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No sooner had the ink dried on Donald Trump’s signing of a peace plan for the Middle East than “concerns” were raised that he will move on to some other subject that he feels requires his attention — and the whole framework will collapse.According to New York Times analyst Karen DeYoung, the president's plan has gaping holes which are already being singled out by experts in diplomacy, and worries are growing that the brain trust that pushed it through will be moving on to try and solve the Russia/Ukraine impasse.According to DeYoung, Trump could have done himself a favor by sharing ownership and responsibility with Democrats, but instead shoved them to the side.“Rather than pledging a renewal of the historic bipartisan U.S. support for Israel that has fractured over Netanyahu’s scorched-earth operations in Gaza, Trump rambled through his usual insults of his Democratic predecessors, saying they had a “hatred toward Israel” and could never have accomplished what he did,” she wrote, before adding that Aaron David Miller, a veteran Middle East negotiator under Republican and Democratic administrations, sees trouble ahead.“If I was running this, I wouldn’t leave [the region] until the president had assurances of at least four working groups, all headed by a senior American official,” he explained. “If they don’t approach it this way, I don’t see how it’s going to work. I can’t tell you in 25 years, even though our efforts mostly failed, how many peace conferences and big gatherings I went to. It’s the day after the peace conference where serious people wake up and say … what do we do now?”The Times’ DeYoung added, “One of the greatest fears, Miller and others said, is that as the immediacy of the shooting war and humanitarian disaster that have riveted the world for two years fades, so will the forward momentum.”With DeYoung suggesting Trump believes he has “solved” the Gaza situation — with no firm framework in place to go forward — there is a belief he will move on and, “the administration may not have the bandwidth to stick with the day after.”You can read more here.

When tips started coming on Oct. 2, warning that the Trump administration was planning to offer financial incentives for unaccompanied immigrant children as young as 14 to self-deport, hundreds of immigration lawyers and advocates gathered on a call.Their aim was to figure out how to protect vulnerable children from "Freaky Friday" — a rumored U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) mission set for Oct. 3. Named for a popular kids’ film, the operation would present children in the U.S. illegally with the option to voluntarily return to their home countries, rather than pursuing asylum or other forms of relief, even though many such children are fleeing abuse, trafficking or violence, advocates told Raw Story. “The first time I heard it, I was like ‘This has to be a joke,’” said Ala Amoachi, an immigration attorney in East Islip, N.Y., who has represented hundreds of unaccompanied alien children (UACs).But then she got word from the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which said information about the mission “was coming from credible sources and that they are not rumors.”Another immigration advocate who declined to be named due to fear of retaliation said they learned about “Freaky Friday” from a government whistleblower.On the morning of Oct. 3, Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney and adjunct Emory University law professor, posted a message on X.There is a darkness and evil that is taking over ICE, led by the dark lord Miller. ICE is launching a nationwide operation today, Friday 10/3, reportedly named “Freaky Friday” that will target unaccompanied children aged 14 and older of all nationalities. Here is what we know:…— Charles Kuck (@ckuck) October 3, 2025 “There is a darkness and evil that is taking over ICE, led by the dark lord Miller,” Kuck wrote, referencing Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff.“ICE is launching a nationwide operation today … reportedly named ‘Freaky Friday’ that will target unaccompanied children aged 14 and older of all nationalities.”Kuck described details of the plan, from a “really reliable source.”Unaccompanied children would receive a “threat” letter from ICE when they turned 18 if they didn’t waive their applications for relief under laws like the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, Kuck wrote. They would be offered $2,500 to return to their home countries. Otherwise, any family members in the U.S. would face threat of arrest, Kuck posted.An Oct. 3 email shared with Raw Story confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) planned to offer a one-time resettlement stipend up to $2,500 to UACs aged 14 and older, in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), who wanted to self-deport.DHS answered Kuck with an X post of its own, denying the “Freaky Friday” mission name but confirming a “voluntary” self-deportation payment.