Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil seeks $20m in damages from Trump administration
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose role in college campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza led to his detention for over three months in immigration jail, is now seeking $20m in damages from the Trump administration.
His lawyers filed a claim Thursday, alleging false imprisonment and malicious prosecution after his March arrest by federal agents. Khalil, a legal US resident, said he suffered severe anguish in jail, and continues to fear for his safety. The government has accused him of leading protests aligned with Hamas, but has not provided any evidence of a link to the terror group.
Key events
Afternoon summary
The Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a claim against the Trump administration alleging he was falsely imprisoned and seeking $20m in damages. The suit comes as Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who has not been charged with a crime, is out on bail and the administration continues to actively seek his removal from the United States. The Thursday filing is a precusor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act“They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked,” Khalil said in a statement.
Here’s what’s also happened so far today:
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A US district judge issued an injunction blocking Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, certifying a nationwide class of plaintiffs
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Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, pushed back against new evidence from a whistleblower suggesting Department of Justice lawyers were instructed to ignore court orders.
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US senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said Kristi Noem was responsible for deaths related to flooding in Texas.
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and his wife, state senator Angela Paxton, announced on Thursday they were getting divorced.
The Texas radio station KUT obtained the petition for divorce filed in Collin county. The petition accuses the attorney general of adultery and says the couple hasn’t lived together since June 2024.
Ken Paxton, who is running for US senate, said on X
After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives. I could not be any more proud or grateful for the incredible family that God has blessed us with, and I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time.
Angela Paxton said on X:
Today, after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds. I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage. I move forward with complete confidence that God is always working everything together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.
Dharna Noor
The fossil fuel industry poured more than $19m into Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, accounting for nearly 8% of all donations it raised, a new analysis shows, raising concerns about White House’s relationship with big oil.
The president raised a stunning $239m for his inauguration – more than the previous three inaugural committees took in combined and more than double the previous record – according to data published by the US Federal Election Commission (FEC). The oil and gas sector made a significant contribution to that overall number, found the international environmental and human rights organization Global Witness.
The group pulled itemized inaugural fund contribution data released by the FEC in April, and researched each contributor with the help of an in-house artificial intelligence tool. It located 47 contributions to the fund made by companies and individuals linked to the fossil fuel sector, to which Trump has voiced his fealty.
Joseph Gedeon
Six Secret Service agents have been suspended without pay after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last July.
The suspensions range from 10 to 42 days, with a loss of both salary and benefits during the absence, the agency’s deputy director, Matt Quinn, told CBS News.
The disciplinary action comes nearly a year after the 13 July 2024 shooting at the Butler farm show grounds, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired multiple rounds from an unsecured rooftop, grazing Trump’s ear and killing firefighter Corey Comperatore.
Quinn defended the agency’s decision not to dismiss the agents outright, telling CBS News the service would not “fire our way out of this” crisis.
“We’re going to focus on the root cause and fix the deficiencies that put us in that situation,” he said, adding that suspended personnel would return to reduced operational roles.
In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, called Khalil’s claim “absurd,” accusing him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric” that threatened Jewish students.
The state department said its actions toward Khalil were fully supported by the law.
Khalil says he filed claim ‘because they think they are untouchable’
Mahmoud Khalil said in a statement that he wanted to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence. In lieu of a settlement, Khalil suggested he would accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.
He said of the Trump administration: “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”
Khalil is planning to share any settlement money with others targeted by officials over pro-Palestinian protests.
The AP has more on the filing. It says the Trump administration smeared Mahmoud Khalil as an antisemite while it sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests.
The filing — a precursor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act — names the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the state department.
It comes as the deportation case against Khalil, a 30-year-old recent graduate student at Columbia University, continues to wind its way through the immigration court system.
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil seeks $20m in damages from Trump administration
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose role in college campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza led to his detention for over three months in immigration jail, is now seeking $20m in damages from the Trump administration.
His lawyers filed a claim Thursday, alleging false imprisonment and malicious prosecution after his March arrest by federal agents. Khalil, a legal US resident, said he suffered severe anguish in jail, and continues to fear for his safety. The government has accused him of leading protests aligned with Hamas, but has not provided any evidence of a link to the terror group.
Citing the CNN report about bureaucratic hurdles at Fema, US senator Ron Wyden said homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was responsible for deaths related to the flooding.
“Kids in Texas died as a direct result of Kristi Noem’s negligence. She should be removed from office before her incompetence gets Oregonians killed in a wildfire,” Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, posted on the social media network Bluesky.
New cost-cutting measures at FEMA may have slowed the agency’s response to the Texas floods, CNN reported on Thursday.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.
For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.
In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.
“We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”
For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.
In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.
But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.
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Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, is pushing back amid new disclosures from a fired DoJ lawyer suggesting justice department attorneys were instructed to defy court orders.
“We support legitimate whistleblowers, but this disgruntled employee is not a whistleblower – he’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote,” she wrote in a post on X. “As Mr. Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order.”
“And no one was ever asked to defy a court order. This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts. This “whistleblower” signed 3 briefs defending DOJ’s position in this matter and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department.”
Lauren Aratani
As temperatures soared on a sweltering July day in New York City, shoppers at Queens’s largest mall said they were feeling the heat – of rising prices.
“T-shirts, basic t-shirts, underwear, the basic necessities – the prices are going up,” said Clarence Johnson, 48, who was visiting the Macy’s at the Queen Center mall to pick up shirts he ordered online.
As Donald Trump presses on with his trade wars, retailers have been passing price increases onto customers. Department stores – which rely on a variety of imported goods and materials, from shoes to t-shirts – have particularly been scrambling to deal with the flux in prices.
At Macy’s, signs advertising sales of as much as 60% off original prices were sprinkled around the store – even next to diamond-encrusted necklaces locked inside display cases in the jewelry department. But for some customers, the prices are still too high.
Oliver Milman
The future of the US government’s premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades.
Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life.
But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed.
A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website. The Guardian replicated the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access.
