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Jurisprudence How Trump Made One of the Most Controversial Post-9/11 Policies the New Normal Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Earlier this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly declared in an internal memo that all noncitizens who had entered the country illegally—millions of immigrants, including many who have been here for decades—were no longer eligible for bond release from immigration detention. The revelation might have been confusing; can the administration just do that? There will probably be some litigation, but broadly the answer may be yes. The administration has been helped along by a series of Supreme Court decisions over the last several years chipping away at noncitizens’ right and ability to seek bond or release from detention, as well as the fact that immigration is almost entirely contained within the executive branch. Once, open-ended detention without clear resolution was the subject of heated debate and widespread political condemnation, most famously in the post-9/11 War on Terror context. Now, flying somewhat under the radar of Donald Trump’s and Stephen Miller’s immigration obsession is a slow creep toward making indefinite detention—that is to say, with no end dates and no clear mechanisms to get out of it—a norm throughout the country. The Sixth Amendment protects a “right to a speedy and public trial.” There is no such protection in immigration detention because these are not “trials” in a criminal sense; they’re civil administrative removal proceedings, and the process has to be neither speedy nor particularly public. Most hearings are presumptively open to the public, but observers still routinely have access blocked, and unlike other court processes, there’s no public docket to view documents or the respondents, the immigration equivalent of defendants. In Florida, it’s unclear who even is being held at Gov. Ron DeSantis’ so-called Alligator Alcatraz camp, built by the state effectively on behalf of the federal government. The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times obtained a leaked list a couple of weeks ago, but that’s now likely outdated. It’s of course ludicrous that there’d be a detention camp in the United States without acknowledged detainees. Attorneys have reported being told that there’s no immigration court with jurisdiction over the clients that they’re also frequently barred from speaking to, meaning the administration is not acknowledging any specific authority that would have the power to order these clients’ release. While that facility seems set up to facilitate due-process-free deportations as fast as possible, it’s also possible and even likely that people might be languishing there for long periods with no active hearings, no conceivable release date, and no real way to petition for release. There have been reported cases of people continuing to be detained at the facility after already accepting deportation, for reasons that aren’t clear and with no one to escalate the issue to. There are now significant political—and, with the passage of Trump’s MAGA budget bill, financial—incentives to franchise this model in other states, with GOP officials lining up to set up camps in their own jurisdictions. Even for “regular” immigration detention, the administration’s position now is fundamentally that detention is permanent up until a person is removed from the country, or sometimes afterward. As I wrote in April, the administration had never laid out a statutory basis for the detentions at the CECOT megaprison in El Salvador—which does not have release dates—often claiming that the Salvadoran government was the one with custody. In the interim, El Salvador acknowledged to the United Nations that the U.S. had “jurisdiction and legal responsibility” over the detainees, who were subsequently released in a prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Venezuela and have gone on to describe hellish conditions. Despite their release, the administration has not acknowledged any wrongdoing with the detention and certainly never indicated it wouldn’t do it again. Domestically, an immense ramp-up in removal cases to fulfill Stephen Miller’s reported quotas means many more cases are going before long-overwhelmed immigration courts, with proceedings further slowed by how many respondents don’t have attorneys and the administration’s efforts to mass-fire immigration judges not perceived to be toeing the ideological line. It wasn’t uncommon even before this Trump term for cases to take years, and now the administration is adding up to thousands of additional cases per day while maintaining that most people should be detained during this process—which has historically been far from the norm—and have no real way to get out, at any point, however long it takes. Even within the laxer environment of immigration, where the rules of criminal detention don’t necessarily apply, there have long been additional limitations on the detention of children. Many are rooted in a three-decade-old court agreement known as the Flores Settlement, which among other things put unaccompanied minors in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is supposed to keep them in shelters, and generally prohibits detention of children for longer than 20 days. Now, ICE is not only detaining more children overall but reportedly holding them in prison-like settings while it moves to overturn key provisions of Flores in court. Altogether, this sets us up for a situation where a whole lot of people, not just adults but minors, could be detained for indefinite periods on U.S. soil and on behalf of the U.S. government abroad, which is obviously an anomalous circumstance with some dire implications for civil liberties and due process. Look at the case of Mahmoud Khalil; many legal observers and other experts like myself see the underlying removal charges as incredibly weak and unlikely to succeed. Yet the man still spent three months in detention, missing the birth of his first child, only getting out at the order of a federal judge after a good amount of public outrage and the administration’s frankly brazen legal arguments. Thousands of other people are going to get put into detention of indeterminate length with far less recourse, which

