Trump Issues Wild Threat to States That Boycott Israel

The Trump administration will no longer distribute disaster relief funds to states—unless their cities pledge not to boycott Israeli companies.

The revision targets the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which aims to curb Israel’s violence in Gaza by peeling financial support away from the nation and its businesses.

Trump’s condition will affect $1.9 billion that is supposed to be distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and that would apply to grants for search-and-rescue equipment, emergency manager salaries, backup power systems, and other emergency-related equipment, according to nearly a dozen grant notices reviewed by Reuters. More than a quarter of the funds—approximately $553.5 million—are earmarked for terrorism prevention in high-risk areas such as New York, which stands to receive the largest chunk at $92.2 million.

In order to access the funds, states or cities must certify that they would not avoid or end “commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies,” the grant notices state.

But the FEMA notice is just the latest in a long line of warnings from the Trump administration regarding its alliance with Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Department of Homeland Security announced in April that boycotting Israel was forbidden for any state or city intending to receive federal funding, and the White House has rescinded billions of dollars from universities around the country for failing to meet Trump’s metric of support for America’s genocidal Middle Eastern ally.

Specifically targeting New York is another way to challenge New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s chances of running the country’s most populous city. Mamdani’s support for the divestment movement has fueled the ire of the president, who has issued several sharp threats to Mamdani since the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist swept the primary. Those include telling the Queens lawmaker that he “better behave” or face “big problems.” Trump has also baselessly accused Mamdani of being an illegal immigrant.

Trump Media CEO and former Representative Devin Nunes has lost yet another lawsuit, this time against Rachel Maddow and NBC Universal.

This case, which has dragged on for more than four years, hinged on Nunes’s accusation that the MSNBC host was acting with malicious intent and malice when she mistakenly stated that Nunes “refused” to hand to the FBI documents given to him by a suspected Russian spy.

Nunes argued that Maddow and MSNBC hold “an institutional hostility, hatred, extreme bias, spite and ill-will” toward him. Maddow and the network simply stated that the Politico reporting they were following at the time of the statement was not up to date.

U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel dismissed the case on Friday, arguing that Nunes failed to prove that Maddow demonstrated actual malice toward him.

Nunes has had two other high-profile, highly unsuccessful lawsuits. In 2019, he tried to sue Twitter and two parody accounts on the site—one pretending to be his mother and another pretending to be his cow. He lost, and the cow account is still active on X. That same year, Nunes sued Esquire for libel after the magazine published a story stating that Nunes’s family dairy farm employed undocumented workers, a massive political contradiction for the Trump confidant. Nunes’s case was tossed four years later, as a judge deemed Esquire’s reporting to be correct.

A Republican representative has waded into the redistricting war—but not on Donald Trump’s side.

California Representative Kevin Kiley introduced legislation Monday to prevent congressional districts from being redrawn mid-decade. The bill, though ostensibly targeted at California Governor Gavin Newsom, would nullify any new districts drawn before the 2030 census.

“This is already the law in California under our State Constitution, which provides that redistricting is done once a decade by an Independent Commission,” Kiley posted on X about his new bill’s boundaries. “But Newsom is planning to blow all of this up so he can impose his own partisan map on voters before the next election.

“Fortunately, Congress has the ability to protect California voters using its authority under the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This will also stop a damaging redistricting war from breaking out across the country,” he continued.

Kiley conveniently left out the reason this war has broken out in the first place: President Donald Trump’s push for Texas to gerrymander its districts beyond recognition in a quest to maintain a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

Some powerful blue-state governors, such as Newsom and Kathy Hochul of New York, have abandoned their traditional resistance to gerrymandering, threatening to redraw their own districts to create more Democratic representatives in response.

“This is war. We are at war. And that’s why the gloves are off, and I say, bring it on,” Hochul said Monday.

Democratic representatives from Texas aren’t playing around, either. They’ve fled the state, making it impossible for the Texas House to reach a quorum and vote on the new maps.

Despite his stated focus on fighting Newsom in California, if Kiley were to pass his bill, it would also nullify any new districts drawn in Texas.

And to be fair, Kiley’s loud silence on Texas’s redistricting may not just be an attempt to fly under the radar of a vengeful, gerrymander-happy president: It could also be a purely self-motivated attempt to keep his seat!

A new report from Harvard’s student newspaper suggests that Trump administration officials planted a lie in The New York Times about the university capitulating to the president.

The Times reported last Monday that Harvard has “signaled a willingness” to shell out up to $500 million to settle with the Trump administration, which accuses the university of being “run” by “antisemitism and DEI.” The story, based on “four people familiar with the negotiations,” seemingly detailed a prominent domino falling as Ivy League universities and other institutions increasingly submit to the president’s shakedowns.

But reporting by The Harvard Crimson cuts against the Times’ story and even suggests that it may have been based on misinformation propagated by Trump’s team.

Citing anonymous Harvard faculty members, the Crimson reported Sunday that President Alan Garber told others that it’s “false” that the university is considering a $500 million settlement, and a deal “is not imminent.” In fact, per the Crimson, the university is actively considering fighting the matter out in court rather than settling. The president also reportedly told a faculty member that the rumor about a hefty potential payment was leaked to the media by the Trump administration. (The Crimson notes that a Harvard spokesperson declined to provide comment but, after the story was published, “disputed the characterization of Garber’s remarks.”)

The Trump White House lying about its battle with Harvard to give a false impression of victory would certainly track with its strategy elsewhere; take, for example, its misleading braggadocio on tariffs and trade deals. It also underscores yet again how the claims of Trump officials warrant extreme suspicion.

This story has been updated.

Please, won’t somebody think of the billionaires?

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren defended mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s plan to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers in order to make the city more affordable for working people during a CNBC interview Monday.

Journalist David Faber repeated a common talking point about wealthy New Yorkers and businesses being “chased out” of the city if they were to be taxed at a higher rate, and Warren was having none of it.

“The issue is affordability. Do you know how many working families are chased out of New York City every day?” she asked, resolute. “What Zohran is saying is, ‘I want people to be able to afford to live in New York City, that’s what keeps it a vibrant city.’”

Faber interjected: “Nobody disagrees with that, Senator, but raising taxes in order to do it?”

Voice dripping with faux-earnestness, Warren responded, “Oh my goodness! Oh dear! Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry?”

Mamdani’s affordability-centric message proved to be a winning one, landing him the New York City Democratic mayoral nomination by 12 points in ranked-choice voting, a margin that shocked the media ecosystem and Democratic establishment. Disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo had been seen as a shoo-in for the nomination, with most polls predicting his win up until the primary. But Mamdani’s simple, progressive goals, grassroots strategy, and infectious energy won the day.

The young assemblymember’s proposed tax hike of 2 percent for the top 1 percent of New Yorkers has sparked hysteria among some in the business community, and much has been written about the potential mass exodus of millionaires and billionaires in search of lower taxes.

But this billionaire bogeyman isn’t backed by convincing evidence, “according to copious research on taxes and their impact on migration,” reported USA Today. A 2023 study by the nonpartisan Fiscal Policy Institute found “no evidence of significant tax-motivated migration” from New York state after previous tax increases.

Meanwhile, one in four New Yorkers can’t afford essentials such as housing and food, according to a report from Columbia University and an anti-poverty nonprofit.