Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-09-02 Tuesday

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Democracy Now! Tuesday, September 2, 2025

From New York, this is Democracy Now. This was weaponized partisan injustice at its worst, politicians in black robes. You had six out of the seven judges, Democrats, but you also had 12. blue states intervening against Trump. President Trump and trade advisor Peter Navarro vow to take their tariff fight to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court strikes down most of Trump's tariffs. We'll speak with a former Solicitor General, Neil Katyal,

who argued the case and with Oregon's Attorney General who brought it. Then a court blocks the Trump administration from deporting as many as 700 unaccompanied Guatemalan children after a try to fly some of them out in the dead of night over Labor Day weekend. And finally, Yemen vows to retaliate after an Israeli airstrike killed the Prime Minister of Yemen's Houthi-run government and some 11 other senior figures. All that and more coming up. Welcome to...

Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. President Trump has vowed to take his tariffite to the Supreme Court. After a federal appeals court ruled Friday, most of the tariffs imposed by the White House on nearly every other country have no legal basis. This includes the Liberation Day tariffs imposed in April, as well as earlier tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China. The decision upholds an earlier ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade. In its decision, the appeals court called tariffs, quote, a core congressional power. After headlines, we'll speak with the former Solicitor General Neil Katyal, who argued the legal challenge to the tariffs, as well as Oregon's Attorney General, who brought the case.

In international news, a landslide in Sudan's Darfur Region killed more than a thousand people Sunday. That's according to the Sudan Liberation Movement, an armed rebel group that controls the region. The landslide destroyed a village in the Mara Mountains, where residents had sought refuge to escape fighting between the Sudanese army and the rival paramilitary faction, the rapid support forces. The Darfur region is largely inaccessible to international aid groups due to the civil war, which is now in its third year. In Afghanistan, the death toll from Sunday's earthquake in a remote mountainous area near the Pakistan border has topped 1,400 and is expected to rise, with thousands more injured by the disaster. It's one of the deadliest earthquakes to hit Afghanistan in over a decade, with aftershocks felt a neighboring Pakistan and as far away as India. Roads have been blocked and communications have been disrupted. aid workers are forced to walk for hours to reach affected communities.

Here's one of the survivors, Mohamed Ibrahim. A total of 25 people from my family were martyred and they're still under the rubble. I ask the international community to provide us with aid and God will grant them rewards. The U.S. offered its condolences on X without pledging any aid, an official from the U.N. office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Afghanistan. told Reuters' U.S. aid cuts have hampered the response to the earthquake, saying, quote, the number of people we have on the ground is much less than we would have had six months ago, unquote. Meanwhile, China, India, Pakistan, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates have all pledged disaster relief assistance to Afghanistan.

In Gaza, Israeli attacks since dawn have killed at least 54 Palestinians include people seeking food. The attacks came as Gaza health officials recorded another 13 deaths due to starvation. Three of them, children. That brings the number of hunger-related deaths in Gaza to more than 360. According to a leading global monitor, more than half a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are suffering catastrophic hunger due to Israel's blockade. On Monday, a steady stream of Palestinians fled northern parts of Gaza City as Israeli forces pushed deeper into the Gaza Strip's largest urban area, home to about one million people.

to find a place where I can stay with my sons and daughters. I don't know where to go. Moving out requires money. I can't even find something to eat. It has been two months without food. I don't know where to go. I borrowed money from here and there. No one is standing by me to give me anything. No one is standing with the Palestinian people. On Monday, millions of Israeli students return to their classrooms to begin the new school year. Meanwhile, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees warns of a lost generation. of more than 660,000 Palestinian children of Gaza deprived of schooling for a third consecutive year. The world's leading Genocide Scholars Association has approved a resolution establishing Israel's policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide as found in the Genocide Convention, constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Melanie O'Brien's president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. This resolution declaring what is happening in Gaza as genocide passed by an overwhelming majority far beyond the two-thirds majority required. This comes after hundreds of staffers at the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights signed a letter urging the UN agency to declare Israel's assault on Gaza a genocide and calling on UN member states to suspend arms sales to Israel. In Spain, dozens of ships carrying civilian activists and loaded with humanitarian aid departed Barcelona Monday, bound for the Gaza Strip. The global Samud flotilla is the largest attempt yet to challenge Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Swedish activists Greta Thunbury helped to organize the flotilla. Israel are very clear about their genocidal intent. They want to erase the Palestinian nation. they want to take over the Gaza Strip. And if that doesn't make people act, if that doesn't make people go out of their couch and take action, fill the streets, get organized, then I don't know what will.