Donald Trump said this week that a known Epstein victim was one of the people “stolen” from Mar-a-Lago by the convicted sex offender. Could Trump have known what would happen to her? A message calling on President Donald Trump to release all files related to Jeffrey Epstein is projected by an activist group onto the US Chamber of Commerce building across from the White House in Washington, DC, on July 18, 2025. (Photo by Alex Wroblewski / AFP) Can Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of the best-known victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghirlaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking crimes, possibly get something approaching justice, just months after her suicide at 41? Perhaps not in the short term, while Donald Trump is abusing her memory by calling her one of the Mar-a-Lago ”people” Epstein “stole” from him. When Trump first made the accusation about his once-close friend on Monday, he didn’t mention Giuffre. “For years I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein, because he did something that was inappropriate…. He stole people that worked for me.… And he did it again. So I threw him out of the place [Mar-a-Lago]. I’m glad I did.” But he brought up the issue again, traveling with reporters on Air Force One. When one of them asked if he was referring to Giuffre, he said yes. “I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us… none whatsoever.” “None whatsoever”? Giuffre frequently told investigators she was not the only young woman “procured” by Epstein and Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago. Yes indeed, Donald, she had “complaints” about your close friends’ using your resort as their sex-trafficking poaching grounds. “We now know from the words of the President himself that Virginia was right all along, and that she was trafficked out of Mar-a-Lago,” one of her lawyers told CNN on Thursday. Giuffre’s family also responded, telling The Atlantic on Wednesday night that they were shocked that Trump would brazenly describe her as “stolen.” “It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side…no doubt about it,’” Giuffre’s two brothers and her sisters-in-law told The Atlantic. “We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.” What was meant to be a “fun summertime job” for the high-schooler led to at least three years of sex trafficking, her family added. And despite the great resilience that led her to become a champion of trafficked girls and women, it also left wounds that were reopened by a violent marriage and contentious divorce, all leading to her suicide, from which her family says it is still “reeling.” The Roberts family is not just outraged by Trump’s casual invocation of their sister as merely a worker Epstein poached from him. They are also speaking out about the news that Trump’s deputy attorney general (and former defense lawyer). Todd Blanche. met with Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for her conviction on sex trafficking and other charges, over two days last week. “If our sister could speak today, she would be most angered by the fact that the government is listening to a known perjurer, a woman who repeatedly lied under oath and will continue to do so as long as it benefits her position,” Giuffre’s family told The Atlantic. CNN reported that Maxwell was negotiating over a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee, and insisting on immunity for any information she might provide. “I don’t think there are many Republicans that want to give immunity to someone that may have been sex trafficking children,” GOP committee chair James Comer said last week, at least establishing a bottom line on child sex trafficking for bottom-dwelling Republicans. Good to know. Popular “swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe → Ican’t help but think about so many of Trump’s widely known sexual predations, which nonetheless didn’t bar him from a second term as president. I feel too exhausted to list more than the highlights: the Access Hollywood tape where he admits he’s a sexual assaulter; E. Jean Carroll’s vindication when Trump became an adjudicated rapist after a jury believed her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room; Stormy Daniels’s claims he paid her to cover up a tawdry affair while he was running for president in 2016. But one story about Trump that surfaced in 2016 didn’t get much traction. This week, writer Kate Manne went into vivid and, until now, wildly under-reported detail about the allegation by “Katie Johnson” (a pseudonym that she adopted) that Trump raped her at an Epstein party when she was 13. “It was widely dismissed when it surfaced in 2016 partly because what Katie was saying was judged just too incredible when it came to Epstein’s sex trafficking of teen girls,” Manne writes on her Substack, noting that the blockbuster Epstein exposé by the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown didn’t appear until 2018. Johnson was also said to have been coached in her story by an allegedly unscrupulous, Democrat-friendly handler. Offering a trigger warning at the top of her post—consider this a warning, as well—Manne goes into great detail about Johnson’s story, which is stomach-churning. (Go to Manne’s Substack to read it in full.) I’ll just clip this, about a “rape fantasy” Trump said he wanted to enact with the teenager: [Trump] ripped off all my clothes and he started to basically have sex with me and I was screaming. I’d never had sex before, it was my first time and [Epstein’s handler] Tiffany was yelling at him too. She was saying I was a virgin and he told us to just shut the fuck up and just basically took my virginity while I was crying and telling him to stop and basically begging for him to just stop… [Afterward]

