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Dems Must Abandon The Tech Billionaires
9:40
The Bitchuation Room • Jan 26, 2026

Dems Must Abandon The Tech Billionaires

"ICE Out": Tens of Thousands March in Minnesota in General Strike Against Immigration Raids
Democracy Now • Jan 26, 2026

"ICE Out": Tens of Thousands March in Minnesota in General Strike Against Immigration Raids

Tens of thousands of Minnesotans braved the bitter cold in Minneapolis on Friday to demand ”ICE out.” The march was organized by faith and labor leaders and was accompanied by calls for an economic blackout. Seven hundred businesses reportedly closed in solidarity. Democracy Now!’s John Hamilton filed a report from the streets. John Reuss, an English teacher, said his students are afraid. “The fear is so tangible,” said Reuss. “If we do not shut it down right now, your city is next.”

Republicans Push Back on Party Line on ICE and Minneapolis Shooting
New Republic • Jan 26, 2026

Republicans Push Back on Party Line on ICE and Minneapolis Shooting

After a Border Patrol agent shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti, 37, in Minneapolis over the weekend, some Republicans are beginning to speak out against the Trump administration’s actions.“ICE agents do not have carte blanche in carrying out their duties,” Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said Sunday. “Lawfully carrying a firearm does not justify federal agents killing an American—especially, as video footage appears to show, after the victim had been disarmed.“Senators Murkowski, Thom Tillis, and Bill Cassidy are all calling for independent investigations into the shooting. In a post on X Saturday night, Cassidy said, “The events in Minneapolis are incredibly disturbing.”“The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake. There must be a full joint federal and state investigation. We can trust the American people with the truth,” Cassidy posted.Representative James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, went so far as to suggest that President Trump remove ICE agents from Minneapolis..“If I were President Trump, I would almost think about, OK, if the mayor and governor are going put our ICE officials in harm’s way and there’s a chance of losing more innocent lives, or whatever, then maybe go to another city and let the people of Minneapolis decide: Do we want to continue to have all of these illegals?” Comer said Sunday on Fox News, adding that he expected Minnesotans to “rebel against their leadership.”On Sunday, Representative Andrew Garabino, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, called on DHS, ICE, and Border Patrol leaders to testify before his committee, drawing praise from his GOP colleague Representative Michael Baumgartner, who said it was important “the American people and Congress be given a better understanding of how immigration enforcement is being handled.”Many Republicans are concerned that ICE’s violence, coupled with the rest of the Trump administration’s heavy-handed policies, will hurt them in midterm elections this year. Representative Dusty Johnson, who is running for governor in South Dakota, called for deescalation, in an X post Sunday. *“Politicians, protesters, and law enforcement all have an obligation to deescalate the situation in Minnesota. As with any officer-involved shooting, this demands a thorough investigation,” Johnson posted.One House Republican told Politico anonymously, “Many of us wonder if the administration has any clue as to how much this will hurt us legislatively and electorally this year.”It may be a small fraction of Republicans right now, but cracks are beginning to form as Trump’s actions are going too far even for members of his own party. The resistance from Minnesota is working. Will the Trump administration back down, or make things worse?* An earlier version of this post misstated in which state Johnson is running for governor.

"Trumped-Up Charges": Out of Jail, Nekima Levy Armstrong Faces Prosecution for Anti-ICE Church Protest
Democracy Now • Jan 26, 2026

"Trumped-Up Charges": Out of Jail, Nekima Levy Armstrong Faces Prosecution for Anti-ICE Church Protest

Civil rights attorney, minister and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, who was arrested by federal officials for participating in an anti-ICE demonstration at Cities Church in St. Paul, was released from federal custody on Friday. “They have altered the facts, just as they altered my image as a way of trying to criminalize nonviolent, peaceful protests and lawful dissent against their unlawful and unjust actions,” says Armstrong, noting images posted by the Trump administration that digitally altered her to make it appear as if she was sobbing during her arrest.

First Draft: Murder Inc.
Zeteo • Jan 26, 2026

First Draft: Murder Inc.

Trump's DHS escalates its reign of terror and killings, pro-gun groups are pissed at Republicans, and the 'Middle East's only democracy' cracks down on the free press... again.

