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Kordia, who was freed last month, joins Mehdi to highlight just how bad the conditions were inside the detention center she was kept in - one of many that have sprung up all over the country since Trump took office. “I actually stayed sleeping on the floor for three months straight,” Kordia tells Mehdi, adding that she saw women who were seven and eight months pregnant in her ‘dorm’. “I thought that I knew about these things… but the reality was absolutely shocking.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says it detained Kordia for overstaying an expired F-1 student visa, but also cited her role in Columbia University’s 2024 pro-Palestine protests, which likely made her a target for ICE. But despite her detention, Kordia says she wouldn’t have done anything differently. “I don’t regret doing it, and I will still call for the end of the genocide… I will still call for a Palestine to be free from the river to the sea.”

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Paid subscribers can watch the full interview above to hear how ICE used chains to shackle Kordia to a hospital bed after suffering a seizure during her detention, how her transfer to Texas was a tactic to ensure her deportation, and to hear some of the other horror stories she witnessed in what she described as “jail or dungeon” rather than a detention center.

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Welcome to ‘This Week in Democracy – Week 64’ – the week Donald Trump threatened to commit war crimes.

He, of course, pulled back on his threat. And while his announced ceasefire (if it holds) is incredibly welcomed, the leader of the supposed free world explicitly threatening to blow up a “whole civilization” in a country of 90 million people itself underscores Trump’s disregard for humanity and the rule of law. This week could be one of the darkest weeks since we began documenting the rise of authoritarianism in Trump’s America last year.

Of course, Trump’s threats of escalation in a war he had no mandate for from the start weren’t the only things he and his cronies were up to this week.

From genocidal threats to wanting to jail journalists to investigating another perceived enemy, here’s just a taste of what Trump and his allies did this week that undermines the Constitution, harms democracy, and makes the world less safe:

Saturday, April 4 – Rubio’s New Target

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that federal agents arrested those he claimed were the niece and great-niece of the late Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the Trump administration in 2020. But in a statement, Soleimani’s daughter said the two “have no connection whatsoever” to her father “and the claims made by the US State Department are false.”

The pair, who were taken into ICE custody and awaiting deportation proceedings, were arrested after Rubio revoked their green cards.

Rubio later quietly deleted a tweet announcing the pair’s arrest.

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Sunday, April 5 – Trump Threatens War Crimes

On Truth Social, Trump marked the Easter holiday with an unhinged, expletive-laden post escalating his threats against Iran.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Trump wrote, adding, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Trump’s post was slammed by several politicians, including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called Trump’s post “evil,” adding that the president “has gone insane” and everyone in his administration is “complicit” in his “madness.”

Monday, April 6 – Trump Escalates War on Journalists

During a White House press conference, Trump threatened to jail journalists of an unnamed media outlet if they don’t identify their source who revealed that a second US airman was missing after Iran shot down a US fighter jet last week.

“[Iran] didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information,” Trump said. “So whoever it was, we think we’ll be able to find it out because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘national security, give it up or go to jail.’”

Tuesday, April 7 – A ‘Highly Unusual’ Investigation

The New York Times reported that the civil rights division of Trump’s Justice Department is investigating former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who implicated Trump in the Jan. 6 insurrection while testifying before Congress in 2022.

The Times described the decision to assign the probe, which is focused on whether Hutchinson lied to Congress, to the civil rights division as “highly unusual,” considering its focus is on enforcing federal statutes prohibiting discrimination.

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Wednesday, April 8 – Bondi Backs Out of Deposition

The Republican-led House Oversight and Reform Committee announced that former Attorney General Pam Bondi will no longer appear for a deposition next week to provide testimony about the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files – testimony the White House wanted to avoid.

In a statement, Ranking Member Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) warned that if Bondi defies her subpoena to testify, the committee “will begin contempt charges in the Congress.”

Thursday, April 9 – Final Order of Removal for Mahmoud Khalil

The Board of Immigration Appeals, which Trump has cut in half and stacked with his own appointees, issued a final order of removal for Mahmoud Khalil, bringing him one step closer to being deported.

In a statement, Khalil called the ruling “biased and politically motivated.”

“The only thing I am guilty of is speaking out against the genocide in Palestine – and this administration has weaponized the immigration system to punish me for it,” he added.

Friday, April 10 – Everybody Gets a Pardon!