“The tide is turning,” says Bernie Sanders. “The American people do not want to spend billions to starve children in Gaza.” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT makes his way to a vote at the US Capitol on July 17, 2025. (Francis Chung / Politico via AP Images) In the summer of 2024, Democratic Party leaders refused to let even a single Palestinian American speaker address their presidential convention about Israel’s horrific assault on Gaza. But almost exactly a year later, a solid majority of Democratic members of the US Senate has voted to block arms shipments to Israel in response to an “all-out, illegal, immoral and horrific war of annihilation against the Palestinian people” that Senator Bernie Sanders told the chamber is being waged by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sanders has tried to block arms shipments before. But in the past, he’s gotten only a handful of his colleagues to join his effort. This week, the Vermont independent had the support of 26 other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus. They did not win their fight to prevent a Republican-controlled Senate from authorizing another $675 million in weapons sales to Israel. But they did move the Democratic Party a little further toward the right side of history, confirming that the relentless campaigning from students on campuses across the country, as well as activism by groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the Arab American Institute, the If Not Now Movement, the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and so many others, is having an impact. Current Issue “The tide is turning,” said Sanders, after the vote on Wednesday. “The American people do not want to spend billions to starve children in Gaza.” In fact, the American people have been opposed for a long time to the Israeli assault on Gaza, which Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel have all identified as genocidal. While Americans are well aware of the details of the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, they have also long since recognized that Israel’s ensuing destruction of Gaza—which has left more than 60,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, dead, and is now leading to mass starvation—is indefensible. In the latest Gallup poll, more than 60 percent of Americans now disapprove of the Netanyahu government’s ongoing assault on Gaza, while only 30 percent are supportive—the lowest level of pro-Israel sentiment since Gallup began asking about the issue. More importantly, there is an awareness that the Trump administration’s support for Netanyahu has made this country complicit in policies and actions that have left Gazans without the food they need to survive. “[It] is absolutely a violation of international law to prohibit food from getting into starving people, and the United States is complicit in this,” says Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). “I mean, the United States is now spending $30 million to fund this private group supported by private mercenary contractors, instead of allowing the international aid, humanitarian organizations to provide food into Gaza. It’s absolutely sickening that the United States government is complicit in what’s happening.” Popular “swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe → Trump and his administration have been and continue to be morally, practically, and politically in the wrong. The question is whether Democrats, who are supposed to be the opposition party, will be in the right. They were not in 2024, at the convention or during the ensuing presidential campaign, and that cost them politically. Sanders has been a longtime, yet often lonely, advocate, for moves to block military aid to Israel. He sees progress in the fact that 27 senators have rejected complicity—often in blunt terms, as when Vermont Democratic Senator Peter Welch said Wednesday, “The mass starvation in Gaza is caused by weapons provided by America and paid for by US taxpayers,” and when Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley declared, “Not another dollar. Not another bomb.” The Senate Democratic Caucus members who joined Sanders, Van Hollen, Welch, and Merkley in voting to stop the arms shipments included Maine independent Angus King, who said, “I had just had it. I kept expecting that Israel would wake up and realize what an awful thing they were perpetuating, and that surely they would at least open up humanitarian aid. They just continued to not do it, and I just reached the point where enough was enough.” Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also supported the Sanders resolution, as did New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-Y) continued to back the arms shipments, as did 18 other Democrats and all the Republicans who participated in the vote. (Here’s a link to a full breakdown of the 27–70 vote. And here is a link to a 24–73 vote on a second resolution by Sanders, which would have blocked the sale of fully automatic assault rifles to the Israeli military. ) So there’s progress to report. But in the face of a global outcry over starvation in Gaza, it’s not enough, on the Democratic side—or in the full Senate. “While a majority of Democrats voting to block military aid to Israel is real progress, it’s still shameful that a majority of the Senate voted against,” explains veteran foreign policy observer and advocate Matt Duss. “If the body accurately represented Americans’ views on Gaza the resolutions should’ve passed easily.” John Nichols John Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism. Read More