Transcript: Trump Wrecks Own Case for Tariffs in Truly Weird Tirade
New Republic • Jan 26, 2026

Transcript: Trump Wrecks Own Case for Tariffs in Truly Weird Tirade

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 26 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent. Any day now, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on President Trump’s tariffs. The legal case against them is strong, in part because he’s justified them by claiming an economic emergency that doesn’t exist. But with this high court, you never know. However, it turns out that Trump has already basically revealed right out in public, again and again, that the rationale for his tariffs is bogus. He’s done this by using tariffs to threaten numerous people for all sorts of other reasons, meaning they have nothing to do with any economic emergency. And Trump did this again during his speech in Davos. MS NOW’s Steve Benen identified this odd pattern in a really good piece, so with a ruling coming at any time, we’re talking to him about all this today. Steve, good to have you on, man. Steve Benen: Thanks, Greg, it’s great to see you.Sargent: So let’s start here. During his Davos speech, Trump told a really odd story about how he decided last year to impose 30 percent tariffs on imports from Switzerland. At one point he spoke with Switzerland’s Karin Keller-Sutter. She rubbed him the wrong way, and he hiked the tariffs to 39 percent.Subsequently, he reduced the tariffs after a Swiss delegation of industry figures visited. As one report put it, they were literally bearing gifts: a Rolex, a personalized gold bar, and loads of flattery, as Axios put it. Donald Trump (voiceover): But I brought it up to 30 percent. And the, I guess, Prime Minister—I don’t think President, I think Prime Minister called—a woman. And she was very repetitive. She said, “No, no, no, you cannot do that—30 percent.” She just rubbed me the wrong way. I’ll be honest with you. And I said, “All right, thank you, ma’am. Appreciate it.”—“Do not do this.”—“Thank you very much, ma’am.” And I made it 39%. And then all hell really broke out. And I was paid visits by everybody. Rolex came to see me. They all came to see me. But I realized, and I reduced it. Because I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want to hurt them. And we brought it down to a, you know, lower level.Sargent: Then the administration announced that the tariffs would be cut to 15 percent. So Steve, it’s interesting that Trump is deciding to set tariff rates based on whether this female leader’s voice annoyed him and then on the level of flattery and tribute he’s receiving. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, is it?Benen: Yeah, when you put it that way, Greg, it sounds bad. I mean, look, we have a situation here in which the White House has said for about a year now that Donald Trump needs unilateral power. He needs to be able to impose arbitrary tariffs on U.S. trading partners—without congressional approval—in response to “emergency” conditions that necessitate this dramatic action.And so with that in mind, you would like to think that the White House has an actual emergency in mind, that this emergency exists. And yet here we are seeing Donald Trump repeatedly and publicly explaining that as far as he’s concerned, there really isn’t an emergency. There are just whims, his own personal preferences. He’s giving away the game on purpose in public in ways that we can all recognize.Sargent: Well, yes, I think we should quickly recap Trump’s case for the tariffs. He’s claiming the authority under a 1977 law to invoke an emergency and impose the tariffs unilaterally, as he said.The emergency that they’re citing is our trade deficits. That’s the emergency, but that’s nonsensical. By the language in the law that we’re talking about here, there’s no conceivable way that trade deficits constitute the sort of emergency he’s talking about. Can you talk a little bit about how absurd that is?Benen: Well, sure. I mean, first of all, let’s emphasize that trade deficits in and of themselves are not a problem. I mean, you and I have trade deficits with our grocery store. We go to them, we buy their groceries. They never buy our groceries.Well, but that’s okay. That’s just economics. We get food. They get our money, and then the world keeps going on. It’s not a problem, then, necessarily, that this trade deficit is somehow this boogeyman that we have to be panicked about. So right off the bat, that’s an important thing to emphasize.Even beyond that, the trade deficit is shrinking. And at no point do we get to a point where it’s considered a crisis that necessitates giving the president this unilateral power.Congress has, under the Constitution, the authority over tariffs. It is in Article I. It does not extend to Article II in the presidency. And so I think given that, with that in mind, given those circumstances, there’s a reason that most legal experts think that the president is likely to lose at the Supreme Court, because the law