A professor dubbed “Dr. Antifa” tried to flee the country amid threats to his life but was stopped at the gate and told his reservation had been canceled.
Mark Bray, a historian of modern Spain and the world, taught in Rutgers University’s history department in New Jersey until a Turning Point USA chapter petitioned for his firing.
“We believe in free speech and the First Amendment. However, this does not mean that one is free from the consequences of their actions,” the petition stated, calling Bray “Dr. Antifa” for the content of his academic work.
In 2017, Bray published Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, based on interviews with anti-fascists, which explores the movement’s philosophy and history. At Rutgers, he taught a course on the history of antifascism.
“My role in this is as a professor,” Bray told The New York Times in an interview shortly before his flight to Spain. “I’ve never been part of an antifa group, and I’m not currently. There’s an effort underway to paint me as someone who is doing the things that I’ve researched, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” the professor added.
Bray decided to flee the country ahead of death threats that he received following the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which led to President Donald Trump designating Antifa—a broad and decentralized political movement that opposes fascism— as a domestic terrorist organization.
On the same day Bray was set to fly to Spain with his wife and two children, Trump hosted a White House roundtable focused on Antifa.
“‘Someone’ cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second,” Bray posted on Bluesky, adding, “We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’”
Since Sept. 26, Bray had received three death threats, including one threatening to kill him in front of his students, The Washington Post reported. His address had also been leaked on social media.
Students have posted screenshots on Reddit of Bray’s emails canceling or moving classes online, with many expressing disappointment that this was happening to their professor.
“Hope he enjoys his time in Europe, I was enjoying the class discussions,” one Reddit user said, posting an email from Bray that read: “Since my family and I do not feel safe in our home at the moment, we are moving for the year to Europe. Truly I am so bummed about not being able to spend time with you all in the classroom.”
In a statement to The New York Times, Rutgers University said that it “is committed to providing a secure environment — to learn, teach, work and research — where all members of our community can share their opinions without fear of intimidation or harassment.”
When asked about the threats to Bray, the White House claimed to The Times that “examples of Democrat violence are plentiful.”
After Bray announced his decision to leave the country, students launched another petition calling for the disbanding of Rutgers’ Turning Point USA chapter. As of Thursday, that petition had about 2,000 more signatures than the one calling for Bray’s firing.
“I think that all death threats and doxxing are unjustified and not how political disputes should be resolved in civilized society,” said Ava Kwan, a Turning Point USA chapter member, in an email to The Times on Wednesday. She added, “I think Dr. Antifa, who believes in violence as a political tool, should be fired, of course. Taxpayer money should not fund the salaries of terrorists.”
Bray and his family have rebooked their flight for Thursday, but hope to return to the U.S. and the classroom in the future. For now, his classes will be pre-recorded.
“I’m hopeful about returning, and I’m hopeful — and I say this as a history professor — that someday we will look back on this as a cautionary tale about authoritarianism,” Bray told The Times.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/dr-antifa-professor-blocked-from-flying-after-trump-roundtable
Sound as though someone hacked into his frequent flyer or travel agency account, or had enough personal info about him to fool the airline’s customer service folks to cancel the tickets.
A normally raucous, colorful parade to mark Mexican Independence Day in Chicago turned quiet and nervous on Saturday as U.S. President Donald Trump signaled he intended to ramp up deportations in the nation’s third-largest city.
In a break from traditional celebrations, twirling folklorico dancers decked in glimmering jewelry and billowing, multi-colored dresses distributed “know your rights” pamphlets to sparse crowds in the city’s historically Mexican Pilsen neighborhood. Horses wore the colors of Mexico’s flag in their tails, while their riders wore neon-orange whistles around their necks in case they needed to alert attendees of Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents. Along the sidelines, volunteers also kept watch for ICE.
“This place would normally be packed,” Eddie Chavez, a lifelong Pilsen resident, said while waving a Mexican flag in a lone row of lawn chairs along the parade route. “Now it’s empty, like a ghost town.”
Trump alluded to immigration raids in Chicago in a Truth Social post that echoed the movie Apocalypse Now.
“I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” his post said, opens new tab, above an image of Trump in a military uniform juxtaposed against flames and Chicago’s skyline. “Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rename the Department of Defense as the “Department of War.”
Illinois Govornor JB Pritzker, a Democrat and vocal critic of Trump, said on Tuesday he believed ICE raids would coincide with Mexican Independence day festivals scheduled for this weekend and next weekend. Some Mexican festivals in the Chicago area were postponed or canceled, opens new tab amid fears of immigration raids.
“We’re scared, but we’re here,” said Isabel Garcia, a dancer in Saturday’s parade wearing a marigold-yellow dress and multi-colored ribbons and flowers in her hair.
“We’re Mexican. We have to celebrate, and they’re not going to stop us.”
ICE has not responded to requests for comment on whether it sent more agents to Chicago, and residents said they had not seen significantly stepped-up immigration enforcement so far.