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has already promised mass presidential pardons to his staff before he leaves office, saying in a private meeting that he’d “pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval.”

The White House didn’t deny Trump had made the promise, but claimed the president wasn’t being serious.

“The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke, however, the president’s pardon power is absolute,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

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Did you miss previous weeks of ‘This Week in Democracy’? Catch up here. And check out more of Zeteo’s reporting from this week below:

In the six months since the Israeli government and Hamas signed a so-called “ceasefire” agreement, Israel has violated the deal more than 2,073 times, according to Palestinian officials. At least 738 Palestinians have been slaughtered, children continue to starve, and the already dire humanitarian crisis has only worsened. Gaza is no closer to being meaningfully rebuilt than it was the day before the ceasefire began.

Needless to say, the October 2025 agreement was no ceasefire at all. Instead, its promises of safety, “self-determination,” and freedom for civilians in Gaza were a smokescreen – a way to get the world to turn its attention away from Israel’s genocide while it continues its killing and mass destruction.

The violations are endless, but here are seven of the most egregious ways Israel has completely destroyed the ceasefire:

1. Immediate Strikes

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But in the weeks since then, what has changed on the ground, really?

In January, at the height of Metro Surge, Zeteo traveled to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area to document the federal crackdown. In the video above, Zeteo’s senior political correspondent Asawin Suebsaeng returned to the Twin Cities in late March. What we saw was clear: President Trump’s occupation of Minnesota never ended. It merely changed. What once felt like a high-intensity conflict has evolved into a low-intensity conflict.

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And in the months since the national media mostly moved on, the Trump administration’s reign of terror hasn’t stopped. Hundreds of ICE agents remain deployed to the state. Minnesota’s Somali-Americans are still a prime target for the federal government’s hate. A sprawling rent crisis and economic emergency created by Operation Metro Surge has no end in sight. The Twin Cities’ residents and politicians talk about the collective trauma and rebuilding after the Trump administration’s onslaught in a language that sounds indistinguishable from the way people talk about surviving a literal war. Law-abiding families and immigrants are still afraid to step outside, fearing ICE could be around the corner. Parents who organized “school patrols” and “ICE watches” to protect their kids are on patrol to this day. And Donald Trump’s secret police have gotten better at being, well, secret.

“The way that you can’t go between your house and your car; you’re looking over your shoulder – you have the level of fear that we lived in,” one immigrant, who has been in the United States for about two decades, tells us. “We never imagined that this is the life that we would have here.”

Zeteo spoke with local activists, politicians, immigrants, and ordinary Minnesotans who continue to live everyday with the effects of President Trump’s violent crackdown and economic warfare. (Some of the identities and faces have been obscured out of privacy and security concerns.) To them and their communities, Minnesota remains occupied territory – and they are pleading with the rest of the nation not to forget about them.

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Zeteo’s Liam Mann contributed to this post and video.

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Good morning! Andrew and Swin here. Our president continues to be racist, ICE keeps shooting people, and the war in Iran could restart at any moment. But this morning, our lede is about Melania Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Don’t blame us. It was her idea.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ the first lady volunteers that she “was never involved” in Epstein’s crimes, Democrats can’t pass a symbolic resolution calling out AIPAC, and Donald Trump doesn’t seem happy with his ceasefire deal, even after he decided Israel could keep massacring people in Lebanon.

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‘What the Fuck Is She Doing?’

Polls show a majority of Americans believe that Donald Trump launched his illegal and reckless war in Iran to distract from his Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

But on Thursday, first lady Melania Trump made the bizarre decision to hold a surprise press event, so she could draw attention away from the worst-run war in US history and bring the president’s ties to the world’s most famous pedophile right back into the national news cycle.

“I’m not a witness or a named witness in connection with any of Epstein’s crimes,” Melania Trump declared. “My name has never appeared in court documents, depositions, victim statements, or FBI interviews surrounding the Epstein matter. I have never had any knowledge of Epstein’s abuse of his victims. I was never involved in any capacity.”

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She continued: “I was not a participant, was never on Epstein’s plane, and never visited his private island. I have never been legally accused or convinced [sic] of a crime in connection with Epstein’s sex trafficking, abuse of minors, and other repulsive behavior.”

Melania Trump’s comments reminded Swin of this clip of Frank from ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.’ It reminded Andrew just slightly more of this classic meme.