“CHUCK KUCK IS WRONG!” the post said. (In fact, Kuck’s name is pronounced “Cook.”)CHUCK KUCK IS WRONG!The anti-ICE activists have made up a ridiculous term, “Freaky Friday,” to instill fear and spread misinformation that drives the increased violence occurring against federal law enforcement. Cartels trafficked countless unaccompanied children into the… https://t.co/dZR0FIsLAz— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) October 3, 2025 “The anti-ICE activists have made up a ridiculous term, ‘Freaky Friday,’ to instill fear and spread misinformation that drives the increased violence occurring against federal law enforcement,” the government post said.The post also said cartels “trafficked countless unaccompanied children into the United States during the Biden Administration.”It said DHS and HHS, whose Office of Refugee Resettlement cares for unaccompanied children without a U.S. legal guardian, were “working diligently to ensure the safety and wellbeing of those children.” “Many of these UACs had no choice when they were dangerously smuggled into this country,” the post said. “ICE and the Office of Refugee and Resettlement at HHS are offering a strictly voluntary option to return home to their families. This voluntary option gives UACs a choice and allows them to make an informed decision about their future. Any payment to support a return home would be provided after an immigration judge grants the request and the individual arrives in their country of origin. Access to financial support when returning home would assist should they choose that option.”In response to a series of questions, an ICE spokesperson sent the same statement to Raw Story.‘Threaten the lives of children’Speaking to Raw Story, Kuck did not name the source that tipped him off to the “Freaky Friday" mission but said “there's no doubt that was the name. That is a typical DHS name under Trump.”ICE has launched enforcement missions including Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago and Operation Tidal Wave in Florida. DHS has given immigration detention facilities alliterative names, including Alligator Alcatraz, Speedway Slammer and Cornhusker Clink.Kuck called DHS’s response to his post “hilarious.”“‘Chuck Kuck is wrong’ and yet in the very same tweet they admitted I was right. They didn't like the name — you know, they didn't object to Stephen Miller being called the dark lord, so that must still be true.”Also on Oct. 3, the National Immigrant Justice Center and Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights released a statement about a widely circulated email that referenced “Freaky Friday” and the program targeting unaccompanied children 14 to 18 years old but with the potential to affect children as young as 10.“I think somebody needed to shine a spotlight on this,” Kuck said.An ICE official said the self-deportation stipend is first being offered to 17-year-old UACs. It is currently unclear if the program will eventually extend to UACs 14 or younger.The immigration advocate who requested anonymity said: “By the time that we got to Friday, it was like, ‘Okay, did they change their mind? Did they reverse course? Was this just like a stunt? Are they leaking this information to catch the leakers?” ‘Trauma upon trauma’While he couldn’t attend due to travel, Kuck said the Oct. 2 call mobilizing immigration attorneys was “a reaction to a program that comes out of nowhere with no warning, that would literally potentially threaten the lives of children.”“That's insane. That's literally what we're what we've reduced ourselves to in the immigration enforcement sphere? That’s sad.” The immigration advocate who spoke anonymously said lawyers were “going out of their ways to officially enter into representation with the kids” in case UACs were going to be moved from care facilities run by HHS. That way, “the government wouldn't be able to say, ‘Oh, we didn't know that this kid didn't have a lawyer or something like that.’”The advocate also said that on Labor Day weekend, in early September, the administration attempted to send more than 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan children to their home country.“We're getting calls from the government saying, ‘Wake up the kids … they're being deported, and tell them to pack two lunches,’” the advocate said.Within 30 minutes, government contractors showed up at shelters in Texas and Arizona, the advocate said. Children were boarded on planes and one started taxiing before a judge ordered an emergency halt at 4 a.m on the Sunday.“That's one of the reasons why people were so alarmed and also so ready to take action [on Oct. 3],” the advocate said. “The government tried to disappear kids in the middle of the night when they thought no one was watching during a holiday weekend, and then now we hear that they're gonna call this Operation Freaky Friday and start targeting unaccompanied kids in this other way?