Judge Dismisses “Vindictive” Case Against Kilmar Abrego Garcia
A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant and Maryland resident who became a national symbol of the administration’s deportation campaign after he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in 2025 despite a standing court order barring his removal there. The administration later admitted the deportation had been carried out in “error.” After public backlash and a Supreme Court order requiring the administration to facilitate his return to the US, federal prosecutors charged him with human smuggling tied to a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee.
Judge Waverly Crenshaw ruled that the prosecution amounted to “vindictive” retaliation, finding that prosecutors only revived the years-old case after the administration faced legal and political humiliation over Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT mega-prison.
The case exposed how the US immigration system operates through the combined machinery of detention, deportation, and prosecution, with the state reaching for criminal charges after the fact to defend its deportation machine.
Sources:
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5891926-kilmar-abrego-garcia-vindictive-prosecution/
https://apnews.com/article/035a2b2ded3ede65e77566cdf12b107f
US Sanctions Four Flotilla Activists
On May 19, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned four activists for their work on the Gaza-bound flotillas carrying life-saving food and supplies withheld by the United States and Israel. The OFAC targeted Saif Abu Keshek and Hisham Abu Mahfouz from the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), and two other organizers from the Palestinian prisoners’ solidarity network, Samidoun. The sanctions freeze all assets they may have in the US, and “make it generally illegal for any Americans to do business with them,” Al Jazeera reports.
Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, called the humanitarian groups a “pro-terror flotilla,” and accused their efforts of being “a ludicrous attempt to undermine President Trump’s successful progress toward lasting peace in the region.” He also warned international banks against working with any flotilla organizers. The “successful progress” Bessent claims, makes no mention of the more than 880 people murdered in Israel’s post-ceasefire bombings, or the famine and shortages the flotillas are trying to alleviate.
Samidoun responded to the sanctions by calling them “the latest manifestation of the ongoing US genocidal war on the Palestinian people.” As the US-Israel war machine continues to murder Palestinians despite their alleged ceasefire, the sanctions on relief vessels are yet another genocidal tactic.
Sources:
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0501
Control of Ebola Outbreak in DR of Congo Compromised After US Dismantled USAID and Left WHO
Last year the Trump administration dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Now as an Ebola outbreak occurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Congolese people are left without USAID leading the defense against the outbreak and supporting the infrastructures in the region to combat outbreaks.
In addition, the US left the World Health Organization (WHO) under Trump’s leadership, leaving another gap in resources that has not been filled. WHO has declared that there is a high risk that the Ebola virus moves across borders and has confirmed the outbreak has crossed into Uganda. WHO has also stated that “the Bundibugyo species of Ebola involved is one for which there is no vaccine or specific treatment, though work is ongoing to test promising candidates.”
As of the last weekly report from WHO, there have been 516 suspected cases in Congo and 12 in Uganda with 131 suspected deaths in Congo and 1 death in Uganda. Confirmed cases are much lower with 33 confirmed cases in Congo and 2 confirmed in Uganda. Without the USAID and US support of WHO, there has not been sufficient support to set up laboratories and testing facilitates to confirm cases. Due to this being an uncommon strain of Ebola, some testing equipment has not been able to verify this particular strain. There were also significant delays when officials in Ituri, the province at the heart of the current outbreak, did not raise the alarm when patients began to show symptoms.
NPR reported that “a new study estimates that the U.S. Agency for International Development has helped save more than 90 million lives in the past two decades.” While the death toll of this Ebola outbreak grows daily, it is hard to measure the impact that the destruction of these international healthcare operations will have on the people of the world.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/world/africa/congo-ebola-testing.html
https://www.who.int/emergencies/situations/ebola-outbreak—drc-2026
Israel Escalates Its War on Lebanon
Israel has intensified its ongoing war on Lebanon. 165 people have been killed by Israeli strikes over the past week, bringing the total death toll in Lebanon to 3,123, as of May 24th. Most of the attacks have been against towns and villages in the south of Lebanon; over 1.2 million Lebanese civilians have been displaced by the war, and Israel continues to order evacuations every day.
Benjamin Netanyahu has announced plans to intensify the conflict further: Israel aims to crush Hezbollah, which, despite not being part of the Lebanese government, is the most powerful armed group in the country, and leads the resistance against Israel. The United States and Israel have put Lebanese President Joseph Aoun under intense pressure to disarm Hezbollah, leaving the increasingly US-dominated Lebanese government under the thumb of the US empire.
Hezbollah is the only group in Lebanon capable of meaningfully resisting Israel. Indeed, it was Hezbollah that drove Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, ending 17 years of Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Hezbollah launched rocket attacks into Israel in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and Israel responded by invading Lebanon in October of 2024. Over 2,700 Lebanese people were killed by Israel in the 2024 war.
Lebanon has been subject to nearly daily bombings by the IDF since the previous war ended with a ceasefire in November 2024. The attacks escalated into open war in March 2026 after Hezbollah retaliated to the US-Israeli assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, a key ally of Hezbollah, by launching rocket attacks into Israel. Nominally, a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel has been in place since April 17th, but Israel has continued to attack targets on Lebanese soil.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cewppdk1187o
https://english.news.cn/20260519/7ebad588ec794f0db564f39fb9cd982b/c.html
https://www.dawn.com/news/2003057/death-toll-from-israeli-attacks-on-lebanon-rises-to-3185
US Indictment of Raúl Castro
Echoing the kidnaping and indictment of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro on falsified drug charges, the US Department of Justice has now indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro on trumped-up charges of murder in connection with the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by the Cuban diaspora group Brothers to the Rescue. Brothers to the Rescue was founded by CIA-trained José Basulto, whose previous attempts at regime change against Cuba included aiding the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the 1962 shelling of a hotel.
This is a clear extension of Donald Trump’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. These charges are another strike of attempted regime change against Cuba, whose people have been enduring under a harsh blockade for decades for the crime of daring to oppose U.S. imperial aims and the mafia control of their homeland.
Sources:
https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/exile/basulto-testifies.htm
UN Secret Mission to Rescue Palestinian Archives
Over the span of 10 months, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) had carried out a confidential operation to rescue millions of archival documents from their abandoned offices in Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Boxes of important documents, such as Palestinian refugee registration cards, birth, marriage, and death certificates, dating back to the 1948 Nakba when 750,000 Palestinians were violently displaced to Gaza by Zionist forces to establish the state of Israel, remained inaccessible. UNRWA abandoned its offices in January 2025, when the Israeli government passed legislation banning the agency from operating within Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel’s hostility toward UNRWA—from both the government and violent Israeli settlers— further escalated after the October 7th Al-Aqsa Flood, making claims that their staff had played a part in the operation, which successfully broke through the illegal apartheid wall that holds Palestinians hostage in Gaza.
The successfully retrieved documents were at risk of destruction, as Israel continues its genocidal campaign in Gaza. UNRWA officials had to take the documents to a warehouse in Rafah before transporting them into Egypt. But when it came time to do so, the Egyptian government refused unless they received approval for this transfer from Israel. Because of this, UNRWA officials had to secretly smuggle the archives to safety.
Now that the physical documents are no longer at risk, UNRWA staff are continuing their digitization of the crucially important documents, revealing family histories and the crimes committed against Palestinians in the creation of Israel, which Zionists try so hard to discredit and erase.
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unrwa-press-release-05sep25
Behind Enemy Lines 