July 31, 2025 The pathological US support for dictatorships in the Middle East is blowing back across the Atlantic Ocean. Donald Trump meets with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office of the White House on March 20, 2018. Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com. The United States has focused on the Middle East since World War II, seeking its oil, gas, and other mineral resources and coveting control of its strategic waterways. The old colonial powers and the superpowers of the Cold War era most often backed dictatorial regimes there, because they were easier to control than democracies, and this country also supported the Israeli settler colony as a bulwark of Western interests. President George W. Bush was the first president to depart (at least rhetorically) from America’s romance with regional authoritarians, pledging to “democratize” the Middle East, though he left office with little to show for it. Now, you have to wonder whether, in some strange sense, the shoe is on the other foot and the pathological US support for dictatorships there is now spreading across the Atlantic Ocean, just as the trade winds blow Saharan sand and dust toward the American Southwest. Democratic Backsliding Here’s something that should sound familiar in the United States today: Qais Saied of Tunisia, elected president in 2019, campaigned against homosexuality and—yes!—African immigrants. In 2021, he lawlessly dismissed his prime minister and parliament and went on to rewrite the country’s constitution so that he could appoint yes-men to its Supreme Court. Then he began jailing his political opponents. In four short years, Saied undid all the political progress Tunisia had made in the previous decade, creating a dictatorship arguably worse than that of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was overthrown in January 2011 in the first of several major Arab Spring youth revolts. Worse yet—and this should sound familiar, too—Tunisia seemed to sleepwalk into authoritarianism. Trade unionists hoped the president would reject the neoliberalism of the International Monetary Fund, while civil society organizations hoped he would curb the Interior Ministry’s past repressiveness. No such luck. Europe declined to punish the newly developing dictatorship by cutting off aid, instead rewarding Saied with an economic deal in return for his willingness to crack down on African emigration. Of course, such democratic backsliding has been a feature of the Middle East for decades, since local civil society remains weak, pro-regime billionaires have proliferated, and Western governments have seldom reacted negatively to (and all too often rewarded) any move toward dictatorship. Now, you might say that the shoe is on the other foot. What Saied did to Tunisia might as well have been a blueprint for Donald Trump. Although he hasn’t yet actually tried to rewrite the constitution, the MAGA leader has been the beneficiary of a decades-long $250 million dark-money plot, led by obscure Federalist Society apparatchik Leonard Leo, to reshape the Supreme Court. The result: a set of justices who are distinctly inclined to let Trump do his damnedest—even expel undocumented residents of the United States to gulags in third-world countries with no court process. Meanwhile, labor union members have too often placed faith in Trump’s pledges to bring back industry by using tariffs to reduce competition. And the centrists of the Democratic Party are the proverbial deer-in-the-headlights, too paralyzed to react effectively as he transforms this country into an ever more autocratic state. They also seem all too inclined to let our democracy slip away, while placing their hopes in a 2026 congressional blue wave that, even if it happens, may be too late to stop Trump from creating his version of a one-party state. Raw Milk and Vitamin A Consider it typical of our times that Field Marshall Abdelfattah al-Sisi’s 2013 coup against the only freely elected Egyptian government since the country’s monarchy was toppled in 1952 had no significant adverse consequences in Washington. In 2014, a leading officer in the Egyptian army, which receives $1.3 billion a year in American aid, made quixotic health claims. Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Abdel-Atti announced that he had personally “defeated AIDS with the grace of my God at the rate of 100%. And I defeated hepatitis C.” In the process, he confused the foundational nucleic acids DNA and RNA, provoking one Egyptian comedian to suggest that the country’s medical schools should never again accept anyone from Abdel-Atti’s village. However, the North Korean–like pall that has blanketed freedom of speech in Egypt was precisely what permitted such bizarre official behavior, since there was little way for the public to respond to even his most absurd claims. Yet imagine this: Abdel-Atti appears almost sane and sober in comparison with the antics of US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has discouraged vaccinations even as a measles outbreak has begun to run wild (and prove fatal in a few cases) 25 years after the US officially eliminated the disease. Kennedy’s proposed treatment for measles? Raw milk and vitamin A. Sadly, overdoses of the latter have caused liver disease in some children. Current Issue Kennedy is also working hard to gut the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The damage he’s doing in the Trump era to America’s vital and effective vaccination infrastructure could unleash serial plagues upon the public. And it’s not likely to get better any time soon, given the irrational demagogue now in the White House, just as Egyptians suffer under megalomaniacal generals. A Kafala System And here’s another Middle Eastern peculiarity inherited from Western colonialism that will sound all too familiar in Donald Trump’s America: the large numbers of noncitizens and stateless people who suffer from a lack of basic civil and human rights. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, imperial Great Britain made treaties with small sheikhdoms along the coast of