A large protest against ICE was expected later on Saturday in Chicago, after thousands turned out for a Labor Day protest on Monday.
Trump last month deployed National Guard troops to Washington, saying they would “re-establish law, order, and public safety.” In addition to Chicago, he has suggested the possibility of deploying troops to Democratic-run Baltimore in Maryland.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/chicago-ice-fears-turn-mexican-parade-into-ghost-town-2025-09-06
The contract between the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Israeli spyware company Paragon has been reactivated, in what some say is the first sign of a shift in the current administration’s policies towards offensive cyber.
Last year, a $2 million contract was signed between Paragon and ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), for its Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit. However, it was frozen a month later amid the Biden administration’s policy to clamp down on the offensive cyber industry, which sells technologies that allow states access to encrypted smartphones and has been misused across the globe over the past decade.
That policy included pressuring Israel to rein in its spyware exports, and also sanctions on Israeli companies like NSO and Candiru, which are regulated by Israel, as well as harsher personal sanctions against the owners and executives of Intellexa, which operated outside Israel’s regulatory oversight.
The temporary suspension of the Paragon contract stemmed from concerns it could violate Biden’s 2023 executive order restricting the purchase of foreign spyware by U.S. agencies, if those had been used to undermine U.S. national security or had been implicated in misuse.
Its renewal, announced with little fanfare this Saturday on an official U.S. procurement data website, is seen by some as an early signal of a potential shift in the Trump administration’s policy toward the offensive cyber industry. The contract renewal was first published by Jack Poulson, an independent journalist, on his Substack.
Paragon, the procurement documents details, will provide a “proprietary solution” to ICE via the HSI, an investigative arm that combats illegal immigration, human and arms trafficking, international crime, cyber threats, and more. It was founded by former Unit 8200 commander Ehud Schneorson and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and developed a spyware called Graphite.
It has been sold to intelligence and law enforcement agencies in Israel, Europe, the United States and Singapore. Infection with the spyware gives operators full access to a victim’s mobile phone, including files, photos, and contacts, as well as the ability to eavesdrop on calls and read encrypted messages. Earlier this year, Paragon was for the first time embroiled in a scandal regarding misuse of its tech in Italy, where the country’s intelligence service turned the spyware against activists and journalists.
Digital rights groups fear that Trump’s policies, coupled with the renewal of the Paragon contract, signal that the United States may roll back its efforts to regulate the spyware industry and could even emerge as a state that abuses these advanced tools.
According to U.S. media reports, the administration has budgeted $170 billion for enforcing Trump’s immigration policy, setting a daily target of 3,000 arrests for the authorities. To meet this goal, ICE is recruiting 10,000 agents, offering signing bonuses of $50,000.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has flooded the streets of Washington, Los Angeles, and other cities with immigration agents, ramping up arrests and deportations of undocumented migrants, as well as enforcing strict new policing measures.
“It is deeply concerning that the U.S. government and DHS are acquiring highly invasive spyware at a time of unprecedented crackdowns on students, protesters, and migrants,” said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab, which monitors technologies that violate human and civil rights. “Time and again, such tools have ultimately been found to be abused to target journalists and government critics.”
DHS-affiliated bodies have numerous ties to Israeli surveillance and intelligence companies: Cognyte provided various technologies to the Secret Service last year and this year reported a $20 million deal with a leading U.S. security organization; Cellebrite supplies law enforcement agencies, including ICE and the Secret Service, with phone-hacking technology for seized devices.
ICE also has access to intelligence technologies from companies like Palantir and Babel Street, Ó Cearbhaill explained. A Haaretz investigation last year revealed how Babel Street sells software that allows surveillance and tracking of individuals using advertising data collected online. According to him, the addition of Paragon’s spyware to the authorities’ surveillance toolkit increases the risk of unlawful and arbitrary arrests, investigations, visa revocations, and deportations, “in significant violation of numerous human rights.”
Late last year, Paragon was sold to the American private equity firm AE Industrial Partners, considered close to the U.S. defense establishment. The sale caused tension and criticism within Israel’s offensive cyber industry.
An investigation by Israeli television uncovered an intelligence community document that warned that the sale of Paragon posed a “potential danger” to national security, due to concerns about American influence over a “strategic sector” for Israel and the leakage of sensitive knowledge abroad. Similar concerns were exposed in 2022 when the American defense contractor L3Harris attempted to purchase NSO and relocate it to the United States.
Following the acquisition, Paragon’s U.S. branch joined REDLattice, a cyber-intelligence company also owned by the U.S. fund. Reporting on the contract renewal, journalist Poulson revealed the two firms’ deep ties to the U.S. intelligence community. According to Poulson’s substack, former CIA deputy director John “Finbar” Fleming was appointed head of Paragon’s U.S. branch.
A big change to all the “cheap goods” Americans order just went into effect.
For nearly a century, low-value packages of goods from abroad have entered the United States duty free, thanks to what’s known as the “de minimis rule,” which as of 2015 has applied to packages worth less than $800.
