Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on May 12 announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for individuals from Afghanistan. Noem stated that the "conditions in Afghanistan" no longer warrant continuing the program, finding that it is "contrary to the national interest." TPS for Afghans was originally introduced by former president Joe Biden in March 2022 to protect the more than 70,000 Afghans who had entered the US as part of the government's "Operation Allies Welcome," after the Taliban's takeover in August 2021. (Jurist)

A 68-year-old veteran opposition activist was arrested after displaying a sign reading "PUTIN HITLER" from the side of a prominent bridge over the Moskva River in the center of the Russian capital May 6. Grigory Saksonov, also known as Uncle Grisha, climbed over the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge holding the sign and clad in wetsuit before lowering himself into the water below with a rope. He was pulled out of the river by police and taken away in an ambulance. Saksonov, who has been arrested before in actions in support of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and had maintained a citizen's memorial on the bridge for slain opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, faces charges of "taking part in an unauthorized action" and "disobeying a police officer." (Novaya Gazeta)

Trump is pointing to Kilmar Abrego Garcia's tattoos to justify his indefinite detention without charge in the ultra-oppressive Salvadoran prison gulag. These notoriously include a cannabis leaf, demonstrating the continued propaganda utility of the "Reefer Madness" stigma, even as a multi-million dollar legal industry emerges. But the White House actually added the characters "MS13" (name of the notorious Salvadoran gang) to the shot of Abrego Garcia's knuckles in a crude photoshop job—despite transparent denials from Trump. Lubricating the emerging transnational mass detention program with this Orwellian post-truth stratagem, the Trump regime meanwhile moves toward actual deportation of US citizens. Bill Weinberg raises the alarm in Episode 277 of the CounterVortex podcast.

The Israeli government on May 5 unveiled a new military plan for the Gaza Strip, an operation forebodingly dubbed "Gideon's Chariots" (Merkavot Gideon) after an Old Testament conqueror. Approved unanimously by the security cabinet, the plan calls for the "conquering of Gaza" and retaining the territory indefinitely, an official said. The plan also includes concentrating the Palestinian civilian population in a "sterile area" in the south of the Strip. The official said Israel will give Hamas until the end of US President Donald Trump's trip to the Middle East, which is 10 days from now, to agree to a hostage deal. Otherwise, "Operation Gideon's Chariots will begin with great force and will not end until all its objectives are achieved." The military is already calling up tens of thousands of reservists in preparation for the new operation. (TNA, ToI, TML, JNS, DW, BBC News)

Syrian Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri accused the interim government on May 1 of carrying out a "genocidal attack" on his community following two days of sectarian violence that left 100 dead. Al-Hijri said: "We no longer trust an organization that claims to be a government. A government does not kill its people through takfiri gangs to which it belongs." Takfiri is a popular pejorative used by Shi'ites and Druze for Sunni militants. Clashes broke out in the Damascus suburbs of Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya, and armed residents began to mobilize in the Druze-majority southern city of Sweida (Suwayda) before a truce was reached. (Al-Monitor, Al-Jazeera)

In Episode 272 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the Israel-hosted "International Conference on Combatting anti-Semitism" that featured speakers from the European and American neo-fascist (and even anti-Semitic!) far right. The established phenomenon of paradoxical fascist pseudo-anti-fascism has now been joined by anti-Semitic pseudo-anti-anti-Semitism. While Trump's 2019 executive order on anti-Semitism sought to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, the new posture would actually substitute the prior for the latter entirely as the ideology to be opposed, in all but name. Anti-Semitism is now acceptable as long as it is pro-Israel, fulfilling Zionist founder Theodore Herzl's 1895 prediction: "The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies."

In Episode 263 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg deconstructs the moves by the unconstitutional Trump regime to consolidate a dictatorship over the United States—attempting to seize autocratic control over the bureaucracy, and (in a case of fascist pseudo-anti-fascism) weaponizing concern with anti-Semitism to suppress free speech while institutionalizing indifference to (and consciously enflaming) all other forms of racism. And this as Elon Musk (a private-sector oligarch given extra-legal power over government functions) tells a rally of the Nazi-adjacent Alternative für Deutschland that Germany has "too much of a focus on past guilt." It took Hitler mere weeks to establish a dictatorship after coming to power, whereas with Mussolini it took some three years. We shall soon find out how long it will take in the United States—unless the country can find the wherewithal to resist.

With the sounds of war starting to fall silent in the Gaza Strip after 470 days of brutal Israeli military assault and siege, a tiny crack of hope has opened for the Palestinian residents of the enclave that they will be able to gather the shattered pieces of their lives and begin the daunting task of rebuilding. But whether the deal reached by Israel and Hamas on Jan. 15 will lead to a decisive end to the war remains entirely unclear.