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But even the ad world isn’t immune to the groundswell of climate organizing. Protesters from Fossil Free London demonstrate outside Barclays Canary Wharf offices as part of the action to disrupt the Energy Intelligence Forum (EIF) summit, a gathering between Shell, Total, Equinor, Saudi Aramco, and other oil giants, being held in central London, England on October 19, 2023.(Lucy North / Getty Images) “Mad Men fueling the madness.” Nodding to the hit American TV show, that’s what UN Secretary General António Guterres last year called the advertising agencies that have “aided and abetted” the fossil fuel industry’s climate denial. This May, the UN rapporteur on human rights and climate change went a big step further: Not only should fossil fuel advertising be banned, Elisa Morgara said in a detailed report to the General Assembly, but criminal penalties should be imposed on anyone spreading climate change disinformation. The call to restrict fossil fuel ads have been embraced by almost 50 jurisdictions around the world, including such major cities as The Hague, Edinburgh, Sheffield, and Sydney. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel Mad Men are also facing pushback within their own ranks, as some of their fellow “creatives” blow the whistle and join with outside activists to confront their industry’s role in helping propel humanity toward a chaotic, deadly breakdown of the climate system. As of June 2025, more than 1,400 advertising agencies around the world have signed the “Clean Creatives” pledge to “decline any future contracts with fossil fuel companies, trade associations, or front groups.” A climate movement in… advertising? That might seem ironic for an industry whose core purpose is to spur consumption. But like all spheres of society, the world of advertising has not been immune to the groundswell of climate organizing that emerged in the late 2010s, when demonstrations like Fridays for Future took center stage in global social movements. In a 2019 open letter, the activist network Extinction Rebellion took the industry to task: “You can do anything you want and you can shift mass behavior in a heartbeat. One of the reasons we’ve got here is because you’ve been selling things to people that they don’t need. You are the manipulators and architects of that consumerist frenzy. Imagine what would happen if you devoted those skills to something better.” “That was really good copy,” said Lucy von Sturmer of the 2019 letter—“good copy” being high praise in the ad industry where von Sturmer used to work. An industry “creative” who volunteered with Extinction Rebellion, von Sturmer ultimately founded Creatives for Climate, which offers “anti-greenwashing” trainings and “climate literacy” workshops for industry workers. “Advertising plays a massive role in removing the burden of responsibility from corporations,” said Polina Zabrodskaya, who was suspended from her job at the London-based global ad agency AMV.BBDO in 2023 after expressing doubts about the sustainability claims made by one of the firm’s clients, the Mars company. “If you create this illusion that everything is sustainable and everything is environmentally friendly, people are lulled into a false sense of safety. Don’t worry about it. The oceans are fine. Children are going to school. Look, a happy child is running to school in West Africa. Buy chocolate!” said Zabrodskaya, who later left AMV.BBDO and is currently suing the firm for “belief discrimination.” Current Issue “Whistleblowers are vital in forcing change within the advertising industry,” said Gabriel Bourdon-Fattal, codirector of Climate Whistleblowers, a Paris-based NGO providing legal and strategic support in Zabrodskaya’s case. “In an industry as opaque and unregulated as this, insiders are stepping up to sound the alarm.” Clean Creatives, the nonprofit that organized the pledge not to work for fossil fuel companies that has attracted 1,400 signatories, also publishes an “F-list” of agencies that do still work with oil and gas companies. The F-list aims to make it harder for such agencies to hire and retain quality employees, said Duncan Meisel, the executive director of Clean Creatives. “The best [employees] are not going to want to work at the agencies that are fossil fuel branded,” Meisel told The Nation. “If you can’t recruit that talent pool, you don’t have a future as an agency.” But there are limits to how far an insider, “creative”-focused strategy can really change the industry. For every agency that turns down a contract with the likes of BP or Exxon, there’ll be a firm out there willing to do the dirty work. As the Financial Times has reported, there’s also the risk that the page may already be turning on the push to change the industry from within, as advertising readapts to a political and cultural mood set by the far right. In short, there’s likely no substitute for external, legal restrictions on what can be publicized and where. An obvious precursor to today’s calls to ban fossil fuel ads are the bans the US government imposed on tobacco advertising—first in 1970, when such ads were banned on TV and radio, and then in 1995, when all tobacco advertising was banned (except for “point of sales” ads—for example, inside retail shops). But activists see relying on today’s Congress or president to limit fossil fuel advertising as a nonstarter. “There’s a lot of existing law that could be really powerful when applied,” said Meisel. “But we don’t pass laws in Congress anymore.” Headway is being made in Europe, however, where cities such as Sheffield and Edinburgh have restricted public billboard advertising for SUVs and airline travel. Paris has moved to ban screen-projected advertisements in public space. A 2023 ordinance approved in Lyon, France, has likewise moved to restrict the size of publicity screens and billboards in public areas. According to Philippe Guelpa-Bonaro, a vice president at the Lyon metropolitan authority who’s charged with the collectivity’s advertising regulations, the law will limit by up to 64 percent the scope of advertising in the city’s public spaces. But the most damaging advertising, whether for the environment or an individual’s physical and psychological health, can only be “regulated by national law,” Guelpa-Bonaro