just isn’t on his side. Sargent: Right. I think we really need to underscore that trade deficits are not an economic emergency. We’ve had them for a very long time, and no economist thinks it’s an emergency. But what Trump’s really testing here is his power to say something’s an emergency, even when it’s complete nonsense.And I think that’s how the administration itself and the people around Trump—particularly the more monarchical of his advisers, the ones who want a monarch—really conceive of this again and again on other fronts, including immigration. They’re testing their ability to just claim that reality is some other thing than it actually is and daring the courts to say the president can’t say that.Benen: Right. And I think that that came up repeatedly in the context of the oral arguments at the Supreme Court. And it’s something that I think Trump’s lawyers just struggle to defend because really, frankly, it’s indefensible.And so with that in mind, I think that the White House is increasingly panicked about the likelihood of a defeat at the Supreme Court. And so we’ve seen Donald Trump lobbying justices by way of his social media platform, raising the specter of an economic calamity, of national security crises, if the White House ends up losing. And yet if the justices honor the law as it’s written, there’s no realistic chance that Donald Trump’s going to succeed when the ruling comes down.Sargent: Well, you put your finger on it there, man. We’ll really find out, I guess, whether the justices are going to honor the law or not. But anyway, you notice this pattern, which is really striking.Over and over, Trump has threatened tariffs for all kinds of reasons: against Brazil for prosecuting one of his allies; against European countries for not supporting his desire to annex Greenland; and even against France after Emmanuel Macron declined to join his “Board of Peace” for Gaza. Those don’t sound like economic emergencies. So what gives there, Steve?Benen: Well, I mean, I’m glad that you put it that way because there’s this pretense. There’s this idea that somehow the White House is going through the motions pretending that there are these emergencies. But Donald Trump is so far gone, is so wrapped up in his own delusion, that he forgets that he’s supposed to maintain that pretense.I think he genuinely just doesn’t remember that he’s supposed to stick to certain talking points in order to keep up appearances, in order to make it seem as if the emergency is legitimate, even though it’s not, even though we know it’s not. And he routinely, with increasing frequency, admits that it’s not.Now, if the justices are paying any attention to all of this, if justices are taking note of the fact that Donald Trump is effectively confessing in public that the entire rationale for his policy is a sham, well, then he has a serious problem on his hands. Sargent: Yeah, I think that there’s not really a lot of clarity around whether the court will see it that way. We just don’t know whether this has any actual legal significance, particularly with this court.Benen: True. We do not know. In fact, especially with this court, it’s an unpredictable environment. I think that for those of us who are concerned, for those of us looking at the reality, for those of us looking at the developments as they’re unfolding in public and who are aware of the law and who heard the oral arguments and have seen all the presentations, we realize that there are certain unavoidable facts.The White House is claiming an emergency that doesn’t exist, and Donald Trump is forgetting to maintain the pretense that those emergencies are real. The result of that is that he’s effectively, if not literally, giving away the game.Sargent: Well, I want to bring in Mike Johnson here because you mentioned a little earlier that what’s at stake is the president’s constitutional powers. Now, Congress is what’s authorized to tax. And that’s at issue in this case. Here’s Mike Johnson talking about whether he’s going to legislate on Trump and the tariffs.Mike Johnson (voiceover): I have no intention of getting in the way of President Trump and his administration. And he has used the tariff power that he has under Article II very effectively. The Article I branch, he has not exceeded his authority. There’s no reason in my view for the Article I branch to intervene in that. Sargent: Yeah, I don’t know, Steve. That sounds like evasion to me.Benen: So here’s the thing to keep in mind. Here’s what I want your listeners to keep in mind, because this is something that a lot of people don’t necessarily remember, which is that Mike Johnson has described himself for years as a “constitutional lawyer.”He’s not just someone who dabbles in the law as part of his political career. He is someone who quite literally describes himself as an expert on matters of constitutional law, talking about this “Article II power” that the president has used very effectively.Except there’s one nagging problem with that. There is no Article II tariff