In Australia, peace activists hold a nonviolent protest blocking the entrance of Port Melbourne, demanding Australia suspend trade with Israel. Meanwhile, in Colorado, dozens of Jewish peace activists and allies rallied Friday outside the Denver office of Senator Michael Bennett. Protesters are calling on him and Colorado's other Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper to join 27 other

Senate Democrats and independents who voted in support of a resolution to block arms transfers to Israel. In Yemen, thousands of mourners gathered the largest mosque in the capital Sana'an on Monday for the funerals of the Prime Minister of Yemen's Houthi-run government,

Abdul Malik al-Houthi, and 11 other Houthi leaders. Also killed in Thursday's attack was Houthi, defense minister. We'll have more on this story later in the broadcast with the Palestinian-American scholar Ramehoudi. The Trump administration tried to deport over 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan children over Labor Day weekend, but a federal judge temporarily halted their removal, ruling the actions unlawful. The National Immigration Law Center filed an emergency request to stop the deportation flight, saying the children face abuse, neglect, persecution, or torture if deported to

Guatemala. As the children were loaded onto planes in Texas and waiting on the tarmac, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Suttonan was woken at 2.35 a.m. to address the case. The judge later issued a 14-day restraining order allowing the children to stay in the U.S. for now to challenge their removal. We'll go to McAllen, Texas. to speak with a lawyer arguing on behalf of the children later in the broadcast. In Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott has signed a new congressional map into law, which is aimed at giving Republicans five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In response, Indivisible's National Advocacy Director, Andrew O'Neill, said,

quote, Governor Abbott's mid-decade redistricting effort is anti-democratic and discriminatory. He's not just rigging the maps in Texas. he's attempting to undermine the midterm elections and diluting the power and voice of communities of color in Texas while doing so, unquote. Meanwhile in Utah, a judge tossed out the state's current congressional map and ordered the Republican-led state legislature to draw a new one by September 24th. The move could favor Democrats as the party could pick up a seat in Salt Lake City. Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed leaders of Asian nations to Tianjin for the regional summit on Sunday, warmly greeting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as friends and opposing what he called the bullying and Cold War mentality of the United States under President Trump.

It was the first visit by Prime Minister Modi to China in seven years, signaling a thaw in relations between India and China. In a joint statement following the talks, members of the Shanghai cooperation, organization strongly condemned recent U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, the group made no mention of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the European Commission says a plane carrying European Union chief, Ursula van der Leyen, was left circling above an airport in southern Bulgaria Sunday after an apparent GPS jamming attack on the plane. According to the financial times, the plane's pilots were forced to land using paper maps. The European Commission blamed Russia for jamming the plane's navigation system and said the incident would, quote,

ramp up our defense capabilities and support for Ukraine, unquote. In Indonesia, at least seven people are dead, hundreds more injured amidst a crackdown on anti-government protests that erupted in Jakarta a week ago before spreading across Indonesia. The uprising began with protests outside Indonesia's parliament against salaries and housing allowances for lawmakers that are nearly 10 times the minimum wage in Jakarta. Protests spread nationwide after footage showed a paramilitary police unit using an armored vehicle to ram a group of protesters killing a 21-year-old delivery driver. Protesters have since burned or ransacked buses, subways, and the homes of several prominent politicians. And more than a thousand demonstrations were held across the United States Monday for Labor Day as protesters came out against what the AFL CIA called a, quote, government by and for the CEOs and Bill.

billionaires, unquote. The protests come after President Trump stripped nearly a half a million federal workers of their union protections in August. On New York's Long Island workers, community organizers, and climate activists march to the streets of the Hamptons to expose billionaire donors who are bankrolling the mayoral campaigns of Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams. Meanwhile, in Chicago, labor leaders join Mayor Brendan Johnson to denounce Trump's threats to blanket at Chicago with National Guard troops and federal immigration agents. Stacey Davis-Gates is president of the Chicago Teachers Union. In Chicago right now, we are reconstructing school libraries so we can teach the truth and media literacy.

In Chicago, we are reopening mental health clinics, abolishing sub-minimum wage, making sure that workers get paid time off. We are in a reconstruction with a black mayor whose family escaped Silas, Mississippi, and imagine his leadership. We're doing it with an organizer, not a billionaire. We are a government of the people for the people, not a government of billionaires for billionaires. And those are some of the headlines. This is DemocracyNow, DemocracyNow.org, the War and Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman in New York with Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez and Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. President Trump's vowed to take his tariff fight to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court Friday struck down most of the tariffs imposed by the White House, including the Liberation Day tariffs imposed in April, as well as earlier tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China. The decision upholds an earlier ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade. It's ruling the appeals court called tariffs, quote, a core congressional power. The White House argued the President can unilaterally impose tariffs based on powers granted by the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or AEPA, which has historically been used to impose sanctions.

