Weekly Review

A Cuban immigrant married to a U.S. citizen was separated from her one-year-old daughter and deported to Havana; three American children, including a four-year-old with Stage 4 cancer, were deported to Honduras without due process; and the U.S. president stated that his administration should be able to deport undocumented immigrants without a trial because to “give everyone a trial … would take, without exaggeration, 200 years.”^{1 2 3 4 5} A former New Mexico judge was arrested for allegedly tampering with evidence related to the arrest of an undocumented migrant; and a Wisconsin county circuit court judge was arrested by the FBI for escorting a defendant out of her courtroom via the jury door after learning that he was being sought by immigration authorities.^{6 7} “Nobody is above the law,” said the U.S. attorney general the same day an internal memo leaked, revealing that she told ICE agents to search suspected Venezuelan gang members’ homes sans warrant.^{8 9 10} It was reported that an Iraqi refugee living in the U.S. was deported to Rwanda, and a beekeeper who has lived on Long Island for more than two decades was arrested for hiding his leadership role in the Rwandan genocide.^{11 12} A former Tesla engineer alleged that more than ten years ago Elon Musk threatened to deport members of her team if she refused to resign after she brought up a braking hazard, a woman in Florida was arrested for impersonating an ICE agent in order to kidnap her ex-boyfriend’s wife, and a White House deputy chief of staff suggested that Americans should receive reparations for “the damages inflicted by mass migration.”^{13 14 15}

A survey from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that was sent over text message to Barnard College employees asked whether they were Jewish, and three dozen members of a British Jewish organization are facing disciplinary action after signing an open letter criticizing Israel’s war on Gaza.^{16 17} Israel bombed Lebanon in another violation of its ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah and killed dozens of people across Gaza in various air strikes, including a strike on a school being used as a shelter.^{18 19 20 21} Russia targeted Ukraine with 70 missiles and 145 drones, killing at least 12 people and injuring 90; Russia’s president described North Korea’s 14,000 troops fighting for Russia as “heroes;” Estonia’s government announced a plan to build a defense line of approximately 600 concrete bunkers and has begun “stockpiling ‘dragon’s teeth,’ barbed wire, and mines” near the Russian border; and the Ukrainian and U.S. presidents met before the pope’s funeral in St. Peter’s Basilica to discuss the terms of a possible ceasefire in the former’s country.^{22 23 24 25 26} Indian and Pakistani forces exchanged gunfire across the Line of Control in Kashmir for three successive nights and the Indian military demolished nine homes and arrested hundreds of people after twenty-six people, most of whom were Indian tourists, were killed by gunmen whom the Indian government alleges are linked to Pakistan’s government.^{27 28} It was reported that Chinese Coast Guard officials landed on an isle situated between the Philippines-occupied Thitu island and the China-occupied Subi reef and unfurled a Chinese flag; after the Chinese officials departed, Filipino military personnel landed on the same isle and unfurled a Filipino flag.^{29 30 31} “A silly piece of sand,” an Australian senior policy analyst said of the isle.³²

The U.S. president solicited ideas from pronatalists on methods to boost the American birth rate, one of which was giving mothers of six or more children a “National Medal of Motherhood”; the U.S. president’s tariffs are making strollers and children’s car seats more expensive; and it was conjectured that Elon Musk could be the father of more than one hundred children.^{33 34 35} Dozens of plastic Easter eggs containing white-supremacist messages were found in a parking lot in Maine, a man in Texas was arrested for devising an Easter egg hunt involving plastic eggs filled with marijuana, and an eighty-four-year-old man fell from a cross while reenacting the Passion in West Virginia.^{36 37 38} Vatican visitors took selfies with Pope Francis’s dead body, and a Sardinian cardinal who has been convicted of embezzlement and fraud claimed that he is entitled to take part in the upcoming conclave.^{39 40} “Controlled,” congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said of Catholic bishops, “by Satan.”⁴¹    —Megan Evershed