power. Mike Johnson just referenced this constitutional provision that does not exist in reality. Don’t take my word for it, listeners. Look it up. It’s [not] in Article II. It’s in Article I.You can see the fact that the power is vested in the hands of lawmakers in the legislative branch, not the executive branch. So the fact that the House speaker is taking this hands-off approach, saying: Well, the president can just do as he pleases because he’s doing it so well; Congress is just going to take a backseat on purpose. That’s not just ridiculous and it’s not just misguided. It is completely antithetical to the constitutional system that he’s supposed to be working under.Sargent: Well, look, one of the hallmarks of Trumpism is that all the corruption is right out in the open. His own voters are supposed to thrill to this. He is essentially saying in every which way: You’re damn right I’m corrupt. I’m going to be corrupt for you.And so in some ways, this has kind of worked for him in that at this point, Trump can do all sorts of appallingly corrupt things and engage in endless self-dealing and the press basically yawns. But I really wonder whether this might be the place where that catches up with him.This one is so blatant and the law is so clear that you would think that confessing to his actual rationale for tariffs in public would at this point actually not work for him anymore. Am I being too optimistic?Benen: I don’t think you are. And in fact, I think that what we’re seeing is the point at which a variety of lines intersect. On the one hand, there’s a legal problem because these “emergencies” don’t exist. On the other hand, there’s a political problem because the American public in general hates these tariffs, recognizes the fact that it’s pushing prices up and that it’s becoming a drag on the economy.And on the other hand, there’s also the legislative element to this. The reason that Donald Trump is not going to Congress to get the authority that lawmakers could give him is that he knows, just as we know, that Congress would not give him the power despite the fact that Republicans are in the majority in the House and the Senate. And so when you have those three intersecting lines, what you have is a breakdown that I think is ultimately going to create a doomed policy that is unraveling before our eyes. Sargent: Well, I think there’s another dimension to the involvement of Congress here that we should just mention in passing, which is that the law that governs whether Trump can do this—the one that Trump himself is invoking, the 1977 statute—was written by Congress.So Congress actually put restrictions on the president’s ability to levy tariffs. And so that just sort of makes the whole thing even more comical if you really think about it. He’s just giving the middle finger to Congress in every which way, and Mike Johnson is just kind of rolling over and taking it.Benen: Well, I remember early last year, I was talking to a congressional staffer who used this one phrase that really stuck in my head. He said that Congress was being treated like a doormat.And that really resonated with me because over the course of the coming weeks and months that followed, Donald Trump and the White House repeatedly proved that they were treating Congress like a doormat—ignoring it, treating it as an afterthought, if it’s treated as a thought at all.And so one would think, under just common sense, that congressional leaders—if for no other reason than institutional pride, to save themselves a degree of embarrassment—would at least get up on their hind legs once in a while and show that they’re co-equal members of a co-equal branch of government.But Mike Johnson and his fellow GOP leaders on both sides of Capitol Hill have done exactly the opposite. They basically rolled over and said that the White House can do as it pleases and Congress will do effectively, if not literally, nothing. So, yeah, I mean, this is a breakdown in the Madisonian model of government. And the only way for this to change is for either them to wake up or for them to lose.Sargent: I’ll tell you, what makes it even more baffling is that most of these Republicans—at least I think—actually oppose the tariffs. So Donald Trump came in and he kind of hijacked the Republican Party. And the story we’re always told is that he’s breaking with the Republican Party on economics in the sense that he’s much more populist.Now that story is mostly bullshit in the sense that when he came into office in his first term, one of his immediate things was to try to wipe away the Affordable Care Act, even though he had promised universal health care in the campaign. And then he cut taxes for the rich in his first and second terms.So the populist story is largely bullshit. But here’s a case where there’s an actual disagreement between the president and many Republicans in Congress: they tend not to like tariffs at all. And yet they’re still not even asserting their own power here. It’s just ... the whole thing’s extremely