Pro-Israel Group Asks Pam Bondi to Investigate YouTube Star Ms. Rachel

The right-wing StopAntisemitism group thinks that children’s YouTube educator Ms. Rachel should be investigated by Attorney General Pam Bondi for “pro-Hamas propaganda.”

The New York Post reports that the organization sent a letter to Bondi complaining about social media posts from the YouTube star, whose real name is Rachel Accurso, about Palestinian children killed by Israel during its brutal massacre of Gaza since 2023.

“Her posts have largely ignored the suffering of Israeli victims, hostages, and Jewish children, while she consistently amplifies misinformation from Hamas and other anti-Israel sources,” StopAntisemitism director Liora Rez wrote in the letter.

Rez also claimed that with “vast sums of foreign funds” being “directed toward propagandizing our young people on college campuses, we suspect there is a similar dynamic in the online influencer space.”

“We urge you and your office to investigate whether or not Ms. Rachel is being remunerated to disseminate Hamas-aligned propaganda to her millions of followers, as this may violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),” Rez wrote to Bondi.

The organization accuses Accurso of using fabricated and debunked reports of children dying of hypothermia (that have actually been verified), and using death toll figures from Gaza that it says came from Hamas (but are actually considered reliable).

Accurso didn’t respond to the Post’s inquiries, but said on Instagram in May that “I care deeply for all children. Palestinian children, Israeli children, children in the US—Muslim, Jewish, Christian children—all children, in every country. Not one is excluded.”

The letter seems to be fitting into a pattern of pro-Israel organizations, such as Canary Mission and Betar, targeting critics of Israel’s military actions, as well as supporters of Palestinian self-determination. Betar says it has provided lists of noncitizen protesters to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, and other government agencies, recommending deportation.

Several international students targeted by Betar and Canary Mission, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, have been detained by ICE as they fight deportation in the courts. But Ms. Rachel is an American citizen with a YouTube following of millions of children around the world, and has merely expressed concern about a human rights catastrophe. It seems even that is grounds for a criminal investigation in today’s political climate.

On Monday, the Internal Revenue Service agreed to start sharing tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help the Trump administration find and deport undocumented immigrants, according to The New York Times.

This is a serious 180 from previous protocol. U.S. law historically requires the IRS to keep taxpayer information like addresses and income under wraps, even from other departments of the federal government. Now Trump is classifying these deportations as criminal investigations to take advantage of a loophole that breaks from that IRS privacy practice.

“It’s unprecedented,” Center for Taxpayer Rights director and former IRS official Nina Olson told the Times. IRS chief counsel William Paul was fired as the deal was made and replaced with Andrew De Mello, a Trump appointee.

Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022 at a rate of $8,889 per person, paying into programs with benefits that they’re barred from receiving. This IRS and ICE deal will likely push undocumented immigrants to stop paying those taxes and pursue unreported employment to avoid getting their information leaked to ICE. These “under the table” jobs are unregulated, dangerous, and often exploitative.

The Trump administration is continuing its unconstitutional attack on attorneys it disagrees with, this time by detaining an American citizen.

Amir Makled, an attorney representing a pro-Palestinian student protester arrested at the University of Michigan last year, was detained at the Detroit Metro Airport Sunday upon returning from a trip to the Dominican Republic with his family. 

Federal agents held Makled for 90 minutes, questioning him about his clients. They also tried to get Makled to give up his phone, which he refused to do, but agents did look at his contact list, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Makled was ultimately released without incident, but his detention is an indication of Donald Trump’s growing assault on attorneys taking cases he is against. The president has already issued executive orders penalizing five of the country’s top law firms, as well as a memo to the Justice Department directing the agency to punish immigration attorneys supposedly perpetuating fraud in the system.  

“This current administration is doing something that no administration has done—they are attacking attorneys,” Makled told the Press. “This is a different type of threat to the rule of law that I see. They are now challenging the judiciary, or lawyers, they’re putting pressure (on them) to dissuade attorneys from taking on issues that are against the government’s issues. We have an obligation as lawyers to stand up to this stuff.”

Trump’s punishment of law firms, which is a move out of the autocrat’s handbook, comes amid a larger crackdown on free speech and any sign—personal or institutional—of Palestinian solidarity. In recent weeks, several international students involved in pro-Palestine protests have been unlawfully kidnapped and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and nearly 300 international students have had their visas revoked for similar reasons.

