(NewsNation) — The trial for Jose Ibarra, the man accused of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, could be ending soon.
Prosecutors say they only need half a day more, and the defense says it only plans to call a few witnesses themselves — including Jose Ibarra’s brothers, Diego and Argenis. Diego and Argenis Ibarra, who, like Jose are Venezuelan citizens, have been in federal custody since February on charges they had fake green cards.
The defense was instructed to bring the brothers to Athens, Georgia one full day ahead of schedule.
Tuesday marks the third day of the trial. Over the previous two days, the prosecution has called 19 witnesses. Riley’s roommates, police officers and FBI agents all testified.
On Monday, police showed body camera footage of the moment they first made contact with Jose Ibarra. Police said they noticed scratches and cuts all over his arms. In video footage from the police, Jose Ibarra was not able to explain where those injuries came from.
Prosecutors say these are clear defensive wounds from when Riley was fighting for her life.
A technological analysis of Riley’s watch revealed the exact moment the 22-year-old stopped dead in her tracks before launching an emergency call to police that was abruptly hung up.
An FBI agent said in court Monday that GPS location data from Jose Ibarra’s phone puts him in an identical spot as Riley at the exact moment she died.
Defense attorneys for Jose Ibarra continue to say it’s still possible someone else might be responsible for the crime. The defense team pointed to the fact that Jose Ibarra and his brothers, who lived together in a one-bedroom apartment near the crime scene, shared clothes like hats and jackets that have been seen on surveillance videos.
Jose Ibarra is charged with murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault, battery and tampering with evidence. If convicted, faces the possibility of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The 26-year-old has pleaded not guilty on all counts.
Riley was reported missing on Feb. 22 when she didn’t return home from a run. Investigators later discovered her body in a forested area on the University of Georgia campus. UGA police arrested Jose Ibarra the next day.
The Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. ET with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. Questions will focus on the agency’s preparedness and response to recent disasters, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
NewsNation will stream the event live here.
A FEMA worker was fired earlier this month after she directed others helping hurricane survivors not to go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Donald Trump, according to the agency’s leader.
“This is a clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation,” Criswell said in a statement at the time. “This was reprehensible.”
The fired employee, Marn’i Washington, is accused of telling her survivor assistance team not to go to Florida homes with pro-Trump yard signs. Washington told NewsNation she believes she’s being used as a scapegoat for a common agency practice.
The instruction to avoid certain houses with certain campaign signs came from her direct superior based on previous team encounters, Washington said, adding that “safety precautions are not politically driven.”
Several recent hostile encounters happened at homes with Trump campaign signs, she said.
“I’m being framed. There’s no violation of the Hatch Act,” Washington said. “I was simply following orders.”
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A curated weekday guide to major news and developments over the over the past 24 hours. Here’s today’s news:
U.S. PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION AND NEW CONGRESS
President-elect Trump yesterday confirmed his intention to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to assist in carrying out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Charlie Savage and Michael Gold report for the New York Times.
Trump has begun receiving intelligence briefings since shortly after the election, U.S. officials said. Ellen Nakashima and Tyler Pager report for the Washington Post.
Trump yesterday selected a former Wisconsin congressman and Fox Business host, Sean Duffy, to lead the Transportation Department. Mark Walker reports for the New York Times.
Trump is calling some senators directly to lobby for former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s confirmation as Attorney General, according to Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND). However, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said Gaetz is facing an “uphill climb,” with nearly a dozen GOP senators refusing to commit to confirming him. Juliegrace Brufke and Hans Nichols report for Axios; Anthony Adragna and Ursula Perano report for POLITICO.
The House Ethics Committee is expected to meet Wednesday for a possible vote on whether to release its report on Gaetz, sources say. Andrew Solender reports for Axios.
Two women testified to the House Ethics Committee that Gaetz paid them for sex, their lawyer told the Washington Post. Jacqueline Alemany, Liz Goodwin, and Perry Stein report.
TRUMP LEGAL MATTERS
The Georgia Court of Appeals yesterday announced it canceled next month’s scheduled arguments in Trump’s Georgia federal prosecution over conspiring to corrupt the 2020 election results. Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein report for POLITICO.
A Manhattan judge yesterday delayed Steve Bannon’s fraud prosecution in state court, pushing the trial back to Feb. 25, 2025. Trump previously pardoned Bannon on similar charges in federal proceedings. Colin Moynihan reports for the New York Times.
U.S. ELECTIONS
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled yesterday that election officials must stop counting incorrectly dated mail-in ballots, a major victory for Republican Senate candidate David McCormick, who holds a narrow advantage over Sen. Bob Casey (D) ahead of an expected recount. Colby Itkowitz reports for the Washington Post.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
U.K. media reports that Ukraine fired U.S. long-range missiles inside Russia for the first time today andstrucka military facility in Bryansk, citing the Russian defense ministry. Ukraine’s military confirmed that it had struck an ammunition warehouse in Bryansk, but did not confirm which weapon was used. BBC News reports.
The United Kingdom is expected to give Ukraine Storm Shadow missiles to strike inside Russia, following President Biden’s policy change. Dan Sabbagh, Andrew Roth, Pjotr Sauer, and Jessica Elgot report for the Guardian.