But its decision, the appeals court wrote, quote, it seems unlikely Congress intended in enacting AEPA to depart from its past practice and grant the President unlimited authority to impose tariffs. The statute neither mentions tariffs or any of its synonyms, nor has procedural safeguards that contain clear limits on the president's power to impose tariffs, unquote. The tariffs will remain in effect until October. Trump wrote on truth's social, quote, if allowed to stand, this decision would literally destroy the United States of America, unquote. The decision encompasses two different cases that challenge the tariffs, one brought by a group of U.S. states led by Oregon, and the other brought by a group of businesses. In a moment, we'll speak with Dan Rayfield, the Attorney General of the State of Oregon. But first to Washington, D.C., to speak with Neil Katyal, he argued the case for businesses. He was previously acting Solicitor General in the Obama administration and has argued over 50 cases before the Supreme Court.

He's also a law professor at Georgetown University. Neil, welcome back to Democracy Now. You've called this decision, quote, a win for our Constitution and founders' vision of what America is, lay out what happened, what exactly this decision means? Yeah, I think it's a sweeping decision that, you know, unequivocally rebukes President Trump's idea that he can impose tariffs on American consumers on his own without the approval of the Congress. You know, our Constitution and Article 1, Section 8, expressly gives the power to tariff to Congress, not to the president. And so the president basically tried to

to do this on his own, saying, well, Congress in 1977 passed a law called AEPA, which is about emergency economic powers, and that gives me the power to have an unlimited tariff. And as you just heard, the court just resoundedly rejected that idea. It doesn't mention the word tariff Senate. And Congress has never given carte blanche authority to the president to tariff the American consumer. And the nonpartisan tax foundation has said after studying President Trump's tariffs, that they are the largest increase on American consumers, the largest tax increase on American consumers since Bill Clinton in 1993. And of course, that was done through Congress. So that's simply what the opinion says. If the president really thinks these tariffs are so

important, as you all just read, that the country will be destroyed without them, his choice is easy. just go to the Congress and get them approved. As the Congress delegated to the President, in your reading of the law up until now. Yeah, so they certainly didn't delegate that kind of unlimited power. When Congress gives the President power of tariffs, they always have hard and fast limits. So, for example, Section 122 of the Trade Act

says the President has a temporary power to increase tariffs for 150 days by 15%. What did President Trump do? He increased tariffs 50%, 150%, indefinitely. And that's a kind of coloring outside of the lines that the court found so problematic last week in its decision. And why did the court give only 45 days for the government to go to the Supreme Court? Typically, it's not a 90-day stay? Yeah, we were very grateful to see that. The court, on its own did that. And I think it's, you know, obviously, you know, they, they have their reasons, but my guess is it's because they recognize the importance of this issue and that it should be

decided quickly. I'm privileged to represent a group of small businesses who are struggling every day to understand what these rules are, how important, how, you know, what these tariffs are likely to be, will there be, you know, refunds on these illegal tariffs in the future? All sorts of really difficult questions. And I think the Court of Appeals did something really really. good by saying, look, government, normally you have 90 days to go to the Supreme Court. We're only giving you 45. Explain overall what tariffs would be lifted. Explain how this works, this timeline, and what do you expect the Supreme Court to do? Well, so the president has two choices right now. One is he could do what the court last week said he should do, which is to go

to Congress and seek their approval. It's our hope that he will do that. And, And, you know, and then Congress can decide. I note that President Trump tried to get approval before when he was president the first time, and Congress said no. But, you know, that's a debate that I think the American people should have that the American Congress should have. The other option is, of course, he could go to the U.S. Supreme Court. He could try as early as this week. And the court could hear the case pretty quickly in a matter of a month or two and then resolve the case pretty quickly. So I think those are the paths that are available right now to the administration, but right now these tariffs have been declared illegal and unconstitutional by the nation's second highest court.