Makled’s client, Samantha Lewis, is an American citizen and one of seven pro-Palestine protesters arrested at the University of Michigan last spring. The 38-year-old attorney is unsure whether this case is what triggered his detention Sunday, but he told the Press he will not stay silent despite the White House’s intimidation strategy.

“I have to be a person who can speak out when your rights are violated. We have to be the balancing act. We’re a nation of laws. You gotta have lawyers,” he said.

Trump’s Justice Department  is going to pull back on prosecuting cryptocurrency fraud, according to a memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The memo, sent to the Justice Department Monday, states that the DOJ won’t be pursuing cases that Blanche said are better suited for financial regulators, instead focusing on crimes committed with cryptocurrency, such as selling illegal drugs, The Washington Post reports.  

Blanche also plans to dismantle the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which was set up in 2022 to “address the challenge posed by the criminal misuse of cryptocurrencies and digital assets.” The move throttles an enforcement team that has successfully prosecuted market manipulation schemes and attempts to hide the owners of crypto assets. The unit was already hampered by the fact that in the Trump administration’s first days, its leader was transferred to a new sanctuary cities division in the DOJ. 

Now other attorneys previously focused on cryptocurrency will instead focus on immigration crimes and procurement fraud, the memo states, although federal prosecutors will still be directed to bring cases against people who defraud investors.

The shift away from prosecuting crypto crimes is not surprising for the Trump administration. The president has long cozied up to cryptocurrency investors, and even engaged in some shady crypto transactions of his own, such as his deal with Justin Sun, a Chinese national accused of fraud. Trump and his wife, Melania, have also released their own memecoins.

The president’s announcement last month of a new national “crypto strategic reserve” smacks of a blatant ploy to make some of his cronies richer, and the Trump family has reportedly held talks about taking a financial stake into Binance, a cryptocurrency firm that pleaded guilty in 2023 to money laundering. It seems that Trump and his cronies are looking to profit from cryptocurrency and want pesky regulations and law enforcement out of the way.

Elon Musk called Donald Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks” Tuesday, once again betraying the administration’s deep rift over the president’s disastrous tariffs. 

Navarro found himself in hot water with Musk after he called the billionaire bureaucrat a “car assembler” during an appearance on CNBC Monday.  

“When it comes to tariffs and trade, we all understand in the White House—and the American people understand—that Elon’s a car manufacturer. But he’s not a car manufacturer. He’s a car assembler, in many cases,” Navarro said. 

“If you go to his Texas plant, a good part of the engines that he gets, which in the EV case is the batteries, come from Japan and come from China, the electronics come from Taiwan,” Navarro said.

Navarro explained that Musk’s view on tariffs differed from the White House’s because he wanted to continue to use “cheap foreign parts.”

Musk was furious. “Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false,” he wrote in a post on X Tuesday. 

In a separate post, Musk claimed that “Tesla has the most American-made cars.”

“Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks,” he added. 

Musk included a link to an article from 2023 citing a Cars.com study that found Tesla produced the “most American” cars. One extremely important caveat: The study included Canada as part of the U.S., which is, of course, subject to Trump’s “permanent” 25 percent tariffs on all imported vehicles and auto parts.

The more recent version of that same study, from 2024, found that the Tesla Model Y still topped the list, though it noted that the company no longer held “a vice grip at the top of the order thanks in part to changes in this year’s workforce calculations.” Still, the study included Canadian parts content as U.S. parts. 

And crucially, Navarro’s not wrong that Musk’s electric vehicle company relies on foreign parts. Tesla’s batteries are manufactured at its Giga Shanghai factory in China in collaboration with Chinese battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Even if Tesla wanted to produce its batteries domestically, it would need to source materials such as nickel and lithium from other countries.

Over the weekend, the billionaire attacked Navarro’s defense of Trump’s tariffs on X, and posted a video of economist Milton Friedman that explains the global nature of supply chains, which was interpreted as a criticism of Trump’s sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” on nearly every country. 

Navarro replied by saying Musk “doesn’t understand” trade.

“The thing that’s, I think, important about Elon to understand, he sells cars. That’s what he does,” he said during an interview on Fox Business Monday. “He’s simply protecting his own interests, as any businessperson would do.”

“He’s got X, he’s got a big microphone; we don’t mind him saying whatever he wants,” Navarro added—though he may come to regret that sentiment.