Russian President Vladimir Putin today signed into law a revised nuclear doctrine saying any massive aerial attack on Russia could trigger a nuclear response. AP News reports.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
A large convoy of trucks carrying aid to Gaza was “violently looted” while traveling through the territory, with drivers forced to unload supplies at gunpoint, the U.N. aid agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) said yesterday. It was not immediately clear who was responsible. Hiba Yazbek and Erika Solomon report for the New York Times.
Organized gangs stealing Gaza aid supplies are operating freely in areas controlled by the Israeli military, aid group officials and witnesses say. An internal U.N. memo concluded the gangs “may be benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” or “protection” from the IDF. Claire Parker, Loveday Morris, Hajar Harb, Miriam Berger, and Hazem Balousha report for the Washington Post.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR — U.S. RESPONSE
The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Israel’s largest settlement development organization “involved in settlement and illegal outpost development in the West Bank,” the Treasury Department said yesterday. Jennifer Hansler reports for CNN.
A group of at least 20 White House staffers criticized the Biden administration for failing to follow through on its Gaza aid demands in a letter seen by POLITICO. Joseph Gedeon, Robbie Gramer, and Eric Bazail-Eimil report.
The United States yesterday warned Turkey against hosting Hamas leadership. Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis report for Reuters.
The U.S. Senate will vote tomorrow on legislation filed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would block some arms sales to Israel. The legislation is not expected to pass. Patricia Zengerle reports for Reuters.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR — INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE
U.N. Security Council members yesterday called for a significant increase in aid to Gaza, with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield saying Washington is “closely watching” Israel’s efforts to address the situation. Daphne Psaledakis and Patricia Zengerle report for Reuters.
Norway will ask the U.N. General Assembly to request an International Court of Justice ruling clarifying whether Israel is violating international law by “prevent[ing] the UN, international humanitarian organization and states from providing humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians.” Patrick Wintour reports for the Guardian.
ISRAEL-HEZBOLLAH WAR
Biden’s senior adviser Amos Hochstein will meet with Lebanese officials today to discuss a possible ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war, after both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government agreed to a U.S.-drafted proposal. Maya Gebeily, Laila Bassam, and Timour Azhari report for Reuters.
ISRAEL-IRAN CONFLICT
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that last month’s Israeli strikes on Iranian military facilities damaged a “specific component” of Iran’s nuclear program. The Washington Post reports.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS
The death toll of Sudan’s war is significantly higher than previously reported, according to a new report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Sudan Research Group. Kalkidan Yibeltal and Basillioh Rukanga report for BBC News.
Russia yesterday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the war between Sudan’s military and paramilitary forces and supply of aid to the region. U.K. Foreign Minister David Lammy, who chaired the meeting, called the veto a “disgrace.” Edith M. Lederer reports for AP News.
A Hong Kong court today sentenced 45 pro-democracy leaders to prison terms of up to 10 years over “conspiracy to commit subversion.” Shibani Mahtani reports for the Washington Post.
The U.N. will restart Haiti aid flights tomorrow, following a week-long hiatus after gangs hit three commercial planes with gunfire. Harold Isaac and Ralph Tedy Erol report for Reuters.
Two “critical” undersea cables in the Baltic sea connecting Finland with Germany and Lithuania with Sweden were severed yesterday, presumably by sabotage, Germany’s defense minister said. Miranda Bryant reports for the Guardian.
Turkish strikes in northeast Syria have cut water to more than one million people over the past 5 years, according to data collated by the BBC World Service. Namak Khoshnaw, Christopher Giles, and Saphora Smith report for BBC News.
U.S. FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Biden pledged a record $4 billion contribution to the World Bank’s International Development Association fund during a G20 summit session, a senior official said yesterday. David Lawder and Andrea Shalal report for Reuters.
A Russian man has been extradited from South Korea to the United States over charges related to a ransomware gang that allegedly extorted more than $16 million from victims, U.S. prosecutors said yesterday. Sean Lyngaas reports for CNN.
OTHER U.S. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) yesterday sued the federal government for information about how authorities might quickly deport people from the United States. Maria Sacchetti reports for the Washington Post.
Biden yesterday condemned Saturday’s neo-Nazi march in Ohio’s capital, with White House spokesman Andrew Bates saying Biden “abhors the hateful poison of Nazism, Antisemitism, and racism.” Maham Javaid reports for the Washington Post.
A Senate panel overseeing technology issues will today hold a hearing on Chinese hacking incidents, including the recent large-scale hack of telecommunications companies. David Shepardson reports for Reuters.
The Library of Congress notified lawmakers of “cyber breach” of its IT systems, saying an adversary had accessed email communications between January and September. Lisa Mascaro reports for AP News.
For those of us with an old-fashioned commitment to justice, science, and common decency, the 2024 U.S. election was a lot of dark things. But one thing it wasn’t? A referendum on climate action or environmental protection.
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It’s true that President-Elect Donald Trump prefers golf courses and MAGA merch to national parks and wildlife; he’s a noted climate change denier and shameless booster of dirty fossil fuels. It’s also true that those character flaws weren’t the same ones that got him reelected.
