Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian rights activist, filed a lawsuit July 14 in US federal court in Manhattan alleging a "coordinated" conspiracy between senior Trump administration officials and three private organizations to target him for deportation over his advocacy work. Khalil is a former Columbia University graduate student who became the public face of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism.

The US will launch a diplomatic campaign aimed at dismantling the International Criminal Court, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced July 6. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Rubio wrote that the US will work alongside allied governments to take the Court apart "brick by brick, if necessary," using all tools at the government's disposal. He said the campaign's message to other governments will be a choice of "sovereign states over globalism," and pledged that the administration will protect US service members from ICC jurisdiction.

At the UN's Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa warned that artificial intelligence poses the threat of an "information Armageddon." Scholars of critical theory perceive that online culture reproduces a "cycle of epistemic injustice" by fostering "organized stupidity" that fuels extremism and authoritarianism. And the same technology now implements the grim material application of this degraded intellectual climate, with a UN Human Rights Council study especially accusing Palantir of being part of an "economy of genocide" through its enabling of Israel's AI-enhanced targeting in Gaza. Meanwhile, the pollution generated by the data centers that power AI is now "almost incomprehensible." Despite all this, UNESCO in Geneva glibly called for a "safe and inclusive AI that benefits all," and an openly boosteristic "AI for Good" confab was held alongside the Global Dialogue. The "anti-tech rebellion" against screens in school classrooms is a significant sign of hope, but the end of reading and death of literacy are already upon us. Moves toward greater regulation of AI are most significant as a catalyst for the conversation that needs to be had: how to launch an effective movement for abolition. In Episode 336 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case.

More than 200 civil society groups and advocates on June 15 issued a joint statement calling for an immediate halt to the use of artificial intelligence systems in military "kill chains," warning that AI-accelerated warfare risks facilitating violations of international criminal, human rights and humanitarian law.

A cyber-attack targeting the World Food Program has exposed sensitive personal information belonging to some 600,000 households in Gaza, the UN's food agency has confirmed, in what may be the largest-known breach of humanitarian beneficiary data to date. WFP is investigating a "security-related incident" in which "unauthorized actors" accessed personal information submitted by Palestinians in Gaza, the agency said in a statement sent to aid recipients via Telegram on May 31. The exposed information included names, ID and mobile numbers, and location data, the statement said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said May 28 that he had ordered the Israeli military to take over 70% of the territory of the Gaza Strip. "Let's start with that," he added. A day earlier, Minister of Defense Israel Katz said the government is planning for large numbers of Palestinians to leave the enclave "at the right time and in the right manner," which rights groups say amounts to ethnic cleansing.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told Israeli President Isaac Herzog that Israel's treatment of detained flotilla activists is "appalling" and "unacceptable" during a call between the two on May 25.

"Hondurasgate"—an apparent plot involving Israel, the United States, and former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) to destabilize Latin America's progressive governments through disinformation—has thrust Israel's ties to the region back into the spotlight. The scandal emerged ahead of a diplomatic visit by Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Central America as part of a push to consolidate alliances with the region's right-wing leaders.