“What the fuck is she doing right now?” one close Trump adviser asked us shortly after Melania Trump stopped speaking.

“I’ve never been friends with Epstein,” Melania Trump said. “Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time, since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach. To be clear, I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, [Ghislaine] Maxwell.”

This was a televised performance that no one was asking for, and which few could immediately explain.

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BEIRUT, Lebanon – The smell was the first thing Louna couldn’t explain. Charred flesh, gunpowder, burnt fabric, and the rubber of ambulance tires screaming down the steep entrance ramp to the hospital. She had worked through the Beirut port explosion. She had worked through the pager attacks. Nothing had smelled like this.

“I don’t know what kind of rockets they used,” said Louna, 30, an emergency room nurse at a hospital in Beirut’s suburbs. “I can’t forget the smell, it was so strong.”

At around 2:20 in the afternoon, the hospital heard the strikes and rang the Code Orange alert. Louna called her father first – she knew he was out on the streets – then her mother, her sister, the rest of her family. They were all crying. She prayed, walking toward the ER, that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.

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Zeteo contributor John Harwood is hosting a Substack live at 1:50pm ET Friday (10:50am PT, 6:50pm BST) with economist Justin Wolfers on how Trump is making the US poorer. They’ll take your questions.

Watch the live here

Americans have begun to sense the scale of the catastrophe that Donald Trump’s second presidency has inflicted on all of us.

The year-one decimation of government functions, self-harm of high tariffs, brutality on city streets, and broad assault on the rule of law were bad enough. Now the mentally unbalanced commander in chief publicly threatens monstrous crimes in an ineptly-conceived war, trashing America’s global leadership while constituents suffer the economic consequences – among which spiking gas prices represent just the opening blow.

Trump seeks to corrupt this fall’s midterm elections that might constrain him. So far, he has failed.

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That leaves a simple political question for 2026: whether American voters hold accountable the parties who caused this nightmare. Or, more precisely, the party – the Republican Party.

Yes, Trump is the madman abusing power. But the GOP has empowered him, long after the dangers became apparent.

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“What has shocked you most about the Epstein saga?” Mehdi asks.

“It’s the blatant gaslighting. You have a guy who is pro-Israel, and yet they tell you, ‘Oh, he might be a Russian spy,’” Bassem says.

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They dig into Epstein and Mehdi’s viral interview with the so-called “Professor Jiang,” the two get into a friendly argument over which terms and ideas qualify as religious tropes and how the weaponization of antisemitism by Zionists has diluted the meaning of the word. “Bassem, why can’t you be careful in your language? Are you doing it for clicks?” Mehdi asks. “I’m not saying my reaction is right, but I’m saying my reaction is natural,” Bassem says.

The two also debate whether right-wingers like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson can be trusted allies for calling out Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Donald Trump’s war with Iran, or if they’re just opportunists who see the writing on the wall for the MAGA movement. “Why don’t you like Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson?” Bassem asks Mehdi, who explains his position on the two.

They also discuss:

• Zionists cracking down on free speech and civil liberties.

• Whether “Pax Judaica” is an antisemitic trope or not.

• The ‘radicalization’ of US citizen Moshe Katz who recently died in Lebanon fighting for the Israeli military.

• Why Bill Maher is… just the worst.

You really don’t want to miss this episode!

Free subscribers get a 5-minute preview of the video above while Zeteo’s paid subscribers can watch it in full. As always, you can also listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hi! It’s Swin again.

The Donald Trump-shaped apocalypse has been postponed, even if his war goes on. With it comes new horrors each day, at home and abroad. Amid it all, the president of the United States is falling back on a familiar habit: huffily ordering aides to bring him the heads (figuratively speaking… we hope) of the people who’ve been snitching on him. So let’s get into that.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ Trump demands action as a new book looms, JD Vance tries to explain away the ceasefire that wasn’t, amid Israeli savagery in Lebanon, and Pam Bondi tries to bail on a date to discuss Jeffrey Epstein before the House Oversight Committee.

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The President Smells a Rat

Donald Trump is a Mad King president, perpetually pissed off about seemingly everything. That is always what you like to hear about someone running a major new war that’s killing thousands and affecting millions across multiple continents. But there’s something new that is uniquely enraging him, those who’ve spoken to him recently tell me. In conversations with close aides and advisers, President Trump has loudly demanded to know who in his Cabinet or his team blabbed to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan for their forthcoming book, Regime Change – including over his reckless decision to launch an illegal war against Iran.