The loophole has reshaped the way countless Americans shop, enabling many small businesses globally to sell goods to US consumers with relative ease and allowing, in particular, ultra-low-cost Chinese e-commerce sites like Shein, Temu and AliExpress to sell everything from clothing to furniture to electronics directly to American shoppers, escaping many duties in place for packages exceeding the $800 threshold.
But those days are over. As of one minute past midnight Eastern Time, all imported goods — regardless of their value — are now subject to 10% to 50% tariff rates, depending on their country of origin. (In certain cases, they could face a flat fee of $80 to $200, but only for the next six months.)
A headache for delivery services
Ahead of the expiration of the de minimis rule, a slew of delivery services across Europe, as well as Japan, Australia, Taiwan and Mexico suspended deliveries to the United States, citing logistical compliance challenges.
International shipper UPS, meanwhile, said in a statement to CNN Thursday: “We stand ready for the new changes and do not anticipate any backlogs or delays.”
DHL, which suspended service for standard parcel shipments from Germany but is continuing to ship international packages to the United States from all other countries it serves, told CNN that shipments “may experience delays during the transitional period as all parties adjust to the changes in tariff policy and regulation.”
The United States Postal Service and FedEx declined to comment on whether customers should anticipate delays.
“Our systems are fully programmed and equipped to support the seamless implementation of these changes. CBP has prepared extensively for this transition and stands ready with a comprehensive strategy, having provided clear and timely guidance to supply chain partners, including foreign postal operators, carriers, and qualified third parties to ensure compliance with the new rules.
Susan Thomas, the acting executive assistant commissioner for Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade, told CNN in a statement that the agency’s systems “are fully programmed and equipped to support the seamless implementation of these changes.”
“CBP has prepared extensively for this transition and stands ready with a comprehensive strategy, having provided clear and timely guidance to supply chain partners, including foreign postal operators, carriers, and qualified third parties to ensure compliance with the new rules,” she said.
A potential benefit for some American small businesses
While some small businesses, like some individual consumers, have benefited from the de minimis exemption by purchasing goods duty-free, the end of the exemption may benefit some, too.
For Steve Raderstorf, co-owner of Scrub Identity, which sells scrubs and other medical apparel at two stores located in Indianapolis, the tariff change will “level the playing field” for him and, he believes, other small business owners, he said.
A 2023 report by Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that advocates for US producers and manufacturers, estimates that e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart took in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue in 2022 through their networks of third-party sellers who took advantage of the loophole.
Raderstorf said almost all the goods he sells are imported. But as a small business, he doesn’t have the ability to set up a third-party network to tap into the exemption. Instead, his imported goods are all subject to applicable tariffs.
Additionally, many of the foreign manufacturers from whom he purchases goods in bulk in order to get a better price have benefited from de minimis by setting up sites to sell directly to people who could have otherwise shopped at his stores.
With de minimis gone, he feels small businesses have a better chance to compete more fairly with mega retailers and also support their local communities more.
“When somebody comes to my door and they want me to support the local football team or baseball team, I have money to do that then, and then it gets back into the community,” he told CNN. “When it goes to China, it never, ever stays in the United States — it’s gone for good.”
Since the de minimis exemption was closed for China and Hong Kong, CBP has seen packages that would have otherwise qualified for duty-free status go down from an average of 4 million a day to 1 million, White House officials told reporters Thursday.
Raderstorf is empathetic to Americans who are concerned about the increased cost of goods — but at the same time, he’s hopeful it’s “going to push them back out into their communities to meet their local retailers.”
President of Portugal Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa made a harsh statement about US President Donald Trump. In his opinion, the American leader is “objectively a Soviet or Russian agent,” reports Euronews.
“The supreme leader of the world’s largest superpower is objectively a Soviet or Russian asset,” said de Sousa on August 27 during a speech in Castelo de Vide.
Trump’s efforts to present himself as the main mediator in reconciling Ukraine and Russia did not make a good impression on the Portuguese president. De Sousa noted that Trump’s attempts to “settle” the war were not beneficial for Ukraine.
“Objectively, the new US leadership strategically contributed to Russia,” he added.
As an example, de Sousa reminded that “every day” there are new threats from the US to impose sanctions on the Kremlin. However, in reality, none of Trump’s promises to strengthen sanctions had been fulfilled.
According to the Portuguese leader, Trump tries to play the role of an “arbiter,” but at the same time wants to negotiate “only with one side.” Kyiv and its European allies are literally forced to pressure Washington to also take part in the negotiations.
De Sousa added that Europe downplayed “the importance of Trump and Trumpism” and also did not believe that the balance of power in the White House and US policy could change so drastically after Trump came to power.
Meanwhile, media write that US President Donald Trump is not satisfied with the demands of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Europe for ending the war. He wants peace at any cost.
In recent days, Trump has expressed in private conversations his frustration that his loud diplomatic efforts have not brought results — but he blames not Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/portuguese-president-calls-trump-soviet-or-1756408421.html
