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Following Minneapolis protests in response to the ICE killing of Renee Good, President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act Thursday, a move that would allow him to send military forces to the city. Trump's comments came after a second person was shot by ICE following a traffic stop. "Trump probably sees this as a civil war," says Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. "This, as we all know, is being leveraged as part of an autocratic power grab."
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The former Conservative minister denies the move was about personal ambition, in an exclusive BBC interview.
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(Second column, 4th story, link)
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A federal appeals court on Thursday delivered the Trump administration a victory in its efforts to deport Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, opening the door for his rearrest. Khalil was a graduate student at Columbia University when he was arrested in March and detained for months. He missed the birth of his son, Deen, while in detention. "The Trump administration is trying everything in its power to come after me, to put the full weight of the government to actually make an example out of me," Khalil tells Democracy Now! "The U.S. government has not brought a shred of evidence that I broke any laws."
The appeals court did not weigh in on the constitutional merits, instead saying Khalil should have appealed his removal order in immigration court before going to a federal judge. "What people need to understand is the immigration courts are not real courts," says Baher Azmy, a member of Khalil's legal team. "They're part of the executive branch."
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The president issued a raft of clemency grants this week, including pardoning a woman he had given relief to once before and a man whose daughter had donated millions to a Trump super PAC.
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With Iran gripped by nationwide protests that activists say have left at least 2,600 people dead, we recently spoke with renowned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, whose latest film, It Was Just an Accident, was shot entirely in secret inside Iran and won the Palme d'Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. The film has since been shortlisted for an Oscar in the international feature category. Panahi dedicated a recent New York Film Critics Circle Award to Iranian protesters.
It Was Just an Accident centers on a group of former prisoners who kidnap a man they believe was their interrogator and grapple with whether to exact revenge, and Panahi says the film drew directly from his own experience with state violence and repression. Panahi has been repeatedly arrested in Iran, served prison sentences, and was recently sentenced in absentia to an additional year in prison and a two-year travel ban.
In an extended interview, Pahani discussed the protests in Iran, fighting against censorship, and the risk of prolonged cycles of violence. "I have always said this regime will fall. It is impossible for it to not fall, because it's a failed state in every sense," he said. "What I care about is the future of my country. I want the country to stand. I want there to be peace, and I want our children and the children of our children to not be facing bullets."
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Nonessential personnel are being removed from Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the main U.S. air operations hub in the region, as President Trump weighs a military response to Iran's crackdown on protests.
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Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed in Iran as authorities crack down on protests against inflation and the government's handling of the economic crisis, with thousands more arrested amid a nationwide communications blackout. The protests started in late December and quickly spread across the country, marking the strongest internal challenge to the Iranian government in years. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran in support of the protesters.
"Many civil and political activists in Iran have warned against any kind of foreign intervention, because it actually increases repression inside of the country," says Narges Bajoghli, associate professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University.
We also speak with Iranian dissident Hamidreza Mohammadi, brother of the imprisoned Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi. Speaking from Oslo, he says he has been unable to reach his family inside Iran since the start of the protests. "In the lack of internet and telephone communication, the regime has been able to kill a lot of people," Mohammadi says. "People in Iran simply want [a] different system, and they don't want to be enslaved by this regime for its ideological purposes."
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