In response to the president’s demands, Trump officials have launched a massive leak hunt within Trumpland and the federal government, multiple Trump advisers say.

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Justin Baragona here, bringing you the latest media dispatches from the right-wing industrial outrage complex and Bari World. In tonight’s edition, we take issue with the establishment press delivering a collective shrug at the president’s increasingly deranged threats towards free speech – while they simultaneously prepare to “honor” him. Plus, we look into who Bari Weiss is wining and dining, and share the world’s worst history lesson delivered by Trump’s Fox brain trust.

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Trump Ramps Up His War on the Press

Within the span of roughly 30 hours, Donald Trump threatened to jail journalists if they didn’t burn their confidential sources and accused a news network of criminal conduct for publishing an accurate public statement. And in both cases, he called for the feds to criminally investigate media outlets.

Yet, despite the media-bashing president ramping up his already white-hot incitement towards the fourth estate to new levels, the White House press corps tasked to cover him has delivered a collective shrug.

And all the while, the elite political media class is prepping to spend a night publicly feting this man during a lavish party. But don’t worry, because in an act of unparalleled bravery, they’ll make sure to show the president their defiant support for the First Amendment by wearing matching accessories.

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Hundreds of Michiganders waited in long lines in the cold for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s rallies with Hasan Piker at two universities.

Zeteo was inside those rallies, where the national reporters who traveled to Michigan for the events seemed extremely puzzled as to why the progressive politician would choose to campaign with the popular leftist Twitch streamer – and they were intently focused on Israel.

“Hasan, do you feel like your presence on the campaign trail may hurt the candidates that you’re supporting more than help them?” a Fox News reporter asked. Another reporter asked El-Sayed what he would say to people who attend a local synagogue that was the site of a foiled terrorist attack, and are “concerned now about you campaigning with Hasan.”

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Olivia Reingold, a writer for Bari Weiss’s Free Press who has defended Israel’s manufactured famine in Gaza, created a viral moment for El-Sayed when she asked him, “Does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish state?”

“What do you mean by Jewish state?” El-Sayed responded. As Reingold stumbled and failed to answer, he retorted: “If you can’t define the question, I’m not going to answer your question.”

In recent weeks, a well-funded centrist think tank and El-Sayed’s Democratic opponents have led a campaign to try to publicly cancel Piker, and El-Sayed for rallying with him. And as President Donald Trump was actively threatening to commit genocide in Iran on Tuesday, the US media was busy attempting to shame El-Sayed over some of Piker’s past controversial comments. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the journalists filed stories with headlines focused on the Muslim men’s anti-Israel views and Piker’s old remarks.

“Michigan Senate candidate El-Sayed declines to disavow Hasan Piker’s past comments,” Politico wrote. Jewish Insider’s headline went further: “Abdul El-Sayed emphasizes anti-Israel rhetoric at rallies with antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker.” The Jewish Telegraphic Agency headlined its piece: “In rallies taking on Israel, a defiant Hasan Piker boosts Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed.”

You would never know from the reports that El-Sayed’s rallies were, in fact, focused around affordability, getting money out of politics and into people’s pockets, and securing Medicare for All. Nor would you know that El-Sayed’s decision to invite Piker to his rallies at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University has been a big boon for his campaign.

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TEHRAN, Iran – The morning after US President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran, the underlying mood here in Tehran was far from relief.

As people continued their daily routines, as they had in the days before, a divide emerged in how Iranians were reacting to the US president’s announcement. Many saw the ceasefire as a victory for Iran, while some thought their country had agreed to it too soon. Others remained deeply distrustful of the Americans, and many expressed an instinctive determination to keep pressure on both Washington and the country’s own leadership. There was, however, an overall unifying feeling of raw defiance among the Iranians I spoke to.

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Ahmad, a 42-year-old bookseller, saw the pause as a sign of Trump’s humiliation, suggesting the failure to secure the Strait of Hormuz might cause Gulf states to reconsider supporting America.

Saeed, a 65-year-old taxi driver, viewed the ceasefire as a victory, comparing Trump’s actions to Saddam Hussein’s invasion in 1980, which led to a nearly eight-year war between the two countries. “They said Iran would surrender in three days,” Saeed exclaimed. “But now the Strait of Hormuz is in our hands.