“It shows a pattern of this administration going after unaccompanied kids.”UACs at U.S. government facilities are “the most vulnerable" of unaccompanied minors as they typically don’t have legal representation, Kuck said. “Generally, if a child came across the border, it wasn't because they thought it was a really great idea,” Kuck said. “My God, this is who we should be protecting, not offering money so they'll go back to what could potentially be a life-threatening situation in their home country.”Amoachi pushed back on the idea that the self-deportation stipend is “voluntary.”“They have all these special vulnerabilities,” Amoachi said. “They are minors, and even if they're not, they're vulnerable because they often experienced abuse: sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse, and they're scared. They're scared for their families. They're very traumatized right now with everything that's going on.”Amoachi detailed “really horrifying situations” clients have faced. One 14-year-old “gave herself up to be a victim instead” when a human smuggler was going to rape her sister, she said.Kuck said he represented a 15-year-old sex trafficking victim who was sexually abused when she arrived in the U.S.The advocate who spoke anonymously was appalled by the idea of a child making a “life-or-death decision without a trusted adult.”“A lot of these kids are leaving countries with high amounts of cartel violence, and so a masked man shows up at your house and says, ‘We'll give you X amount of money to carry this across the border, or join our gang,' or whatever, and they're putting you in a life or death situation, and then you come to the United States, and then there's another masked man coming to you, saying, ‘You have to make this decision right now.’ It's just trauma upon trauma.”Amoachi said she had spoken with kindergarten-aged UACs who had seen classmates killed for not joining gangs in places like El Salvador. One 5-year-old was abandoned after his mother killed herself, having been in a forced relationship with a gang member, Amoachi said.“What low have we reached in this country when we're going after unaccompanied minors?” Amoachi said. ‘It's just counter-humanitarian to do these things, particularly because a lot of UACs, they're coming to the U.S. usually to reunite with one or both of their parents, and they're often coming from situations where they were physically abused or psychologically abused or exposed to sexual abuse or gang violence.” ‘Done for show’Unaccompanied, undocumented minors may qualify for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), a form of immigration relief for children abused, neglected or abandoned by one or both of their parents.Two of Amoachi’s clients were deported to El Salvador this year despite pending Special Immigrant Juvenile Status cases. They suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and depression as a result of detention and deportation, Raw Story reported.Nicole Whitaker, an immigration attorney in Towson, Md., said: “This effort is a part of a broader escalation in immigration enforcement under the current administration, signaling a shift from targeting adults with criminal records to targeting children. “It goes against the spirit of the SIJS legislation as it was originally enacted and punishes children and families who have done the right thing by following the proper procedures and ‘waiting in line’ for legal status."Marina Shepelsky, an immigration lawyer in Brooklyn, N.Y., came to the U.S. as an immigrant herself, fleeing the Soviet Union. She said she gets frustrated at family members “cheering” on the Trump administration. Marina Shepelsky during an interview with Raw Story (Screen grab)“I find it to be almost hypocritical when people say, ‘Well, we went through the legal channels,” Shepelsky said. “People will be so happy to go through legal channels if there were legal channels. If it was a real amnesty, millions of people would apply, and they would pay a $100,000 penalty. They would find the money, believe me.“I think it's very cruel, this enforcement the way it’s done. I think that it's just a lot of it is done for show, as a deterrent to people, and I think it's unfair.”Amoachi said children are generally inclined to comply with people in authority, which could compel them to accept a self-deportation offer. UACs might also be tempted to take the $2,500 self-deportation stipend if there’s “implication that their family members could face repercussions,” meaning some children would be “willing to sacrifice themselves for their families," Amoachi said.This summer DHS launched a voluntary departure program through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Home App, offering subsidized travel and a $1,000 “exit bonus.”“None of this is accidental,” Kuck said. “They want to literally deport everybody, so they do the easy ones first.”Shepelsky mainly represents Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war with Russia. Given her clients are usually white, “they are treated differently,” she said, “but I wouldn't say they're treated much, much better than others.” “This is so inhumane and so not aligned with what all of us have always thought was the purpose of the immigration system. “Now, instead of protecting them, especially kids, we are trying to buy them, bribe them, scare them, bully them, really, into leaving.”