There’s no denying that Trump’s next nine holes at the White House will be an ugly obstacle to saving the planet. But the silver lining is this: When it comes to the climate and extinction crises, the American people overwhelmingly want action.
The reality is that sustaining a livable climate, breathable air, and drinkable water is still a political winner, despite the billions of dollars constantly being spent by private interests to greenwash killer technologies and tear down regulations. According to a 2023 Pew Research study, two-thirds of Americans think corporations aren’t doing enough to curb climate change. At least 80% want to help endangered species and wild places. In a country where so much is decided on the strength of a paper-thin margin, including who occupies the White House, those numbers are a powerful signal that the vast majority are asking for a stable planet with abundant wildlife.
During his campaign, Trump distanced himself from the extremist Project 2025—a radical Christian nationalist proposal that aims to gut environmental laws, along with other dangerous moves like giving unprecedented authority to the president, abolishing the Department of Education, and quashing civil rights and science—as soon as he understood how unpopular it was. It remains unpopular today. Now that he’s won the presidency, though, with both houses of Congress under GOP domination, Trump has less to gain personally by keeping the extremists at arm’s length. And for him, personal gain is where the buck stops.
In the face of this, those of us clamoring for action on climate and extinction can’t throw up our hands in despair. We have a brief window of time to avert the worst scenarios, and for the next four years we’ll face antagonists at the top. That means we have to fight from the bottom, the middle, and all sides.
In the next two months, President Biden can help shore us up against ruin by filling all 47 current judicial vacancies in district and appellate courts. For decades, a top priority of Republicans has been to shift the judiciary to the hard right; this reached its zenith in Trump’s first term and left us a court system stacked with zealots and a corrupt Supreme Court that no longer heeds the will or welfare of the people.
Democrats need to respond with equal force to rebuild the integrity of our third branch of government by appointing judges who accept science and the rule of law. So far Biden has done relatively well filling vacancies; he needs to finish the job, and fast.
Next, after Inauguration Day, states and public-interest groups must redouble their efforts to beat back the deregulatory agenda. States are the natural first line of resistance to bad policy emanating from the Trump White House—a bulwark, in this embattled moment, against a federal government essentially bent on self-immolation.
Much can be done by states and cities to get rid of fossil fuels and speed up the shift to clean energy. In red states not disposed to resistance, individuals, neighborhoods and towns will have to rise up from the grassroots and insist on progress. Being involved is now a moral imperative, and it’s important to work toward local wins like getting cities to adopt green energy and vehicle procurement policies, move building codes quickly toward zero pollution, or expand green spaces—the list of possible actions is long. (And as soon as you can, ditch that gas car, too.)
During Trump’s first term, the hundreds of lawsuits launched against his attacks on the successful programs that protect our climate and health had an 80% success rate. And although he’s coming into this round armed with a blueprint for annihilation, dismantling longstanding rules involves red tape—and time. A full-court press in the judicial system is more important than ever to minimize the damage.
All states should ramp up electric vehicle sales rapidly, as California is doing, and resist industry attempts to fast-track more oil and gas development on federal lands and waters. Trump would like to sacrifice every last publicly owned acre to oil and gas extraction; states must oppose this. They can do so by reviewing each new proposal for legal compliance and heading to court to enforce the law—and the people who live in those states need to support those efforts.
As Trump seeks to free polluters from government restraint, states should legislate to hold them accountable, passing laws like Vermon’s Climate Superfund bill. In 2024 Vermont became the first state to enact legislation requiring large fossil fuel producers to pay a fee for the harms caused by their oil, gas and coal. New York’s bill is awaiting the governor’s signature by year’s end; California should pass its own bill, which stalled in the state Senate this summer, promptly in the next session. Climate Superfund legislation complements the lawsuits that have already been filed by states and local governments to force fossil fuel polluters to pay for the damage off which they profit so handsomely—critical lawsuits that must be continued.
State public utility commissions—the bodies that regulate monopoly utilities—can prohibit those utilities from building new fossil gas plants to fulfill the skyrocketing demands of AI and data centers. Unfortunately, utilities like Dominion in Virginia, Duke Energy in North Carolina, and AEP in Ohio all plan to build new gas plants. But we the people can do something about it: Customers and community groups can get involved as public commenters and challenge the rate hikes being imposed on them to pay for those polluting plants.
States should also develop more rooftop, community solar, and other responsible renewable sources through state and municipal programs and laws. Net energy metering—a policy that allows rooftop-solar owners to sell self-produced energy back to the grid—has helped rooftop solar flourish across the country, but these programs have come under attack in California and North Carolina and need to be defended. (Florida successfully rescued its program.)
During the first half of Trump’s first term, the GOP held both chambers of Congress—as it will in Trump’s next term, at least until 2026. Despite that congressional control, it failed in its efforts to cut down the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act, all of which play a major role in addressing the climate crisis. Republican members of Congress will renew their assault on these fundamental laws in the coming term, so protecting them needs to be a top Democrat priority—and all of us, whether our representatives in Congress are red or blue, need to voice our personal opposition to any weakening of our safety nets.