strange. Benen: It is. And that’s an important element to this because—and we alluded to this a few minutes ago—the courts that have heard this case already have said, in no uncertain terms: Just go get the authority. Just go to Congress, get the authority that you need, and you can go ahead and impose these tariffs accordingly.So why doesn’t the White House do that? Why doesn’t Trump just go and tell congressional Republicans: Give me the authority?And it’s because he knows that he’d lose. He knows that his grip on power isn’t nearly as strong as it has been advertised, as has been hyped. He knows that congressional Republicans, given their very narrow majorities in both chambers, would simply say: No, we’re not doing this—that this policy is too dumb, too unpopular, and too destructive.And so yeah, on the one hand, Congress is rolling over and allowing this to happen. But on the other hand, if given the opportunity, they wouldn’t roll over. They would say: No, we’re not doing this because it’s stupid.Sargent: And one last point, Steve, that I think eludes a lot of people: Republicans in Congress are going to pay the political price for the tariffs. That’s the funniest thing about this whole thing. Probably they’re going to lose the House, and possibly the Senate. Longer shot, obviously, but it’s very, very clear that affordability is an enormous issue in these elections.Republicans lost a string of elections in 2025 over this very thing. They’re probably going to lose the House over this very thing. And the reason for this, at least in part, is Trump’s tariffs. They have hit a lot of consumers and driven up prices. And so in every which way, Republicans are rolling over and Trump doesn’t pay any price for this. They do, yet they’re still accepting it!Benen: Yeah, I’m looking forward to the fall when I hear GOP incumbents, if they do a town hall, if they do interviews and so forth, they get asked: Well, what did you do when tariffs were increasing the prices for consumers across our state, our district, and so on? What did you do?And the answer is going to be: Well, I just let Donald Trump do as he pleased.Well, you know what? When Donald Trump has a 39 percent approval rating, and [the] affordability crisis gets worse, voters are probably not going to respond particularly well to that message. But we’ll see. Time will tell.Sargent: Well, right. We should point out that, yes, he actually polled at 40 percent approval in a New York Times poll, which is really the gold standard of polling. And so I think there’s a very real likelihood that his approval rating is in the 30s by the time Republicans are faced with an election and forced to defend the tariffs. And I think that’s going to be pretty tough.Benen: I do too. And I would not want to be in their shoes right now.Sargent: To circle back to where this all started, Trump just revealed yet again that the whole thing is really absurd. So we talked earlier about how he recently threatened tariffs on European countries because they weren’t letting him annex Greenland.And then, as soon as they started entering into talks with Donald Trump about giving him some sort of fig-leaf access to Greenland that would allow him to claim that he won something, he then immediately said the tariffs are on hold. So what happened to the economic emergency, Steve? Benen: It was an elusive emergency. It was here one minute, and the next thing you know, you turn around and the emergency is gone. I don’t know! Check between the couch cushions. Maybe he dropped it.Sargent: Yes. Well, just to close this out: if he can get away with this—something this buffoonishly and obviously ridiculous—and the entire Republican Party lets him get away with it, and the Supreme Court lets him get away with it, where the hell are we?Benen: I think under those circumstances, we would be looking at a breakdown of American governance at crisis levels that should cause widespread concern and real anxiety among the American people, because there is no defense for those circumstances. There is no way to rationalize. There’s no way to defend. There is no way to see this as anything other than a genuine crisis of American governance.Sargent: Because the tariffs, when it really comes down to it—and they’re rarely described this way in the press—are an enormous abuse of power, and no institution in American governance is stopping him from doing it. That’s what the story would be if at the end of the day the Supreme Court upholds the tariffs after he’s essentially given the middle finger to the entire world about them.Benen: Yeah, my hope and expectation is that the Supreme Court will not go along with that one, will not follow that path, will realize that there needs to be a check because they still have some responsibilities to the law, despite recent history. But if I’m mistaken, then you and I should talk again, and we will commiserate accordingly.Sargent: Sounds like a great plan. Steve Benen—thanks so much for coming on. Always great to talk to you.Benen: Thank you.