Keir Starmer is considering Aadhaar as model for UK, but detractors warn of ‘digital coercion’ and security breachesIt is often difficult for people in India to remember life before Aadhaar. The digital biometric ID, allegedly available for every Indian citizen, was only introduced 15 years ago but its presence in daily life is ubiquitous.Indians now need an Aadhaar number to buy a house, get a job, open a bank account, pay their tax, receive benefits, buy a car, get a sim card, book priority train tickets and admit children into school. Babies can be given Aadhaar numbers almost immediately after they are born. While it is not mandatory, not having Aadhaar de facto means the state does not recognise you exist, digital rights activists say. Continue reading...

MAGA influencer Steve Bannon insisted that there would have to be a "Christian state" in the Middle East as a part of a peace deal negotiated by U.S. President Donald Trump.During the Monday War Room program, MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec told Bannon that the deal should include protection for Christians."But in this peace deal, whether we get the transitional, technocratic government, whatever we see coming forward, I want to make sure that there are protections for the Christians who are on the ground here, that there are protections for the holy sites, rebuilding of the holy sites, rebuilding of the churches," he said.Bannon argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lost his bid to prevent a two-state solution with the Palestinians."The only solution here, if you're going to have a two-state solution, you have to have a three-state solution," he insisted. "You have to have a Christian state. We can no longer just say, take it through the Muslims and the Jews. It just can't work.""If you want to really protect the Holy Land, the Christians are going to have to get their own stake in this," he continued. "That is as obvious, as sure as the turning of the earth. And I think this is going to be a huge condition of the Christians in the United States, evangelical and Catholics, to say, well, hang on for a second.""Now that because of facts on the ground and how Netanyahu overplayed his hand with the Greater Israel Project, and President Trump finally said, no, we're America first. We're not Israel first."

A history professor is abruptly leaving the U.S. after a conservative group founded by the late Charlie Kirk singled him out for persecution, according to a report on Wednesday. Mark Bray, who has taught about antifascist movements at Rutgers University since 2019, notified students Sunday that his courses would immediately move online as he and his family prepared to flee the country for their safety, reported the Washington Post.“Since my family and I do not feel safe in our home at the moment, we are moving for the year to Europe,” Bray told students by email. “Truly I am so bummed about not being able to spend time with you all in the classroom.”Far-right social media accounts called attention to Bray in late September, after news outlets quoted his remarks about President Donald Trump’s executive order designating antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization," and the Washington Post confirmed three death threats sent to the professor since Sept. 26.One online activist called him a “domestic terrorist professor," while another shared his home address in New Jersey, and the Rutgers chapter of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, which was founded by the late Kirk, launched a petition Thursday demanding Bray's firing, referring to Trump's executive order and smearing the educator as a threat to their safety.Bray decided to move his family to Spain for the rest of the year, and he's optimistic they'll be able to return one day. “I’m hopeful about returning, and I’m hopeful — and I say this as a history professor — that someday we will look back on this as a cautionary tale about authoritarianism,” Bray said.The university told the Post that administrators were aware of the Turning Point USA petition and Bray's message to students. “We are gathering more information about this evolving situation,” the university said in a statement.Bray, the author of four books on anarchism and antifa, also faced widespread criticism when he told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” in 2017, while a lecturer at Dartmouth University, that violence was sometimes justified, after the deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.Dartmouth's president at the time condemned Bray in a statement and accused him “supporting violent protest," but more than 100 of the university's faculty members rallied around him.Turning Point USA did not respond to requests for comment on the report, but the Trump administration justified the threats he received by blaming Kirk's assassination, which remains under investigation, on "Democrat violence," but Bray characterized the threats chasing him to Europe as part of the president's crackdown on academic freedom.“There’s been a concerted attack on universities, and I feel like this is a facet of that," Bray said, "to make it so that professors who conduct research on protest movements don’t feel safe sharing their research or teaching about topics that the administration doesn’t like.”