Climate activists have begun to expand their reach, allying with social-justice, public-health, labor, and civil-rights groups. But that reach should really have no limit at all: Every one of us has a stake in survival. Mass mobilization is inevitable as almost every year is hotter than the one before and we’re battered by storm after storm and fire after fire.
Why not make it happen now, while we still have so much to save?
On April 2, 1870, two years before the 1872 U.S. presidential election, a letter to the editor of the New York Herald appeared in its pages, announcing a campaign for the presidency against incumbent Ulysses S. Grant. The letter was signed by Victoria Woodhull.
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Woodhull, who had been born poor in an Ohio frontier settlement, embodied the ethos of America, a try-anything country with radical individualism at its heart. Despite a childhood mired in poverty and dictated by physically abusive parents, she went on to co-found a successful brokerage firm on Wall Street in 1870, making a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange, profits which she later used to launch a newspaper. The paper’s progressive contributors wrote essays and articles proposing changes that would gain traction decades later, such as the abolition of the death penalty and welfare for the poor. But the most improbable aspect among an abundance of improbabilities in Woodhull’s life was this single fact: she was a woman.
Trapped in a system that oppressed her gender in every conceivable way, Woodhull forged her success with novelty, enterprise, courage, and determination in what became a rags-to-riches story that intersected predominantly with men, among whom were Karl Marx, Walt Whitman, Henry Ward Beecher, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Frederick Douglass, and the Prince of Wales. In a time when political ambitions were believed to be only a male prerogative, she faced down restrictions that almost always crushed those had by women. With a combination of pragmatism, imagination, and expert guile, she engineered an unprecedented meeting in front of a congressional committee to appeal to them directly on behalf of a woman’s right to vote. She formed a third political party whose coalition included laborers, abolitionists, spiritualists, and suffragists and whose agenda proposed an overhaul of the U.S. government, including a one-term presidency, an eight-hour workday, national public education, and the establishment of an international tribunal to settle international disputes.
That women were not allowed to hold political office or vote didn’t present an obstacle to Woodhull’s presidential campaign. “I anticipate criticism,” she said, then added, “[but] they cannot roll back the rising tide of reform. The world moves.”
The world moved slower than had been wished for: it took another 48 years for women to be granted the right to vote.
One hundred and four years after that, a question persists: what will it take for America to elect a woman president, assuming she is fundamentally able?
Kamala Harris’ failure to win the presidential election is being explained differently by different people. Some say it had to do with timing: had President Biden bowed out sooner, there could have been other candidates in the race; at the very least, Harris would have been given more time to make her case to the voters. Though Trump’s racist messaging resonated with a substantial number of people, Harris’ defeat cannot simply be reduced to the color of her skin, though it undeniably played a significant role in the decisions of voters. And it wasn’t just about class, the economy, or securing the borders and illegal immigrants. Rather, it was in part about how American men and women perceive these issues through the lens of their gendered experience.
One might ask how much of the Democratic Party’s failure had to do with ignoring what both sexes believe should be the gender of power? The stereotypical masculine traits conveyed as strength of leadership are often prized over what can be safely assumed to be feminine traits of compromise. Because ambition in a woman was considered unsavory, Victoria Woodhull insisted that she was no more than a vessel through which an otherworldly inspiration was acting for a greater good. That ploy made little difference when she announced her intention to run for the presidency: she managed to offend not just men but women, some within the suffrage movement. Similarly, 120 years later, when Bill Clinton was President and Hilary Clinton suggested that her ambitions extended beyond the traditional role of First Lady, the public’s reaction was so adverse that she was pressured into a public relations cookie bake-off with her Republican counterpart, Barbara Bush. Whether women hold other women to a higher standard than men is debatable but, despite—or, perhaps, because of—the effort to reposition Hilary Clinton among voters as a non-threatening candidate, she lost to Donald Trump. She was smart and capable. She was also irritating to some women voters, many of whom granted immunity to the willfully ignorant and morally insolvent Donald Trump.
How men and women perceive a woman in a position of leadership and in possession of political power is far from clear-cut. Kamala Harris was right to recognize that a glass ceiling strategy doesn’t necessarily win converts. She and her party constantly reminded them that Trump was a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and at best, a misogynist proud to have appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion. And yet while many people did vote to overturn abortion bans in their states, they did not necessarily vote for Harris, who performed worse than other women democrats or people of color.
Did the women who defected to the republican ticket believe that Harris wasn’t the right person to lead the country—or that women in general are incapable of meeting the demands of being President?
What of the men? To the 19th century America male, Victoria Woodhull represented a new kind of femaleness that meant the death of a certain type of maleness. The backlash unleashed attempts by the press to discredit her and resulted in a wrongful jail sentence. Trump’s strategy of convincing men—young men especially—of a type of woman punishing them for just for being men, is not without precedent. He returns to the White House thanks in large part to 54% of male voters.
The “why’s” of Harris’ resounding and swift defeat will be put to rest when the end of dismantling its reasons gives way to constructing a new beginning. Victoria Woodhull knew that it was impossible for her to actually become President. Her campaign had a single purpose: to challenge Americans to consider whether a woman could lead a country. Since Woodhull’s death in 1927, some 85 countries—from Western democracies to military dictatorships—have answered that question in the affirmative by choosing women as their leaders. For America, however, Woodhull’s challenge remains unanswered.
