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In the historic criminal hush money election fraud trial of former President Donald Trump, New York prosecutors are wrapping up their case charging Trump with falsifying business records in an illegal effort to influence the 2016 presidential election. On Tuesday, Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen admitted he misled the Federal Election Commission about hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. In cross-examination, defense attorneys tried to suggest Cohen was motivated by vengeance against Trump. "He's the one who has firsthand knowledge of the actual deal that he and Donald Trump struck in order to pay the hush money, create a phony retainer, and ultimately falsify the business records," says criminal defense lawyer Ron Kuby. "The boss betrayed him. And now he, indeed, is out for revenge." Kuby says Trump and his right-wing allies are using the trial as a backdrop for politics, and discusses the possibility of Trump serving prison time. Kuby is also representing climate crisis activists arrested at Citibank headquarters in New York City during Earth Week last month and pro-Palestinian activists arrested at recent protests at Fordham University and SUNY Purchase. "I tend to view these struggles … as perennial struggles with each generation kind of rising up to do their part," Kuby says. "I just have mad respect for the young people who are literally risking their education, their careers and their futures to stand up for the planet, to stand up against the slaughter in Gaza."
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Students and workers at the City University of New York held a peaceful occupation Tuesday of the school's Graduate Center in solidarity with Palestine and renamed its library "The Al Aqsa University Library," after Gaza's oldest public university, which was destroyed by Israel's bombardment. This comes as over 500 faculty and staff at CUNY have signed a letter demanding the charges be dropped against at least 173 people arrested in April when NYPD violently raided a peaceful Gaza solidarity encampment on the City College campus. "This is really the most egregious example we've seen of violent repression of pro-Palestinian organizing," says pro-Palestine activist and CUNY alumni Musabika Nabiha, who says the crackdown wasn't in response to the tents, rallies or free food, but because the "encampment's demands themselves proved a threat to the constant accumulation of profit and profiting off of genocide that CUNY is engaged in." Alex Vitale, coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at CUNY's Brooklyn College, criticizes the school administration for being relatively harsh on student activists. "CUNY is spending millions of dollars for a security apparatus that fails to address the real security needs of students and is really there in moments like this to be a tool, a kind of private army, for the administration to suppress student dissent."
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Palestinians across the globe are marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba — which means "catastrophe" in Arabic — when those establishing the state of Israel violently expelled over 700,000 Palestinians. Palestinian historian Abdel Razzaq Takriti says closer to 900,000 Palestinians were forced out or massacred during Israel's founding, which is being celebrated inside Israel with calls to ethnically cleanse and settle the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. "The Nakba is continuing. This is a colonial continuum," says Takriti. "It's not enough to commemorate. It's not enough to talk about it. We have to stop it right now. … The first step to doing that is to stop the genocide in Gaza." Takriti lays out four principles for Nakba education: refuting Nakba denialism, recognizing the Nakba is part of an ongoing process of settler colonialism, stopping that process, and then reversing it by restoring Palestinian national rights.
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 Anadolu via Getty The Biden administration is moving ahead with plans to send another $1 billion in weapons and ammo to Israel, according to numerous reports citing congressional officials.
The move comes just days after the White House paused a shipment of bombs, citing concerns for civilians in the Gaza city of Rafah. The new package reportedly includes about $700 million for tank ammunition, $500 million in tactical vehicles, and $60 million in mortar rounds.
It was not immediately clear when the shipment would be sent, but officials cited by The Wall Street Journal said "additional steps" would need to be taken before the weapons shipment could be approved.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Democracy Now! speaks with Dr. Adam Hamawy, one of around 20 American medical workers trapped in Gaza after Israel closed the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. A plastic surgeon and Army veteran, Hamawy is on a volunteer mission with the Palestinian American Medical Association at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Like many Gazans, the U.S. medical workers are now facing dehydration and other deadly health conditions. "We're continuing to do our job. … It's tiring, but this is exactly what we need to be doing," says Hamawy, who calls on President Biden to stop supporting Israel's assault on Gaza. "If my best friend is a serial killer, I'm going to stop being his friend." Hamaway describes treating "massive" injuries to civilians in Khan Younis, where much of the city has been destroyed and vandalized in Hebrew. "It's going to haunt all of us. … I'm here. I see it with my own eyes. At some point in time, everyone is going to see it."
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The police fatal shooting of Win Rozario, a 19-year-old Bangladeshi teen who lived in Queens, New York, has set off protests and demands for justice from the family. Rozario had called 911 in late March asking for help as he experienced a mental health crisis, but two New York police officers who arrived at the family's home shot him at least four times within minutes after entering the Rozario residence. The NYPD claimed Rozario "came at" the officers with a pair of scissors when they fired at him, but police body-camera footage shows he was standing on the other side of the kitchen, several feet away from the officers, as his mother desperately tried to shield her son. "He needed help, and what they did instead was kill him," says New York City Councilmember Shahana Hanif, who represents the city's 39th Council District. She also discusses progressives' ongoing efforts to pass a ceasefire resolution at City Council to demand an end to the war in Gaza, as well as Mayor Eric Adams's crackdown on asylum seekers.
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