Kristi Noem has been ousted from her position as homeland security secretary after intensifying calls for her resignation. Noem’s tenure has been marked by allegations of corruption, deadly immigration raids and legal challenges. ProPublica reporter Justin Elliott has reported extensively on Noem’s tenure, including a $200 million ad campaign that may have been the inciting incident for her firing. “This did not go through the normal competitive process,” says Elliott. Instead, the ad “went to a Delaware LLC that was formed only a few days before.”
President Trump has announced Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma as the new homeland security secretary. Mullin “has been known as a hard-liner,” says Chris Stein, senior politics reporter for The Guardian US. Stein adds that the Trump administration will continue its aggressive immigration policies despite the change in leadership.
It is the seventh day of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, and Israel is escalating attacks on Lebanon after ordering the entire population of southern Lebanon to flee. This comes as Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatened to turn areas of Lebanon into another Gaza in a video shared on social media Thursday. “The word on everyone’s mouths here is ethnic cleansing,” says Lylla Younes, an investigative journalist speaking with Democracy Now! from Beirut. “People are basically fleeing north with nowhere to go. Shelters are filling up rapidly. People are sleeping on the pavement in the winter nights.”
Human rights lawyer Omar Shakir, the new executive director of DAWN, has urged Iran to give the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over apparent crimes committed by the U.S. and Israel in strikes on schools and hospitals. “There is more and more evidence emerging every single day of grave war crimes being carried out by the United States and Israel,” he says. “The Israeli government, because of impunity, is emboldened across the region. And unless we see a strong response from states that are willing to use the tools of accountability, … the risk to civilians across the region will continue to grow.”
Mehdi on the Republican religious nutjobs pining for Armageddon in the Middle East. Plus: the latest on the Iran school bombing and, for once, a disgraced Republican is shamed into quitting politics.
“I have a bomb, I have a bomb,” the male voice said. “Don’t let anyone in or out of the clinic, or I’ll set it off.” For about 25 years, A Preferred Women’s Health Center, an abortion clinic in Charlotte, North Carolina, has endured more than its share of threats—usually, broad warnings about damnation in […]