Trump’s Path to a (Real) Nobel: Press Israel to Free Marwan Barghouti
New Republic • Jan 26, 2026

Trump’s Path to a (Real) Nobel: Press Israel to Free Marwan Barghouti

President Trump’s Board of Peace and plans for Gaza and Israel-Palestine won’t bring peace or garner him his coveted Nobel Peace Prize. But freeing one Palestinian from Israeli prison could possibly achieve these goals. Marwan Barghouti has sat in an Israeli prison since 2004, serving five life sentences plus 40 years. Fadwa Barghouti, his wife, along with her youngest son, Arab, granted me their first recent interview with an American journalist, on my recent trip to the region just after the New Year. While the Barghouti family has never engaged with Trump or any members of his administration, the president has mentioned Barghouti’s name several times recently, most likely after mentions of him by French President Emmanuel Macron and the Saudi leadership. I met Fadwa and Arab in their modest Ramallah apartment, where I’ve visited them for the past three winters. Fadwa is a lawyer, who gave up her own practice to work full-time for her husband’s release. She is active in Fatah, a strong feminist, and a founder of Fatah’s Union for Women’s Rights. Arab, 35, is the youngest of four children. Previously, we spoke on background because the family feared for Marwan’s safety in prison. Now, that same concern makes them speak out. (I have been writing about him since 2006, most recently in this magazine in 2024.) For a family that lives in fear for Marwan Barghouti’s life since his incarceration, both Fadwa and Arab emit a hope that stands in contrast to the extraordinary anger and hatred that has captured the region and the world since October 7, 2023. They are rightly concerned about the cavalier way that the Netanyahu government is treating this prized prisoner with National Security Minister and longtime Kahanist Itamar Ben Gvir running the prisons. Ben Gvir recently posted a video of himself threatening a visibly gaunt Barghouti in prison, followed by a post on X wishing for Marwan’s “execution.” An untraceable phone caller claiming to have been in prison with Barghouti called Fadwa to say her husband’s ear was cut and his teeth knocked out. Their Israeli lawyer visited the prison at the end of December, confirming this was a lie. (His wife has not been allowed to see him for three years; his children or grandchildren even longer.)Marwan, a Fatah leader presently held in the notorious Megiddo Prison in Israel, was convicted by Israeli court in 2004 for his leadership role in terrorist attacks against Israelis during the second Palestinian intifada. Marwan and his family deny the charges and didn’t recognize the court proceedings. Since October 7, 2023, he’s been moved several times and kept in solitary confinement, as have all Palestinian security prisoners, in conditions that the Association for Civil Rights Israel has argued violate international laws. This is a political incarceration. Barghouti, almost without dispute, is the only potential candidate for president of a future Palestine who could beat both a Hamas leader and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas or any potential P.A. leader since the P.A. is deeply unpopular. Khalil Shikaki, the Palestinian pollster, this past October found that in a race between Barghouti and Khalid Mishal of Hamas, the vote would be 58–39 Barghouti. Barghouti forged ties with the Israeli peace camp for years. When he took over the reins of the popular Fatah uprising in 2000, he was a young and incorruptible alternative to Arafat. As the uprising spiraled, and as spokesperson for the intifada, he became a wanted man by the Israeli government led by hard-line Ariel Sharon.  Six months before Barghouti’s arrest, the Israel Defense Forces raided his home, remaining for three days. “They quarantined me and my children in a small room in the house,” Fadwa recalled. “They put the Israeli flag on our balcony.” Marwan couldn’t return to the apartment. His son added: “We used to go to demonstrations to be able to see him, just for a few minutes.”Fadwa last saw Marwan under the cloak of secrecy near Ramallah for the last time on March 28, 2002, 17 days before his capture. “He advised me that either he will be arrested or killed,” she said. “I told him, ‘God willing, you will be arrested and not killed because at least we will be able to come and visit, and I can tell you that our children have finished university, our children got married, and so on.’” Meanwhile, the family prepared for what they thought would be a short internment. “As a lawyer, not just as his wife,” Fadwa told me, she didn’t expect his sentence to be so harsh. “I thought, it’s going to be five years, maximum ten. We never expected in our worst nightmare that it would be like this. We knew that he was never involved in actual operations and violence. He never denied his role as the spokesman for the intifada, calling for the people to demonstrate, to resist the occupation, and he even supported resistance in Palestinian territories according to international law.”The trial, which lasted for almost two years, was of course major Israeli news. Then Prime Minister Sharon took a daily personal interest. At the end of the trial, Barghouti flashed a victory sign with his fingers that was seen around the world as a symbol of the Palestinian struggle. Fadwa recalled why her husband staged that photo. “He told me that despite body pain from the long trial, he forced himself to raise his arms in a victorious salute, which flashed across screens everywhere.” Barghouti has been at the top of all the prisoner exchange requests from Hamas since October 7. Israel never acquiesced. There seems to be truth to his son Arab’s speculation: “In the last 14 years, 800 Palestinian detainees have been freed by the Israelis: very complicated security cases, according to the Israeli courts. Yet they keep excluding Marwan. We need to ask ourselves why. Not because he’s a security threat, obviously, but because he’s a political threat.”Arab asks: “Why is he that effective as a leader? He’s a unifying figure … something that we lack in Palestinian politics. [Israel] is happy with the status quo, which is scattered Palestinians: Hamas ruling Gaza, the P.A. very weak ruling the West Bank, Jerusalemites on their own, the Palestinians in Israel on their own, the diaspora, and so on.