Negin, a 27-year-old barista, argued the ceasefire came too soon, referring to the deaths of scores of schoolchildren in Minab. “After so much innocent blood, there should not have been a ceasefire this quickly,” she told me.

“I have no doubt the war will resume,” she added. “The US and Israel cannot be trusted.”

Meanwhile, Sobhan, a 56-year-old restaurant cleaner, believed the ceasefire was merely a prelude to renewed unrest and insisted people must maintain their presence in public spaces.

The tense morning could not be separated from the night that preceded it.

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Sudanese journalist and researcher Mosaab Baba, and former senior adviser to the US special envoy for Sudan (and former ambassador) Susan Page join Mehdi to discuss where the war-torn country stands after three of the darkest years in its history. The conversation touched on many aspects of Sudan’s war, including:

• Why the media is not covering the crisis in Sudan despite the “astronomically high number” of people displaced, according to Baba.

• The ways the people of Sudan are being left “to fend for themselves” as a result of the escalating regional war.

• The role of the UAE, and whether Trump and the US still have the leverage to end the war on its own.

• How “there’s no peace process to speak of” three years into the war, Page tells Mehdi.

• The consequences and effects of the war in Iran on the war in Sudan.

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Good morning! Andrew, Swin, and Prem here, with some decent news. Donald Trump opted not to try to slaughter Iran’s “whole civilization” Tuesday evening, as he had threatened. In Trump’s disturbing second term, we must take wins where we can. Who knows how long the “ceasefire” will last, but we, of course, welcome it: No more civilians should have to die just because our president is a raging idiot, sociopath, and pawn of Benjamin Netanyahu.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ the ceasefire framework appears to be “a strategic win” for Iran, and a major loss for Trump and Netanyahu; liberals expand their majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court; and Janet Mills goes dark on the air with two months left in Maine’s Senate primary.

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Don Backs Down

Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to destroy Iran’s “whole civilization” unless its leaders agreed to a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

By Tuesday evening – instead of trying to kill the 90 million people living in Iran, or bombing Iran’s power plants and bridges as he had promised – Trump announced “a double sided CEASEFIRE!” for two weeks. In doing so, Trump all but admitted the reality that his illegal war is going terribly – and Iran is winning.

“We received a 10-point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate,” the president announced on Truth Social – apparently referring to the 10-point plan that Iran had presented to the US before he threatened to murder its entire population.

Using this 10-point plan as a framework for a deal, rather than the previous American 15-point plan, is obviously a major win for Iran – which is, indeed, declaring victory. Experts and commentators see it that way, too.

“If Iran did in fact secure guarantees based on the ‘10 principles’ Trump referenced, that is not a marginal outcome, it is a strategic win for Tehran, reinforcing its narrative and positioning,” wrote Danny Citrinowicz, a former top Israeli intelligence officer who focused on Iran. As former US State Department official and veteran Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller put it, “Iran has won another round.”

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Political scientist Robert A. Pape writes: “Huge strategic defeat for the US, biggest loss since Vietnam.”

The 10-point plan would allow Iran to continue its control over the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial waterway that Iran has closed since the start of the war, stopping the flow of oil and throttling the global economy.

Just a day earlier, Trump was fantasizing about the US “charging tolls” for ships to transit the strait. Now, it looks much more likely that Iran will keep doing this instead, and that it will get to charge “a $2M fee per ship.” In another win for Iran, the plan would involve lifting “all US sanctions on Iran.”

Under Iran’s proposed framework, the US would allow Iran to continue its uranium enrichment program – which would mean folding on the entire supposed basis for Trump’s illegal war. This point was included in the Farsi version of the plan, but reportedly omitted from English versions shared by Iranian diplomats.

Some liberals will invariably revel in “TACO Trump” memes about how Trump always chickens out. But, as we reported at Zeteo on Tuesday, none of this is over. The ceasefire, as of now, is only temporary. As Trump advisers and others in the upper tiers of Trumplandia warned us, there’s still a decent chance that he escalates the war again soon.

Here’s why.

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In a must-watch Zeteo panel discussion on the heels of the two-week ceasefire deal between Trump and Iran, Mehdi is joined by three experts to break down the 10-point plan, the perception that Iran is now in a stronger place, and whether the deal will last.