Just over a year into Donald Trump’s first term as President, immigration agents raided a meat processing plant in Bean Station, Tennessee, arresting 104 workers. It was the largest worksite raid in a decade. Two months later, 114 were arrested at a large-scale nursery in Sandusky, Ohio. The next year, immigration agents raided poultry plants in six towns in central Mississippi, arresting 680 workers in one day.
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When Trump comes back to office in January, he plans to bring back the raids, after President Biden largely put a stop to such enforcement tactics.
“Worksite operations have to happen,” Tom Homan, Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and his incoming “border czar,” said on “Fox and Friends” last week.
Worksite raids generate headlines and TV news stories, but the operations don’t lead to a significant number of deportations, according to those familiar with such operations. “They are flashy, they are disruptive, they are controversial—therefore, I would expect them” during the second Trump Administration, says John Sandweg, who was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Obama Administration. “But from a numbers perspective, they are not going to materially increase the count.”
Trump won the election after repeatedly promising on the campaign trail to launch the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, one that would remove millions of people from the country. Trump confirmed Monday on social media that he was prepared to declare a national emergency and use the military to help beef up his mass deportation program.
Deporting people is challenging and requires time and resources. During Trump’s first term, deportations peaked in the 2019 budget year, when the federal authorities removed about 347,000 people.
To further boost those numbers, the Trump administration may decide to address the backlog of some 3 million cases in the immigration courts by convincing Congress to fund more immigration judges. Or they could hire more agents to locate hundreds of thousands of people still in the U.S. who have already been ordered removed by a judge, says Sandweg.
Worksite raids are expensive, resource-intensive operations that are likely to be less effective in boosting that number, experts say.
Eric Ruark, director of research for NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for reducing both legal and illegal immigration levels, says “worksite enforcement is essential” to dealing with illegal immigration. “It also sends a message to people who might want to come that there’s not going to be the opportunity to work in the United States because they don’t have authorization,” Ruark says. (Homan has also argued that worksite raids are an effective way to find victims of sexual trafficking and forced labor.)
Ruark predicts that reviving of workplace raids will prompt a collision within the Republican Party, as pro-business Republicans are likely to see the raids as undermining the economy. “You’re going to see pushback,” Ruark says. “The only thing standing in the way of carrying out his campaign promises would be opposition within his own party.”
Michelle Lapointe, legal director for the American Immigration Council, which opposes Trump’s immigration plans, agrees that the raids are about sending a message. “Part of the strategy is to terrorize people—and these worksite raids do exactly that,” she says.
After the raid in eastern Tennessee in April 2018, workers sued in court and claimed officers with Homeland Security Investigations and the Internal Revenue Service had illegally singled them out for arrest based on their appearance. A court approved a $1 million settlement. Some workers were also granted legal status as part of the settlement terms. The meat processing plant in Bean Station is still operating.
Lapointe says her organization is preparing to defend workers if worksite raids ramp up again under Trump. “They promised to carry these out again and we take them at their word, unfortunately,” she says.
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a revised nuclear doctrine declaring that a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power will be considered a joint attack on his country.
Putin’s endorsement of the new nuclear deterrent policy comes on the 1,000th day after he sent troops into Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022.
The signing of the doctrine, which says that any massive aerial attack on Russia could trigger a nuclear response, demonstrates Putin’s readiness to tap the country’s nuclear arsenal to force the West to back down as Moscow presses a slow-moving offensive in Ukraine.
Asked whether the updated doctrine was deliberately issued on the heels of Biden’s decision, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the document was published “in a timely manner” and that Putin instructed the government to update it earlier this year so that it is “in line with the current situation.”
Putin first announced changes in the nuclear doctrine in September, when he chaired a meeting discussing the proposed revisions.
Russia’s president has previously warned the U.S. and other NATO allies that allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied longer-range weapons to hit Russian territory would mean that Russia and NATO are at war.
The updated doctrine states that an attack against Russia by a nonnuclear power with the “participation or support of a nuclear power” will be seen as their “joint attack on the Russian Federation.”
It adds that Russia could use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear strike or a conventional attack posing a “critical threat to sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Russia and its ally Belarus, a vague formulation that leaves broad room for interpretation.
It does not specify whether such an attack would necessarily trigger a nuclear response. It mentions the “uncertainty of scale, time and place of possible use of nuclear deterrent” among the key principles of the nuclear deterrence.
The document also notes that an aggression against Russia by a member of a military bloc or coalition is viewed as “an aggression by the entire bloc,” a clear reference to NATO.
At the same time, it spells out conditions for using nuclear weapons in greater detail compared with previous versions of the doctrine, noting they could be used in case of a massive air attack involving ballistic and cruise missiles, aircraft, drones and other flying vehicles.
The wide formulation appears to significantly broaden the triggers for possible nuclear weapons use compared with the previous version of the document, which stated that Russia could tap its atomic arsenal if case of an attack with ballistic missiles.
President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron hand for more than 30 years and has relied on Russian subsidies and support, has allowed Russia to use his country’s territory to send troops into Ukraine and to deploy some of its tactical nuclear weapons.