The holidays are about to more difficult and more expensive, warned importers speaking to CNBC for a Wednesday report. President Donald Trump's tariffs are leading to complications for countries that don't know how to submit funds that come as a result of the tariffs. While Trump has boasted that trillions of dollars are coming in from his tariffs, in August, at least 30 countries simply gave up and suspended or restricted all shipments to the United States. U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods mean that the world's largest Christmas tree manufacturer will face an extra 57.6% tariff, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.“We brought in about 25% less product,” said Chris Butler, CEO of National Tree Company, when speaking to CNBC about the matter. “We are definitely going to see a short supply this year. So if you’re a consumer and you are in the market for Christmas goods this year, I would definitely act now and get ahead of the curve.”Butler leads "the Christmas Trade Group," which is a group of organizations with over 1,000 employees who generate $1 billion in revenue annually. He explained that Black Friday is usually a big day for purchases on Christmas décor and trees are just scratching the surface of the smaller amount of items being imported. The reduction of imports means such items will likely sell out quickly. “I would get ahead of that. So buy now, buy early is what I would say to consumers,” Butler said.He went on to say that prices will be increased by at least 10% as a result of Trump's trade war. “I think most consumers will be able to weather the 10% price increase, but consumers at the lower end of the economic spectrum may struggle,” he continued.Butler has already met with the the Trump administration twice about his hope to "save Christmas." “This is why we are having conversations with the [Trump] administration so we can potentially save Christmas going forward and give American consumers the low prices that we think they deserve,” he said.Read the full report here.

Flanked by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted a White House dinner with some of the richest and most powerful leaders of the world’s tech giants.To Fraser Patterson, CEO and founder of Skillit, an AI-powered construction hiring platform, it was no coincidence that after the meeting last month of more than 30 Silicon Valley power players and Trump advisers, the administration unveiled a plan to charge $100,000 one-time application fees for H-1B visas, which tech companies typically use to employ highly skilled foreign workers.“It can appear as though, rather than it being an improvement to immigration policy, it feels a little more like a labor war strategy,” Patterson said.“Isn't one of the great tenets of the American way of life and Constitution the separation of church and state? Wouldn't that extend to business, too, between business and state?”Patterson’s New York-based company employs eight — an infinitesimal fraction of the workforce at giants like Amazon, with more than a million employees and nearly 15,000 H-1B visa holders.“The largest technology companies are going to be able to hoard the best global talent, and I think it's easy to be able to draw a straight line between that and shutting out the smaller startups and the smaller firms that can’t enforce that price tag,” Patterson said. “I think it scales back the competitiveness of the technology industry, broadly speaking.”‘Global war on talent’The Trump administration says the current H-1B visa program allows employers “to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers,” and the program has been “abused.”Last week Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) reintroduced bipartisan legislation, The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, to close loopholes in programs they say tech giants have used while laying off Americans.But, Patterson said, limiting H-1B visas will effectively end up “closing the door on skilled workers” and “gift Europe the best possible opportunity to label itself as the tech talent hub. “The general consensus is this is going to narrow the pool,” Patterson said. “There's going to be just fewer nationalities represented, fewer ideas. The U.S. becomes less of a magnet.”Rich Pleeth, CEO and founder of Finmile, an AI-powered logistics and delivery software, agreed that the fee might tilt the scales of tech dominance away from the U.S., where places like San Francisco and New York have long been considered global hubs for innovation.“The global war on talent is real,” Pleeth said. “Europe has a golden opportunity … Canada, Singapore, Berlin, they're all going to benefit.” Rich Pleeth (provided photo)Finmile employs 15 people in the U.K., seven in Romania and two in the U.S.