“There is no doubt that Trump has given the Iranian theocracy another lease on life,” Iranian-American relations expert Trita Parsi, who correctly predicted what would happen earlier in the day, tells Mehdi. For Parsi, this is a win for the Iranians.

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Meanwhile, Zeteo’s Senior Political Correspondent Asawin ‘Swin’ Suebsaeng has the latest from a Trump administration official who suggests the ceasefire deal isn’t the end of Trump’s campaign against Iran.

“A problem is Donald Trump hates being humiliated,” the official told Swin, adding, “He is going to see coverage that he was beat by the Iranians. I’m expecting that to change his thinking.”

Harrison Mann, former US army officer and new Zeteo contributor, who is also Associate Director for Campaigns and Policy at Win Without War, cautions Mehdi about the impact the ceasefire’s extension to Lebanon will have for Gazans.

“Actually, forcing an end to that front will free up more troops for the continued ethnic cleansing of Gaza,” Mann warns.

Watch the full video above to hear the panel’s analysis, plus their predictions about what will happen over the next two weeks.

If you believe in the work we do and want to see more of it, do consider becoming a paid subscriber. A donation to Zeteo also goes a long way.

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Donald Trump has tapped the brakes on his menacing threat to kill Iran’s “whole civilization.”

In a Truth Social post just over an hour before his 8:00pm deadline, Trump wrote that, based on conversations with the Pakistani government and supposed progress on a deal with Iran, he has agreed to “suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks,” saying “it will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!”

Trump said the reason for his walkback was that “we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives and are very far along” with a deal.

He said the US received a 10-point proposal from Iran, and says “it is a workable basis on which to negotiate,” adding that the two-week ceasefire is subject to Iran agreeing “to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz.”

It’s unclear if the 10-point proposal is the same one that Iran had already presented – before Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s “whole civilization.”

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said it accepted the ceasefire but with a warning: “Our hands remain upon the trigger, and should the slightest error be committed by the enemy, it shall be met with full force.” Iran’s foreign minister said Tehran will allow passage through the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian military supervision.

Israel has reportedly agreed to the ceasefire as well.

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Trump administration officials and others close to the White House caution Zeteo that we aren’t out of the woods yet – not by a mile. During this war, the US president has careened so quickly between war plans, ordering escalation and threatening mass murder, and then suddenly racing back to his desire to save face and to declare immediate “victory,” and then flopping back in the opposite direction again. By early afternoon in Washington on Tuesday, various Trump advisers and administration officials told Zeteo that chances were sky-high that Trump would dramatically escalate soon. Some sources left the door open for a scenario where the president takes his foot off the genocidal gas on Tuesday, only to rev the war-crime machine up again in weeks, if not days. None of the sources viewed Tuesday’s deadline as a mere negotiation tactic.

On Tuesday night, two close Trump advisers say they are still expecting Trump to escalate this war in the future. Each did, however, breathe a sigh of relief that the apocalyptic war crimes were put on hold. There are few in Trump’s inner orbit who thought this war would be a good idea, or who think it’s currently anything other than a political disaster for Team Trump.

Those senior officials, however, will continue to go along to get along with whatever the Mad King decrees.

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Mehdi and special guests will host a LIVE discussion at 8pm ET tonight (5pm PT; 1am BST) to discuss Trump’s “deadline” and the latest from Iran.

Tune in on YouTube

FBI emails obtained by Zeteo show that the Trump administration is pushing state and local police to target Americans with left-wing views, emails show. As Donald Trump’s hot war in Iran enters its second month with no end in sight, a quieter, colder war is simmering on the home front.

Its target is not a foreign power thousands of miles away, but US citizens who disagree with the president and his hardline advisers. This domestic war’s chief weapon is a national security presidential memorandum, NSPM-7, which attempts to criminalize a laundry list of common left-wing beliefs and viewpoints.

Trump’s FBI is conducting trainings for state and local law enforcement officials on the president’s NSPM-7 directive, in order to help enlist them in the administration’s ongoing crackdown on the left, emails show. And it’s happening at the same time as Trump’s war in Iran is throttling energy prices and the global economy – creating even more discontent with his administration.

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What this development means in practice is if you have criticized a corporation on social media, held a sign that demands ICE leave your city, shared a meme about alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione, or publicly condemned Trump’s Iran war at a local town hall, both the federal government and your local police could take note and forward along a list of your thoughtcrimes to the FBI for further review.

