate and it’s very peaceful.

And it is our main message and that is why our message is so heavily censored because they know people will resonate with this message. Regarding the concept of remigration, it’s, let’s say, a set of policies aimed at removing, peacefully removing from a certain country people according to different criteria back to their own nations.

Chris: I noticed you had speakers from the U.S. So I’m curious, do you feel that we share some sort of common destiny or do you feel that we are cooperating and sharing different interests but same goals?

Alfonso: That’s a very interesting question. And I would probably, I think a lot of people will say, probably a bit idealistically, I would say that the European space, and I include Russia in the European space, and the United States, we all share a common destiny based on the fact that we are, in a way, a common people with a common set of basic cultural values and cultural norms. So in that way, I would say that the whole European space, the big Europe, let’s say, also includes the United States, even if they nowadays represent totally different interests.

I think these interests are circumstantial and not deep, conjectural interests. I think these are the circumstances of our age that make it so and dictate that the United States nowadays is, in a way, opposing to European interests. But deep down, spiritually and culturally, we are a common people in a lot of ways and we share a common destiny in a lot of ways as well.

So I would also include the United States in that defense of the European spirit and the European people.

Chris: Dries van Langehove was one of the speakers as well, and his case has become pretty infamous. Basically, he’s been jailed for sharing memes, not even his memes. But he has been facing some pretty heavy persecution in Belgium. How have you been treated in Portugal?

Alfonso: Yes, Dries has been facing unprecedented persecution and we really stand with him. He’s representative of this European Faustian spirit and also the European spirit of fighting, even when a lot, I won’t say all, because there’s always that will and that hope, but when a lot is lost. So we all stand with Dries and the persecution he’s facing is representative of the justice of our fight, the justice and the righteousness of our fight.

I have also faced a lot of persecution, maybe not so much as Dries yet. I’m sure I will face in the future. I haven’t been a member of parliament like Dries has, and I think when I eventually achieve that level of political status, which I will in the future, I will also be very heavily persecuted.

However, I have faced really also unprecedented persecution for the Portuguese scenario and context. I can give you three simple examples. In March, I was aggressively dragged by police with handcuffs to the police station because I dared to protest for remigration in the most heavily invaded area of Lisbon, where there’s hordes and hordes of immigrants from Muslim countries and not only from Muslim countries.

And I dared to protest for remigration there, and I was aggressively dragged by police into the police station. These police kept me there for around an hour before they said I was, of course, free to go because I had committed no crime. I have also been heavily joked at and pointed fingers at for publicly standing in a council hall meeting, in the council hall of Lisbon meeting, and taking use of my three minutes as a citizen of the city legally and constitutionally, taking use of these three minutes that I’m granted as a citizen to protest, of course, peacefully about something I don’t agree with, which is immigration and the insecurity caused by the criminality caused by immigration. I protested in these three minutes, and I was joked at, I was shouted at, I was mocked by elected officials, by elected politicians of the council hall of Lisbon, who pointed their fingers at me, joked at me, shouted at me, behaved very poorly. And I simply said, it is very ironic that the citizen needs to come to the council hall to institute some good manners and some democratic respect.

And they requested that police drag me out of the council hall, even when I was granted the right to speak there. So I was then dragged out again by the police for this. The same police that then praised me and said they loved my work, and even their kids watched my work.

So this really shows how degraded and how much lack of credibility the system has. I will give you another example. I went to an immigration conference, where again a government official from a sociology department in a university was saying that the Portuguese can stay in their parents’ houses until they’re 35, because we need to house immigrants. And if that’s what we need to do in order to have immigrants, then that’s what we need to do. And I got up, I protested against it, I asked a couple of questions, and four police that were not in police clothes dragged me very aggressively again with extra use of force out of this public conference room that was open to questions from the public. Now, this is simply ludicrous behavior, just like Dries, you mentioned, also Martin Sellner have been subjected to.

And it’s really a show that the system is wrong and we are right. We can’t force the system to say the truth, but we can force them to say lies and to tell lies, obviously, in a way that’s too obvious. We are forcing the system to overreact.

We are forcing the system to overstep. We are creating this questioning and this inquisition in people’s minds, which is in turn allowing for more interest in our ideas, more critical thinking, which in turn will make sure that in the end we will win, because people will understand that we are right, and that’s why we are being censored and oppressed by the state. That is wrong.

Chris: So, finally, what is your call to action for those who are listening now? And I’m especially thinking about young Europeans who feel that something is deeply wrong.

Alfonso: That’s a great point. We should always have a call to action. Too many times we have these beautiful speeches and these empty words and these meaningless phrases without appealing to any set of actions that could be taken.

So my call to action starts in the end of your question. You mentioned that young Europeans feel that something is wrong, and I would say to these young Europeans, maybe some of them are listening in, I would simply say that something is totally wrong, and that makes it totally right for us to be opposed to this system. If they are thinking for themselves and reflecting in these internal debates why is this system so heavily against the interests of its own people, then they should recognize that, okay, something is wrong, but that also means that something is right in this age.

That is an age for heroes, an age for idealistic young people, an age for fighters, an age that maybe, this is, let’s say, a cliché, but it’s a really beautiful one. Maybe we weren’t born in time to complete the discoveries; we weren’t born in time to reinvent some great empires, but we were born just in time, we were born just in time to save European civilization. That’s not a cliché, that’s not an empty sentence, that is a call to action for every single young man listening in, or woman, that this continent of ours deserves to be fought for.

So what you should do practically is you should share this message far and wide, spread it, send it to at least ten people that you know, or send it to as many groups as you can. Join your local activism group; it does make a difference; it does impact people; it does make people think. Start delivering leaflets, or putting out stickers, or speaking to people.

Donate if you can donate; it really does make a world of difference to projects like Arktos, like RE-SUM, like our own movement, Reconquista. Donating really does make a difference. So donate, share the message, or join your local activism group.

If you feel as a fourth call to action, if you feel you have a certain gift, a certain talent, use that talent at the service of your people. I have always recognized, and I say this humbly, that I had a talent for speaking, for articulating ideas, articulating concepts, reaching people through communicating. So I put that talent at the service, not of my own interest, but at the service of my people.

So maybe you are an artist, maybe you are a great designer, or a great video editor, or a great communicator, or a writer, or a thinker. Put those talents at the service of our people. If you haven’t found the talent yet, then pray to God, and reflect, and you will find your talent that you can then help our people with.

Chris: Powerful words from Afonso Gonçalves. You’re out somewhere on the road, heading to your next adventure, and I want to wish you the best of luck, and thank you so much for organizing the event, and sparing some time to talk to me.

Alfonso: Thank you. Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate your guys’ work.

You’re also doing great things. Thank you for the interview. It was my pleasure.

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