Since Putin sent troops into Ukraine, he and other Russian voices have frequently threatened the West with Russia’s nuclear arsenal to discourage it from ramping up support for Kyiv.
Russian hawks have been calling for toughening the doctrine for months, arguing that the previous version failed to deter the West from increasing its aid to Ukraine and created the impression that Moscow would not resort to nuclear weapons.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — As tens of thousands crowded the streets in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, on Tuesday, the throng of people, flags aloft, had the air of a festival or a parade rather than a protest.
“Just fighting for the rights that our tūpuna, our ancestors, fought for,” Shanell Bob said as she waited for the march to begin. “We’re fighting for our tamariki, for our mokopuna, so they can have what we haven’t been able to have,” she added, using the Māori words for children and grandchildren.
What was likely the country’s largest-ever protest in support of Māori rights — a subject that has preoccupied modern New Zealand for much of its young history — followed a long tradition of peaceful cross-country marches that have marked turning points in the nation’s story.
“We’re going for a walk!” one organizer proclaimed from the stage as crowds gathered at the opposite end of the city from the nation’s Parliament. People had traveled from across the nation over the past nine days.
For many, the turnout reflected growing solidarity on Indigenous rights from non-Māori. At bus stops during the usual morning commute, people of all ages and races waited with Māori sovereignty flags. Some local schools said they would not register students as absent. The city’s mayor joined the protest.
The bill that marchers are opposing is unpopular and unlikely to become law. But opposition to it has been widespread, which marchers said indicated rising knowledge of the Treaty of Waitangi’s promises to Māori among New Zealanders — and a small but vocal backlash from those who are angered by the attempts of courts and lawmakers to keep them.
Māori marching for their rights is not new. But the crowds were larger than at treaty marches before and the mood was changed, Indigenous people said.
“It’s different to when I was a child,” Bob said. “We’re stronger now, our tamariki are stronger now, they know who they are, they’re proud of who they are.”
As the marchers moved through the streets of Wellington with ringing Māori haka — rhythmic chants — and waiata, or songs, thousands more holding signs lined the pavement in support.
Some placards bore jokes or insults about the lawmakers responsible for the bill, which would change the meaning of the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi and prevent them from applying only to Māori — whose chiefs signed the document when New Zealand was colonized.
But others read “proud to be Māori” or acknowledged the bearer’s heritage as a non-Māori person endorsing the protest. Some denounced the widespread expropriation of Māori land during colonization, one of the main grievances arising from the treaty.
“The treaty is a document that lets us be here in Aotearoa so holding it up and respecting it is really important,” said Ben Ogilvie, who is of Pākehā or New Zealand European descent, using the Māori name for the country. “I hate what this government is doing to tear it down.”
Police estimated that 42,000 people tried to crowd into Parliament’s grounds, with some spilling into the surrounding streets. People crammed themselves onto the children’s slide on the lawn for a vantage point; others perched in trees. The tone was almost joyful; as people waited to leave the cramped area, some struck up Māori songs that most New Zealanders learn at school.
A sea of Māori sovereignty flags in red, black and white stretched down the lawn and into the streets. But marchers bore Samoan, Tongan, Indigenous Australian, U.S., Palestinian and Israeli flags, too. At Parliament, speeches from political leaders drew attention to the reason for the protest — a proposed law that would change the meaning of words in the country’s founding treaty, cement them in law and extend them to everyone.
Its author, libertarian lawmaker David Seymour — who is Māori — says the process of redress for decades of Crown breaches of its treaty with Māori has created special treatment for Indigenous people, which he opposes.
The bill’s detractors say it would spell constitutional upheaval, dilute Indigenous rights, and that it has provoked divisive rhetoric about Māori — who are still disadvantaged on almost every social and economic metric, despite attempts by the courts and lawmakers in recent decades to rectify inequities caused in large part by breaches of the treaty.
It is not expected to ever become law, but Seymour made a political deal that saw it shepherded through a first vote last Thursday. In a statement Tuesday, he said the public could now make submissions on the bill, which he hopes will experience a swell of support.
Seymour briefly walked out onto Parliament’s forecourt to observe the protest, although he was not among the lawmakers invited to speak. Some in the crowd booed him.
The protest was “a long time coming,” said Papa Heta, one of the marchers, who said Māori sought acknowledgement and respect.
“We hope that we can unite with our Pākehā friends, Europeans,” he added. “Unfortunately, there are those that make decisions that put us in a difficult place.”
Georgetown University sits on a hilltop above the Potomac. Its flagship school, the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, trains America’s future diplomats, senior military officers, and intelligence operatives. Its graduates include Bill Clinton and a long list of senators, ambassadors, a CIA director, two White House chiefs of staff, the king of Spain, and various heads of state.
The school also grants degrees to foreign students. I enrolled in its master’s degree program after spending years as a Swedish military officer and diplomat. I was interested in making a career transition from my country’s armed forces, where I’d spent nearly a decade, to diplomatic service. I’d done two tours in Afghanistan, three in Africa, and some diplomatic and commercial work in the Persian Gulf. I wanted to study at one of the world’s premier schools of diplomacy. What I found at Georgetown was far from what I had expected.