Unlike a standard-issue presidential directive that nudges a sector of the federal bureaucracy or realigns a federal agency towards the president’s liking, national security directives target the entire intelligence and defense apparatus, which is why they are almost always classified. NSPM-7, which was published publicly by the White House in September, makes no effort to conceal its goals.

The presidential directive is the most significant shift in domestic counter-terrorism efforts since the Patriot Act was introduced into law in the wake of 9/11. The program is sweeping in its scope, not only for the list of subversive activities it seeks to target, but also in the joint terrorism task forces it relies upon.

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On Tuesday morning, hours before his deadline for returning Iran to the “stone ages,” Donald Trump somehow made it even worse – threatening to kill off Iran’s “whole civilization.”

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” the president of the United States posted on Truth Social. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” He is a sociopath who threatens to kill civilians casually – and who knows how many. There are over 90 million people in Iran.

The president’s menacing threats to wipe out Iran have prompted an unseen level of backlash across the American political spectrum. Everyone from far-right conspiracists Alex Jones and Candace Owens, to former MAGA loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene, to Never Trumper Bill Kristol, to progressive lawmakers Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, is now calling for Trump’s removal from office.

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Asked about his message to his Republican colleagues amid Trump’s horrific remarks, Rep. Ro Khanna told Zeteo: “When an American President threatens war crimes and threatens the extinction of a civilization, it is time to call for his removal and voting for Massie and my [War Powers Resolution] to end this war.”

By noontime in Washington, the mood inside the administration was grim. Various Trump advisers and administration appointees tell Zeteo that chances are high that the American commander in chief sharply escalates, including with attacks on high-profile civilian targets, this week. Some administration officials who had wished to gently nudge Trump in the direction of declaring “victory” and “coming home” this month sounded resigned to the “Hell” and war crimes that their leader had vowed. “The progress that was made on that has been completely reversed,” one senior US official says.

Sources add that in recent weeks, the president has been vacillating so wildly and quickly between further inflaming the bloodbath and invading, or trying to save face and pull the plug on a war effort that basically everyone in his inner orbit knows could easily bring down his administration. So, in theory, it could take another 48 hours and the right fig leaf for him to flop back in the other direction.

But by early afternoon, Eastern Time, on Tuesday, the president of the United States – sources close to him stress – was definitely not bluffing, and wanted to escalate the carnage. In other words, Trump wasn’t doing Madman Theory. He’s just a madman.

Trump’s latest threat to genocide an entire nation stems from his own self-imposed deadline – 8pm ET Tuesday – for Iran to agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which it has shut since Trump launched his illegal war, cutting off the flow of oil and throttling the global economy. If Trump targets Iran’s power plants and bridges, and carries out the war crimes he’s promised, Iran has pledged that “the entire region and Saudi Arabia will fall into complete darkness with Iran’s retaliatory strikes.”

And that’s just if Trump sticks to his original already-horrific warnings to attack Iranian infrastructure. What will occur if Trump goes even further, as his Tuesday morning message suggests?

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In any case, in response to Trump’s genocidal statement, Iran cut off direct communications with the US. From threatening to kill millions of Iranian people, to actively killing Iranian negotiators, the US-Israeli coalition has only made this war of their own making harder to end at every step of the way.

Alt-right commentator Tucker Carlson, once one of Trump’s closest allies, on his Monday show urged people close to the president to refuse orders to use “some weapon of mass destruction” on Iran.

“Figure out the codes on the [nuclear] football yourself, because everything hangs in the balance right now,” Carlson said. “This is not hysteria, this is 100% real.”

Vice President JD Vance, who laughably pitched Trump as a “candidate of peace,” openly backed Trump’s violent threats on Tuesday. “We’ve got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use,” Vance warned Iran. “The president of the United States can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don’t change their course of conduct.”

The White House reportedly denied Trump is considering using nuclear weapons in Iran, according to AFP.

Shortly after Trump’s deranged post, Israeli Prime Minister and wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is “crushing” the Iranian regime with increasing force. He claimed the military destroyed railways and bridges on Tuesday – civilian infrastructure protected by international law.

The US-Israeli war has already killed over 2,000 Iranians, including at least 212 children, and displaced 3.2 million people.

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Ahead of the 8pm “deadline,” Iran said that Kharg Island, the main oil export hub, had already been attacked. NBC News reported, citing an anonymous official, that the US had struck the island in strikes overnight, reportedly targeting military sites.