The 2025 tribal ‘initiation ceremony’ where teenage males in South Africa undergo agonising circumcision has ended – with 39 deaths and dozens more boys mutilated. Despite a target being set by the Government of zero fatalities this year, the figure is still a huge drop on last year where 93 died, while a total of 361 boys have died in the last five years. Gruesome complications in 2024 led to 11 penis amputations after unskilled traditional ‘surgeons’ used old spears and razor blades to perform the eye-watering rituals. Thousands more have ended up in hospital since 2020 after the twice-yearly three-month seasons of initiation which ends with the circumcision. The ceremony, known as Ulwaluko, is typically carried out by Xhosa people and marks the transition from boyhood to manhood. Boys generally undergo the centuries old ritual aged between 16 and 26.   Without undergoing the ceremony they are not allowed to sit in on tribal meetings,  take part in some social activities or get married. The rituals have been held for centuries in secret in specially built huts away from the villages where nobody except the tribal elders and the young initiates can enter. The 2025 tribal ‘initiation ceremony’ where teenage males in South Africa undergo agonising circumcision has ended – with 39 deaths and dozens more boys mutilated. Picture: File image    The annual ceremony, known as Ulwaluko, is typically carried out by Xhosa people and marks the transition from boyhood to manhood. Pictured: File image Boys generally undergo the centuries old ritual aged between 16 and 26 and are unable to sit on tribal meetings without. Pictured: File image The Government lays the blame on criminal gangs who have set up hundreds of unregulated illegal initiation schools with untrained ‘medics’ who botch the circumcisions. They ignore the law that anyone aged under 16 cannot undergo the ritual and charge high prices to families to carry out Ulwaluko often with fatal or horrific end results. Gangrene, sepsis and dehydration are the main cause of death even though it has been reported boys who back out have also been stabbed, drowned or beaten to death. There are hundreds of reports a year of illegal schools kidnapping boys as young as 12 and carrying out the surgery then forcing the parents to pay to get their sons back. Although there are calls to ban the dangerous practices, some have argued that it is an important part of Xhosa life.  The Customary Initiation Act has been introduced to make it illegal for unregistered initiation schools to be set up and all traditional surgeons must now be qualified. Police now have the powers to shut down the illegal schools and arrest the principals. Every year tens of thousands of boys undergo the sacred ceremony which dates back for generations despite the very high death rate. The worst of the injuries occur from botched circumcisions carried about by tribal ‘nurses’ who may use the same spear for many boys which cause mass infection. Pictured: File image Although there are calls to ban the dangerous practices, some have argued that it is an important part of Xhosa life. Pictured: Young men who successfully underwent the circumcision in 2018 The Minister for the Department of Governance & Traditional Affairs had set a target of zero deaths for 2025 in registered schools while police shut down illegal schools. According to a tribal chief Sipho Mahlangu, Deputy Chair of the National House of Traditional Leaders, 80% of initiates who die or mutilated are the victims of the illegal schools. Most die due to severe dehydration after being forced not to drink to prevent urination after circumcision. The Government has pledged to cut the number of illegal schools preying on teenagers in half from 429 by 2029. Although boys have a choice as to whether they undertake the initiation there is huge peer pressure and those who refuse are named Inkwenkwe or ‘boy’ – a harsh insult. Traditional surgeons charge parents to take the boys away for up to three weeks to teach them survival skills and how to behave as a man then perform the dreaded ‘snip’. Scotty Dawka, 19, went to an initiation school despite having seen a TV programme on penile amputations and told a local reporter: ‘I was of course very scared of going. ‘In my community many boys went through the initiation before me and I wanted to be the same as them. I wanted to be looked up to as a man in my village by the elders. Despite a target being set by the government of zero fatalities this year, the figure is still a huge drop on last year where 93 died, while a total of 361 boys have died in the last five years. Pictured: File image Gruesome complications in 2024 led to 11 penis amputations after unskilled traditional ‘surgeons’ used old spears and razor blades to perform the eye-watering rituals. Pictured: File image Boys cannot take part in tribal meetings or even be included in some social activities or get married. Pictured: File Image ‘It was very painful to go through and I fell ill but I was treated and survived’ he said. Anne Kumalo had her 16-year-old son kidnapped when he went to a local store along with 22 other boys and taken to an illegal initiation school 20 miles away in Soweto. She said: ‘I was charged R1000 (£43) to get him back or warned he would be killed and when police found the school the boys had been badly treated, whipped and beaten’. Political party Action SA’s Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip said: ‘The bulk of deaths are caused by illegal initiation schools run by opportunistic and unqualified individuals. ‘Now all the schools have to be registered and the surgeons properly trained,’ he said. In launching this year’s winter initiation season, the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Mr Velenkosini Hlabisi vowed to reduce the death toll greatly. He said: ‘All initiation schools are accountable and any school