First Year
The trouble started with a required course for all students in my program, “Globalization: Inter-Societal Relations.” Georgetown’s course guide describes the class, which was “DEI certified,” as focusing on how European states expanded globally and “the impact of that expansion on peoples with different political and social traditions.” More simply put, this was a class about the negative effects Western expansion had on the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Georgetown solicited online feedback about the course, and I submitted a public review on a Google document set up by school staff for the purpose of collecting student appraisals. I argued that we deserved “a serious history class” focusing on the West, rather than a course that dwelled on the evils of imperialism and colonialism (this line of study has consumed American academia, especially on elite, private school campuses). Diplomats need to understand their own history, I wrote. “In order for you to represent, as a global leader and foreign service officer, you need to know what you represent and why.”
Not a day passed before an anonymous student slapped back at my review, decrying “circumstances where people the most privileged—namely white men—come together to intellectually masturbate to lionized accounts of the West.”
As comments became increasingly heated, school administrators had the whole Google document evaluation taken down. A few days later, the master’s program’s leadership team sent a program-wide email decrying what they said were “racist comments and hurtful responses.” Though my name was not explicitly mentioned, it was widely understood that they were referring to my remarks.
Email from Georgetown SFS leaders to master’s students.
In the wake of that email, I was accused by my fellow students of “ideological rape” and “spiritual genocide.” As a fair-haired Swede with a Northern European accent, I may have been mistaken for a German—attracting the exact kind of prejudice and discrimination my classmates inveighed against. Students I had never met denounced me as a “rapist” when I passed them on campus. My lacrosse stick, which I’d left unattended in the student lounge, was thrown in the trash. A friend, a gay student who was not open about his sexuality, told me students threatened to out him to his parents if he did not denounce our friendship.
On two different occasions on campus, I was slapped on the head by black students whizzing by me on e-scooters, while calling me a “fucking white guy.” There was no point for me to contact the police. During a mandatory “DEI Skills Clinic” led by two faculty members, my fellow first-year students and I had been told not to call the police if we witnessed a person of color committing a crime “because the police are racist.”
A screenshot from Georgetown’s “DEI Skills Clinic.”
Of all the effronteries I encountered last fall, what hurt me the most was when students discouraged me from attending church because, they warned, it would add to the already widespread perception that I was a Nazi.
As the harassment I was experiencing escalated, I was called to a small meeting with George Shambaugh, the director of the master’s program, and another professor. During our conversation, Shambaugh conceded that the course evaluation I’d written was neither racist nor problematic. But when I asked him if he’d make a public statement to that effect as well as an apology, he refused.
Later, I wrote an email to the School of Foreign Service’s leadership team, telling them they’d created a culture of fear, that students were wary of speaking freely, and that the administrators were suppressing free speech. In response, Shambaugh encouraged me to apologize, saying that my accusations were “offensive.” I ended up apologizing to anyone whose feelings I may have hurt but stood by my statement.
Henrik Schildt’s email to Georgetown SFS leaders.
Master’s program director George Shambaugh’s response.Master’s program director George Shambaugh’s response.
A Georgetown spokesperson declined to comment on “individual student matters” and pointed to the school’s “Speech and Expression Policy.”
“The University is committed to the free and untrammeled exchange of ideas, even when those ideas may be controversial or objectionable to some,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “At the same time, the University condemns hateful expression and conduct that undermines our core values.”
“If any member of the Georgetown community experiences harassment, discrimination, or any other misconduct, the University offers many well-publicized options to report such concerns, receive support, and hold the appropriate community members accountable for any violations of University policy.”
After October 7
As was the case at many academic institutions, the reaction in the fall of 2023 to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel caused the simmering tensions about “post-imperialism” and “anticolonialism” to boil over spectacularly. In the days following Oct. 7, a large cohort of my classmates endorsed the attack as a “tangible event” toward decolonization. One student wrote in a widely read WhatsApp group chat that “nothing but violence can remove a violent and heavily equipped colonial regime.” An Oct. 12th event was held to honor “martyrs” who had been “murdered by the occupation and to stand in solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian liberation.”
In a WhatsApp group, a Georgetown SFS student endorses violence against Israel.
Outside the School of Foreign Service building, students arranged vigils—not for the murdered or kidnapped Jewish victims, but for Palestinian “martyrs.” The walls were covered in posters proclaiming “Glory to our Martyrs” and “Support Liberation.” Georgetown’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a radical group that has endorsed Hamas, held “Keffiyeh Thursdays” where students wore the checkered headdress that Palestinian terrorists use to conceal their faces.
A poster on Georgetown’s campus endorsing Oct. 7.
As the size and tenor of the pro-Palestinian protests escalated, Jewish students began fearing for their safety. During a small meeting with some of the School of Foreign Service’s Jewish students held at Georgetown’s Center for Jewish Civilization, Joel Hellman, the dean of the School of Foreign Service, lamented the surge of anti-Semitism on campus but said many of the anti-Israel students’ actions are protected free speech. A senior DEI official at the meeting, Carla Koppell, also said that Jews are not recognized as a “protected” minority group under Georgetown’s DEI policies, but that the school is reviewing the issue (as far as I know, in the tumultuous year that followed, nothing has changed).