The Israeli military has already started attacking Iran’s energy infrastructure. On Monday, Israel said it struck Iran’s largest petrochemical complex, after previously targeting its nearby gas facilities, which serve the world’s largest natural gas reserve. Iran responded by attacking Saudi Arabia’s Jubail petrochemical complex.

Don’t Miss It:

Mehdi and guests will host a LIVE discussion at 8pm ET tonight (1am BST) to discuss Trump’s deadline and what happens, plus the latest from Iran.

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“Bundists and Zionists hated each other from the start. Bundists totally rejected this idea that they should leave their homes in order to colonize Palestine — a land where almost none of them had ever been.”

In her new book Here Where We Live Is Our Country, Molly Crabapple does something both radical and disarmingly simple: she tells a story that was never supposed to be remembered.

Through years of research and her signature visual storytelling, Molly resurrects the world of the Bund – a once mass movement of Jewish socialist revolutionaries who were unabashedly anti-nationalist and insisted that liberation could only come through struggle and solidarity, wherever Jews already lived. They called it “doykait,” or “hereness.” It meant fighting antisemitism not by fleeing, or by building a state elsewhere, but by linking arms with neighbors and refusing to abandon their homes and communities across Eastern Europe. In this new episode of ‘Beyond Israelism’, Molly and Simone Zimmerman revive the Bund’s lost history and political tradition.

“One of the things that Zionism tries to do is it tries to not just take over land and not just take over a culture, but tries to take over history.”

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Bundists organized workers, built schools and summer camps, created art and literature, and fought against the competing forces of European fascism and the Zionist movement who were both urging Jews to flee Europe.

While most Bundists were murdered in the Nazi gas chambers and Soviet gulags, some, like Marek Edelman – a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – carried that commitment forward long after the Holocaust, insisting that Jewish identity demanded standing with the oppressed, including with Palestinians. It is for this reason — the Bund’s principled anti-Zionism — that they have been mostly excluded from history.

“It is impossible not to see the liquidation of Gaza in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto...”

Molly’s vivid communing with the past offers a powerful companion to our present. She insists that history is not foreclosed, and that the traditions we inherit are, in part, a matter of choice. In a time of genocide and fascism, the Bund’s ideas could not feel more prescient, and their stories and lessons more urgent to learn from.

Free subscribers get a 5-minute preview of the video above while Zeteo’s paid subscribers can watch it in full. As always, you can also listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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‘Beyond Israelism with Simone Zimmerman’ is a provocative new video podcast series from Tikkun Olam Productions, the team behind the viral and award-winning 2023 film Israelism. In this series, Simone will host bold and inspiring conversations that face, head on, the growing global reckoning with Zionism, the debates over Jewish identity, and the urgent struggle for Palestinian freedom. The episodes will unpack the myths of Zionism; dive deep into the meaning of Palestinian liberation, and through raw and fearless discussions examine the Jewish relationship with Israel.

If you enjoyed this conversation, here are some additional resources:

Order Molly’s book: Here Where We Live Is Our Country

Molly’s op-ed in The Guardian: ‘They tried to smear him as an antisemite – but Mayor Zohran Mamdani walks in a rich Jewish tradition’

More of Molly’s work on her official website: www.mollycrabapple.com

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Hi everyone! Prem here : )

Hope you had a nice holiday weekend, if you and yours celebrate. Wherever you are, I hope you are having the opportunity to enjoy simple pleasures. I've been enjoying the beautiful cherry blossoms of Washington, DC, and getting to watch ‘Project Hail Mary’ in a movie theater. (Amaze, amaze, amaze!)

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ a detailed walkthrough of Donald Trump's genuinely insane public appearances on the eve of his deadline for returning Iran to the "stone ages"; the Washington press corps offers an embarrassing display of supposed First Amendment "solidarity"; and how Trump's dream Pentagon budget would make the US military one of the biggest polluters in the world.

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OK, Grandpa, Let’s Get You to Bed

Between standing alongside his wife and a staffer in a bunny costume for the White House Easter Egg Roll, and standing alongside fellow alleged sexual abuser and war criminal Pete Hegseth for a press conference, Donald Trump had a busy Monday. And at each stop, he delivered remarks that contributed to one of his most bizarre, dangerous, and outright vicious days as president yet.

*Inhale* … and here we go:

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