“It's very challenging for smaller companies like us,” Pleeth said. “Talent is everything, and if the U.S. makes it harder to bring in the world's best talent, where do you set up headquarters?”While the Trump administration says the new H1-B fee will help American workers, particularly recent college graduates seeking IT jobs, Patterson said it would have the opposite effect, likely leading to “greater offshoring.”Thanks to Trump’s array of trade tariffs, which he says will bring jobs back to the U.S., many American small businesses are already struggling to survive as they face increased costs.“In reality, it's probably going to lead to labor shortages,” Patterson said. “You can't just turn on a faucet overnight to really highly skilled local workers.”Nicole Whitaker, an immigration attorney in Towson, Md., said the proposed $100,000 fee sends the message to foreign workers seeking job opportunities in the U.S. that "our doors are closed ... find another country.""This is a part of a bigger and broader push by this administration — even if things don't go into effect— to make it look like we are shutting down our borders. We are not open, and we're not welcoming toward immigrants," Whitaker said.‘The next Googles’ Pleeth, a former marketing manager at Google, pointed to tech leaders including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who were born in India but came to the U.S. for college and to work.“If you suddenly make it hard for talented people to come in, the next Googles are not going to be built in the U.S.,” Pleeth said. “Talent is the oxygen for the tech industry. For decades the U.S. had an open pipeline … we don't expect the $100K toll to hit the tech companies who are the ones who can afford it the most.”Skillit currently does not have any employees sponsored through the H-1B visa program but Patterson said he had used it when the fees were more reasonable, around $2,500.Patterson, who was born in Scotland, came to the U.S. on an O-1 visa for foreign workers of “extraordinary talent.” He is now close to becoming a U.S. citizen. Fraser Patterson (provided photo)“Very onerous, nerve-racking, even to get here … but I would say it wasn't disproportional to the value of coming here,” he said.Pleeth wants to move from the U.K. to the U.S. with his wife, two daughters and dog, a process he expects some challenges with but is hopeful will “eventually move forward.”“It's just going to become a lot harder for junior people who can share cultures, can come in with new ideas,” Pleeth said. “It's a talent tax.”

Donald Trump on Sunday was warned about yet another criminal prosecution that's coming his way.Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School and a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, over the weekend published a piece called "The Next Prosecution of Donald Trump" in which he claims "plans are under way to try him in the International Criminal Court.""This time he can strike first," Kontorovich argues.According to Kontorovich's analysis, the international court will try to "find a jurisdictional hook" in the president's actions."Before his second term began, President Trump was prosecuted repeatedly in state court, federal court and the Senate. After it ends, he could face trial in another venue, the International Criminal Court in The Hague," Kontorovich said. "The U.S. didn’t sign the Rome Statute and therefore doesn’t belong to the ICC, but the court can find a jurisdictional hook in actions the administration has taken abroad in ICC member states."Specifically, Kontorovich says Trump may have opened the door to his future prosecution with the recent attacks on purported smuggling boat operations."The strikes on Venezuelan narcoterror smuggling boats provide one possible avenue. Shortly after the U.S. Navy destroyed the first such vessel, Ken Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch, endorsed ICC intervention. 'Trump just did what the International Criminal Court has charged former Philippines Pres. Duterte with doing—ordering the summary execution of alleged drug traffickers,' Mr. Roth tweeted," the professor wrote. "Venezuela is a Rome Statute party, which in the court’s thinking gives it jurisdiction over U.S. officials and servicemen involved in the attacks. The ICC has already launched an investigation against a nonmember state (Israel) based on a single boarding of a vessel flagged by a member state, so it has all the precedents it needs."He goes on to offer advice for how Trump can attack the ICC and circumvent the future prosecution.Read the piece here.