I was attending the meeting as a practicing Christian who was concerned about the treatment of my fellow Jewish students. I asked Dean Hellman how he could allow his faculty to call me a racist but hide behind the school’s free speech policies and do nothing when students called for the death of Jews. His response to this was that “the other side is also hurting, and they complain just as much as you.”
The School of Foreign Service announced, a few weeks after the Oct. 7 attack, the hiring of Aneesa Johnson as the “primary point of contact” for masters degree students on “everything academic.” Johnson had a well-documented history of virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Israel remarks—she had denounced so-called Zio bitches and retweeted a cruel meme that showed a Hasidic boy with glasses and braces that said “the world hates you.” A simple Google search of Johnson’s name would have revealed her prolific online opinionating. Only a few days after she started work, Georgetown placed her on leave, claiming they had been unaware of her history.
Around the same time, a recent Muslim convert with a past in the U.S. Armed Forces began posting anti-Semitic content on group WhatsApp chats that were created and moderated by students. When I asked Shambaugh about one of these posts—a cartoon of a Satan-like President Joe Biden, with Stars of David for eyes, amidst burning Palestinian flags—he called it “not even problematic.” He repeated Georgetown’s free speech policy and said the school would remain neutral. A former professor stated that they had warned Shambaugh that his inaction was undoing two decades of work cleaning the campus of its anti-Semites.
A caricature of President Joe Biden posted in a Georgetown SFS student group chat.The student poster defends the image.
The pervasive anti-Semitism at the School of Foreign Service has unusual significance, when compared to that at other elite schools, in that the school has a direct pipeline to the U.S. diplomatic and national security apparatus. I regularly heard my classmates express their intention to change U.S. policy from within. In early November, the WashingtonFree Beaconbroke the news that my former classmate, Sylvia Yacoub, now a career foreign service officer at the State Department, went rogue and tweeted that Biden was complicit in genocide. Her accusations were hardly a surprise to those who had attended classes with her. During an ethics class taught by a former U.S. military officer, Ms. Yacoub had said that she would use her position at the State Department to change it from within. When I asked if this would be appropriate conduct for a junior foreign service officer, a second student answered: “Progress is messy.”
Then it got worse. My defense of Western heritage continued to bother many of my fellow students. “Don’t die with so much animosity in your heart” wrote a recently converted Muslim menacingly to me on WhatsApp. A School of Foreign Serivce professor who is a terrorism expert advised me, as a friend, to stay at home for a week because “recent converts to Islam with combat skills are likely eager to prove themselves.” I took his advice.
As the protests intensified, not only the student body but also the professoriate ran amok. Georgetown professor John Esposito’s Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding gave a speaking invitation toMohamad Habehh, a self-proclaimed “PR dude for Hamas” who works forAmerican Muslims for Palestine, an organization which the House Oversight Committee recently investigated for material support for terrorism.
The center also employs Nader Hashemi, awell-documented Hamas supporter whose hiring at Georgetown was internally opposed by many students and faculty but later approved by Dean Hellman himself. Anthropology professor Laurie King called Georgetown’s then-interim director for student life, Rabbi Daniel Shaefer, “a disingenuous fascist who supports the killing of Arabs.” King did not respond to a request for comment.
Screenshot from anthropology professor Laurie King’s Instagram.
Several School of Foreign Service master’s degree candidates, many on prestigious Pickering and Rangel fellowships, attended protests on campus and elsewhere in the city. Back on campus in the student lounge, a School of Foreign Service professor knelt in front of some keffiyeh-wearing protesters to offer words of comfort. I was sitting at the table next to them.
In February, the Georgetown Israel Alliance, a pro-Israel student group, organized an event on campus with IDF soldiers. The gathering, which was guarded by armed policemen, could barely begin before it was interrupted by screaming students. Protesters outside the lecture hall had gathered by the hundreds, calling for the death of Israel and Jews. I spoke to a Jewish undergraduate who told me that one protester had threatened to kill him right in front of a police officer, who did nothing in response. I urged him to report the police officer. “To whom? The police officer?” he replied.
At this point, some parents of Jewish students had so little trust in the administration that they began to patrol campus themselves.
I was one of two students invited to meet at Georgetown with the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt. The meeting was closed to cameras and its location disclosed just before it took place. Though everyone at the meeting agreed on the moral failure of the school, I was stricken by how willfully the people I paid so much to learn from were at the mercy of rabid anti-Semites.
As a military veteran myself, I proudly waved an IDF flag at graduation in May in support of my brothers and sisters in arms who fight for a land that is as holy to them as it is to me. I found a small seed of consolation in how families from around the world who were attending the commencement united in booing the Hoyas for Hamas who staged a walk-out. The American people, I thought to myself, ultimately will never allow themselves to be ruled by tyrants.
But long after I departed, diploma in hand, the horrors on the Hilltop continue unabated. In September, a Jewish student who was collecting signatures for a letter to the dean condemning anti-Semitism was anonymously attacked online and implicitly encouraged to commit suicide. The letter was intended for the dean of the very best school of international affairs in the world—a school that stands neutral when the nation and the world it once led tremble in the face of anti-Semitism, and the bad actors, including hostile states, who foment it.