“The second reason is his popularity gives him legitimacy from the people and not from the Israeli government or even from the international community. And that’s something that we Palestinians really appreciate. There’s nobody else here who can do that. “And the third thing, which he believes is why the Israeli government insists on not releasing him, is he believes in coexistence. He has a track record of meeting with Israelis, of being a moderate. He still makes it public that he believes in the two-state solution, and he doesn’t lose that popularity. But the Israeli government is not interested in any peace process, even if it’s going to bring stability, because stability is not their incentive or motivation. Their motivation is full domination on the land.”Arab’s message to supporters of Palestinian freedom is especially striking in his compassion. “We don’t want people to be pro-Palestinian. We want them to be pro-justice. And for them to be pro-justice, we must look at how we can come up with better solutions.” After leaving Ramallah, I visited Ami Ayalon at his home in central Israel. Now 80, Ayalon is a former Shin Bet leader (2000–2005), a former admiral of the Israeli Navy, and a former Labor Party politician. He is part of a small cohort of previous security and military leaders who are outspoken against Netanyahu’s government, including its conduct during the war against Hamas. Ayalon was a featured speaker at the regular Saturday night Tel Aviv demonstrations against Netanyahu in early January. For the last several decades, Ayalon has been a forthright promoter of justice for the Palestinians as a way to secure Israel.Ayalon insists that Marwan Barghouti be freed from prison, and that if Palestinian elections are allowed, a victorious Barghouti will attempt to negotiate a sustainable future for both Palestinians and Israelis. To answer critics who say that Barghouti has “blood on his hands,” Ayalon says: “When we say somebody has blood on his hands, what do we mean? I have blood on my hands. I killed many people. I’m not proud of it, but this is why you send soldiers and warriors to the battlefield, not to negotiate. If you want to negotiate, you send diplomats. “I’m saying it as a director of the Shin Bet: Marwan himself did not kill anybody, personally. But yes, he was a commander. So when we say blood on his hands, yes, he commanded.” That’s why he was arrested. But today, Ayalon says, Barghouti is no longer in prison because of any acts he may have committed: “If you ask me today, why is he in prison? Because in the eyes of the Palestinians, he is the only alternative. He became a symbol.”Indeed, Ayalon’s arguments echoed what Barghouti’s son told me regarding the political reason for Marwan’s continued imprisonment. The former Israeli warrior concurs with Fadwa Barghouti about the causes of the second intifada and the emergence of Marwan’s leadership: “The second intifada was a popular uprising against the reality. “Palestinians see [and saw] more settlements, more security, more soldiers, etc. Arafat’s administration was totally corrupt, and the Palestinians saw it.” Barghouti has always been respected by Palestinians because he is seen as uncorrupted, unlike Arafat and Palestinian Authority leaders today. Ayalon described how Arafat latched onto Marwan Barghouti because of Arafat’s vulnerabilities. “Marwan was second to Arafat. And we know that Marwan gave orders to lead terror. In the eyes of the Palestinians, this was a war of independence. In the eyes of the Israelis, it was pure terror. This is why he was arrested and tried.”Ayalon told me that in his view, there are two types of people left among Israelis and Palestinians: messianists and pragmatists. A pragmatist himself, he includes Barghouti in that sphere and therefore hopes for his freedom. Ayalon hopes too that a post-Netanyahu government could be pragmatic. “The future of the Middle East will be decided between MBS [Saudi leader Mohammad bin Salman] and Trump. These are the two people who can shape the future of the Middle East,” Ayalon told me.Though the Barghouti family isn’t in touch with the current White House (they previously engaged with the State Department and other U.S. officials), they are in frequent contact with the Saudis, Egypt, the EU, France, and the U.K., all of whom want to play critical mediating roles. It’s likely that one of these countries’ leaders is whispering Marwan’s name in Trump’s ear, because he has mentioned Barghouti several times in recent interviews. Meanwhile, the family is building an international campaign of support that most recently was endorsed by Bono, The Elders (the peace and justice campaign founded by Nelson Mandela), and hundreds of celebrities. Celebrities won’t free Barghouti, but they are keeping his name in the spotlight. In this Israeli election year, it’s hard to imagine Netanyahu releasing him, even with pressure from Trump. However, a new Israeli prime minister—if he is a pragmatist too—could be guided by security recommendations that point to a different political agenda. The United States and Saudi Arabia hold keys that could unlock prison for Barghouti, giving Palestinians—and Israelis—a chance for livable and reconcilable futures. And, then too, maybe Trump could actually earn that Nobel Prize.

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