Daily Mirror Icon News US News Artificial intelligence OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, a key figure at the forefront of artificial intelligence technology, has admitted that he has ‘reinforcement basements’ which could be useful if WW3 breaks out Sam Altman has admitted he has a concrete basement(Image: Theo Von/YouTube) Sam Altman has told of his “concrete basement” as tech billionaires plan bunkers for a dystopian future and world wars. The boss of OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, is among the super wealthy who are taking measures to protect themselves in an increasingly dangerous world. While fears of World War Three and talk of nuclear armageddon are never far away, there is also worry about the direction artificial intelligence could take, especially with the possibility that it could soon out-think humans. And then there are tech bosses, who are projecting the potential for a new dystopian world, who appear to be taking steps to protect themselves. Sam Altman was giving his views on the future of AI(Image: Theo Von/YouTube) Altman is at the forefront of AI developments with ChatGPT and he has also co-founded Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency which has a global identity network using iris scanning technology to recognise people. It comes after NATO scrambled warplanes as Russia shoots down West’s F-16 fighter jet in Ukraine onslaught. READ MORE: Putin warns of nuclear war after unleashing another night of hell on Ukraine READ MORE: Donald Trump’s mental state ‘clear to see’ as lawmakers urged to ‘act now’ Speaking on a podcast by comedian Theo Von, Altman chatted about AI’s potential and also revealed he had a form of bunker at his home. “I have underground concrete, heavy reinforcement basements but I don’t have something I would call a bunker,” he said. But Von responded: “That’s a bunker dude.” So Altman replied: “What is the difference between a basement and a bunker?” And the host said: “A place you can hide when it all goes off or whatever.” Altman continued: “I have been thinking actually that I should do a good version of one of those but I don’t have what I would call a bunker – but it has been on my mind. Not because of AI but just because, like, people are dropping bombs in the world again.” His comments come with Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg having also told of having a bunker – but he too has played it down by describing it as a “little shelter” or a “basement” in Hawaii. Sam Altman was speaking to comedian Theo Von(Image: Theo Von/YouTube) Meanwhile, a co-founder of OpenAI proposed building a ‘doomsday bunker’ which could be used by researchers for the company in an emergency “rapture” scenario, according to a new book. Ilya Sutskever is said, in the book Empire of AI by Karen Hao, to have arranged a meeting with OpenAI scientists in 2023 during which he said: “Once we all get into the bunker…” And a confused researcher responded: “I’m sorry, the bunker?” Sutskever replied: “We’re definitely going to build a bunker before we release AGI.” It is understood he felt a bunker would be needed as he foresaw the possibility of a world war involving AGI – an artificial intelligence which exceeds human capabilities. Read More

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — President Donald Trump played golf Saturday at his course on Scotland’s coast while protesters around the country took to the streets to decry his visit and accuse United Kingdom leaders of pandering to the American. Trump and his son Eric played with the U.S. ambassador to Britain, Warren Stephens, near Turnberry, a historic course that the Trump family’s company took over in 2014. Security was tight, and protesters kept at a distance went unseen by the group during Trump’s round. He was dressed in black, with a white “USA” cap, and was spotted driving a golf cart. The president appeared to play an opening nine holes, stop for lunch, then head out for nine more. By the middle of the afternoon, plainclothes security officials began leaving, suggesting Trump was done for the day. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered on the cobblestone and tree-lined street in front of the U.S. Consulate about 100 miles (160 kilometers) away in Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital. Speakers told the crowd that Trump was not welcome and criticized British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for striking a recent trade deal to avoid stiff U.S. tariffs on goods imported from the U.K. Protests were planned in other cities as environmental activists, opponents of Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza and pro-Ukraine groups loosely formed a “Stop Trump Coalition.” Anita Bhadani, an organizer, said the protests were “kind of like a carnival of resistance.” Trump’s late mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, was born on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland and the president has suggested he feels at home in the country. But the protesters did their best to change that. “I don’t think I could just stand by and not do anything,” said Amy White, 15, of Edinburgh, who attended with her parents. She held a cardboard sign that said “We don’t negotiate with fascists.” She said ”so many people here loathe him. We’re not divided. We’re not divided by religion, or race or political allegiance, we’re just here together because we hate him.” President Donald Trump steers a golf cart at the Trump Turnberry golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, Saturday, July 26, 2025.