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Thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in the United States are newly at risk of deportation after the Supreme Court ruled to allow the Trump administration to strip them of “temporary protected status,” or TPS. The program, designed for foreign citizens of countries the U.S. government believes are too unstable or dangerous to be returned to, often due to natural disasters or war, has been a major target of attack by the Trump administration and its anti-immigrant agenda. “We are looking at the catastrophic deficit in the workforce in the United States if we allow this deportation machine and cruelty to take effect,” our guest, Haitian Bridge Alliance’s Guerline Jozef, says. “This is just part of the Trump administration’s efforts to feed the detention and deportation machine and essentially halt immigration,” adds Lupe Aguirre of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “It’s about maintaining their campaign promises to root out people that they see as undesirable.”

The death toll from twin earthquakes that hit Venezuela Wednesday night is expected to reach into the thousands as rescuers continue to search for bodies trapped in the rubble. Hospitals are rapidly reaching a breaking point, and thousands of survivors have been left homeless. Reporter Andreína Chávez’s building was one of the countless residences in Venezuela’s capital Caracas and its surrounding region that were damaged by the massive quakes. Chávez was on the street when the earthquakes struck, and says she “saw at least three buildings partially collapse right in front of [her].” As Venezuelans band together to find survivors, the country is calling for international support and resources to step up critical rescue and recovery efforts. “We weren’t prepared for a disaster of this magnitude,” says Chávez. “Venezuela is a country that has been under U.S. sanctions … as well as a country that has an infrastructure that is very deteriorated. We have public services that are very deteriorated, and all of that has been something that has really added to this tragedy.”

The Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in a major blow to the rights of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The court ruled 6 to 3 along partisan lines to sanction so-called metering at the southern border, which allows immigration officers at ports of entry to block asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil. “In a time of increasing conflict and climate catastrophe, this will result in many more deaths,” warns Erika Pinheiro of Al Otro Lado, the lead plaintiff in the case. When the turnback policy was first introduced, recounts Melissa Crow of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, who served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs’ case, many asylum seekers became “so desperate that they ended up trying to enter between ports of entry, either by swimming across the Rio Grande or by traversing the desert under harrowing conditions, and many, many of them didn’t make it to the other side.”

Over 500 Are Dead and Thousands Remain Missing Following Twin Earthquakes in Venezuela, U.N. Shipping Agency Halts Strait of Hormuz Evacuations as Projectile Strikes Cargo Ship, Israeli Airstrikes Kill 2 in Lebanon as Netanyahu Says Occupation Will Continue Indefinitely, Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to Block Asylum Seekers at U.S. Border, Supreme Court Will Allow Trump to End TPS for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, Supreme Court Blocks Cancer Patients from Suing Bayer over Popular Weed Killer, U.S. Plans to Deport Over 500 Unaccompanied Immigrant Children, Federal Agents Confront Election Worker at Syracuse Polling Place over Instagram Post, Judge Blocks Trump’s Order Creating “Confirmed Citizen Lists” and Restricting Mail-in Voting, JD Vance Praises Richard Nixon, Downplays Watergate Scandal, New York City to Freeze Rents for Nearly 1 Million Apartments for Next Two Years

In oil-rich Kazakhstan, disparate dealmaking and the government’s widespread corruption is an open secret.

John Feffer for Foreign Policy in Focus   Donald Trump has always considered himself exceptional—that is, an exception to the rules. As a tycoon, he has demonstrated that multiple bankruptcies and an utter contempt for business associates have not hindered his accumulation of wealth. As a politician, he has shown that the same outrageous statements and […]

Traffic through the waterway has more than tripled since a US-Iran interim peace deal, but remains far below prewar levels.

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here. It’s not just that President Trump has ramped up the decades-long conservative attacks on colleges. It’s also that some college presidents and board members themselves are repeating right-wing talking points about the shortcomings of American higher education. A recent report by officials at Yale University on declining trust in higher education criticized universities for not hiring enough professors who vote for GOP politicians but largely left out the aggressive Republican efforts to undermine academia. In the latest edition of Right Now, Charlie Eaton, an economic sociologist at University of California, Merced, and John Warner, a columnist at Inside Higher Ed, explain why universities are under siege from both the right and the center-left. Eaton emphasizes the role of oligarchs, who are wary of universities in part because professors put out research that questions wealth inequality in America and industries such as artificial intelligence where the superrich are growing their fortunes. Warner argued that there is an ideological divide in academia somewhat similar to that in the Democratic Party, with students and professors, particularly those of color, challenging an old guard that doesn’t want to give up influence. Eaton and Warner both say that colleges should change to build more public trust, but not by hiring more Republican professors or cracking down on progressive protesters. Universities, they argue, should lower their prices, connect more with their communities, and broadly adopt a more public, democratic posture, instead of trying to be elite and exclusive. Marshall Steinbaum, an economics professor at the University of Utah, offered similar ideas in a Right Now episode earlier this year.