(AP Photo/Alastair Grant) via Associated Press Other demonstrators held signs of pictures with Trump and Jeffrey Epstein as the fervor over files in the case has increasingly frustrated the president. In the view of Mark Gorman, 63, of Edinburgh, “the vast majority of Scots have this sort of feeling about Trump that, even though he has Scottish roots, he’s a disgrace.” Gorman, who works in advertising, said he came out “because I have deep disdain for Donald Trump and everything that he stands for.” Saturday’s protests were not nearly as large as the throngs that demonstrated across Scotland when Trump played at Turnberry during his first term in 2018. But, as bagpipes played, people chanted “Trump Out!” and raised dozens of homemade signs that said things like “No red carpet for dictators,” “We don’t want you here” and “Stop Trump. Migrants welcome.” One dog had a sign that said “No treats for tyrants.” Demonstrators gather at Union Terrace protesting against the visit of President Trump to Scotland on July 26, 2025 in Aberdeen, Scotland. U.S. President Donald Trump is visiting his Trump Turnberry golf course, as well as Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire, during a brief visit to Scotland from July 25 to 29. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images) Jeff J Mitchell via Getty Images Demonstrators gather outside the U.S. Consulate to voice opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of his visit to Edinburgh, Scotland on July 26, 2025. Photo by Yunus Dalgic/Anadolu via Getty Images) Anadolu via Getty Images Some on the far right took to social media to call for gatherings supporting Trump in places such as Glasgow. Trump also plans to talk trade with Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president. But golf is a major focus. The family will also visit another Trump course near Aberdeen in northeastern Scotland, before returning to Washington on Tuesday. The Trumps will cut the ribbon and play a new, second course in that area, which officially opens to the public next month. Scottish First Minister John Swinney, who is also set to meet with Trump during the visit, announced that public money will go to staging the 2025 Nexo Championship, previously known as the Scottish Championship, at Trump’s first course near Aberdeen next month. “The Scottish Government recognizes the importance and benefits of golf and golf events, including boosting tourism and our economy,” Swinney said. People take part in a Stop Trump Scotland protest outside the US Consulate in Edinburgh, as US President Donald Trump begins his five-day private trip to the country at his Turnberry golf course in South Ayrshire. Picture date: Saturday July 26, 2025. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images) Jane Barlow – PA Images via Getty Images At a protest Saturday in Aberdeen, Scottish Parliament member Maggie Chapman told the crowd of hundreds: “We stand in solidarity, not only against Trump but against everything he and his politics stand for.” The president has long lobbied for Turnberry to host the British Open, which it has not done since he took over ownership. 20 Years OfFreeJournalism Your Support Fuels Our Mission Your Support Fuels Our Mission For two decades, HuffPost has been fearless, unflinching, and relentless in pursuit of the truth. Support our mission to keep us around for the next 20 — we can’t do this without you. 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Taipei, Taiwan, July 27, 2025 –(PR.com)– Leading white box provider AAEON has released two new additions to its desktop network appliance range, the FWS-2291 and FWS-2292, designed for SD-WAN, uCPE, and UTM applications. The FWS-2291 and FWS-2292 host the Intel® Processor N97 and Intel® Processor N150 by default, respectively. However, AAEON notes that the two devices are each able to support CPUs from across the Intel Atom® x7000RE, Intel Atom® x7000C, and Intel® Processor N-series ranges (formerly Twin Lake, Alder Lake-N, and Amston Lake). While both devices suit similar types of networking applications, they offer unique benefits depending on project need. For the FWS-2291, this is reflected in its four 2.5GbE copper RJ-45 and two GbE SFP ports with two-pair LAN bypass, designed for hybrid environments requiring both long-distance fiber uplinks and local high-speed LAN capabilities. Meanwhile, the FWS-2292 is more equipped for edge firewall, UTM, or SD-Branch applications, given its six RJ-45 ports, all of which offer 2.5GbE speed, also with two-pair LAN bypass. For wireless networking capabilities, both devices offer an M.2 3052 B-Key and M.2 2230 E-Key slot for the installation of 5G, 4G/LTE, and Wi-Fi modules. Expansion-wise, both also contain an M.2 2242 M-Key for storage module integration on top of a 2.5” HDD Bay and up to 128GB of onboard eMMC. The two devices are identically sized at 220mm x 105mm x 44mm, while also sporting dual rear-panel lockable power input connectors with power adapter options tailored to manage demanding CPU workloads, alongside redundant power support for 24/7 operation. For detailed specifications for the FWS-2291 and FWS-2292, please visit their respective product pages on the AAEON website, or contact an AAEON representative directly through the website’s contact form.  About AAEONEstablished in 1992, AAEON is one of the leading designers and manufacturers of industrial IoT and AI Edge solutions. With continual innovation as a core value, AAEON provides reliable, high-quality computing platforms including industrial motherboards and systems, rugged tablets, embedded AI Edge systems, uCPE network appliances, and LoRaWAN/WWAN solutions. AAEON also provides industry-leading experience and knowledge to provide OEM/ODM services worldwide. AAEON also works closely with cities and governments to develop and deploy Smart City ecosystems, offering individual platforms and end-to-end solutions. AAEON works closely with premier chip designers to deliver stable, reliable platforms. For an introduction to AAEON’s expansive line of products and services, visit www.aaeon.com. AAEON Technology Inc.John Bernard+886 2 89191234 ext. 1114https://www.aaeon.com/en/ Contact Categories Computer Security Read More