And how do you expect the Supreme Court to rule given the six judge conservative majority on the court? Well, I'm not going to predict how the court will rule. We think the case here is overwhelming. But I've heard these questions all the time in my past cases, which I've litigated in the Supreme Court. Oh, the court is too conservative or something. I'm reminded, I think I was even on this program when I argued Moore v. Harper, which was a case challenging the Republican National Committee's theory of the independent state legislature doctrine, which if they had won that case would have entrenched Republican rule for perhaps decades. and everyone said, oh, the Supreme Court, you know, they're in the pocket of Republicans and so on. And, you know, I never thought that was right. I thought that the Supreme Court would look at this by understanding what is the original intent of the Constitution when it comes to elections.

And lo and behold, six to three, the Supreme Court rejected that Republican theory there. I think a similar result is very possible here. Again, I'm not here to predict what the court will do. But I think if they look at, as I suspect they will, the original understanding, of the Constitution, the fact that our founders cared so much about the taxation and tariff power to put it in expressly Congress's control and strip the president of any power over that because they knew that every king and despot always wants to use the tax power. I mean, think Boston Tea Party, think so many other things in our revolutionary history. The idea

that the president could come along and just impose taxes and tariffs on the American people on his own would have turned the founders over in their graves. So we are going to make that case to the Supreme Court, should this become a Supreme Court case, and we are optimistic in the strength of that argument. Neil Kachon, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Law professor at Georgetown University argued the case before the court, which has now struck down Trump's tariffs. But they can remain until October. We will, of course, control. We will, of course, continue to follow this story, as we will turn right now to Dan Rayfield, Oregon Attorney General. He's leading the multi-state lawsuit against Trump's tariffs. He's joining us from Salem, Oregon.

Oregon Attorney General, thanks so much for being with us. You're the one who brought this case. Explain why you brought it and the significance of the ruling of the court. Yeah, I think when people think about tariffs or you hear tariffs, that word in your community, you don't feel that that's something that's impacting you as a person just walking through your community. In fact, if you listen to President Trump, he claims and brags that all of these costs are being paid by foreign businesses. And the fact is that when you look at it, when you look at people that we trust, Goldman Sachs, all of these others, JP Morgan, they show that about 70 to 80% of those tariffs are paid by Americans. And so when you thought about the importance of this case,

especially when cost of living is such a huge thing for Americans right now, and you see a president using and abusing an emergency power that had never been used for tariffs before. It was a real easy decision for us to move forward. Here in Oregon, I was hearing from businesses that were having their products removed out of their shelves in Canada. We're seeing the costs of goods that the state, state was purchasing increasing. And it was just only the beginning when we started this journey

back in February and really starting evaluating the impact. So it made absolute sense for us to get involved and say, hey, Mr. President, if you want to do tariffs, that's great. Just do them the right way. Do them the way that Congress intended. And the first court to hear this case was the Court of International Trade in New York where there were two Republican judges, yet the court voted unanimously against these tariffs? What's your sense of how this will continue to work its way up the judicial chain here? Yeah, and the one thing that I never got when I became Attorney General was a crystal ball, so just know that. But as you look at this, I think what people should find interesting, that you have 11 judges that have all ruled that the manner in which

the president has tried to implement his tariffs is unconstitutional. that went beyond the safeguards that Congress intended for consumers. They put these sideboards. Congress put sideboards in place to protect consumers, to protect all of us, to protect our businesses, our economy. And the president doesn't want to use this. We want around them. So it wasn't surprising that you had Republican or judges appointed by Republicans saying,

hey, you went too far here. This isn't what Congress intended. This isn't what our Constitution intended. We had one judge in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals that actually ruled and appointed by a Republican that ruled that these weren't constitutional as well. So I don't think that these are really Democratic or Republican leaning issues. I mean, these are foundational democratic principles that we're trying to uphold. I wanted to turn to the White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro speaking about the tariffs lawsuit on Monday. This case is arguably the single most important economic case that has ever come before the Supreme Court.

If the lower court's ruling is upheld, President Trump has correctly said, that will be the end of the United States. I think we're in very good shape. Bottom line is we're optimistic that the Supreme Court will rule on this. We don't have to, the tariffs will remain in place at least through October and Pat perhaps be on until the Supreme Court rules on this. So that's Peter Navarro, the top trade advisor to President Trump, the convicted felon who was pardoned by Trump. Dan Rayfield, or Oregon Attorney General, your response?

I would just say I wish I had the moral flexibility to make such bold, inaccurate statements to the American public. the way that the Trump administration does, it's absolutely wild to sit there and say that that is going to destroy America. I would argue giving all of the power to tax, because that's what these are. These are a tax on American people. And giving all of that power to the president without the ability of Congress to curb it is more un-American than anything that is going on right now. This case is incredibly important for the American people and our autonomy. Congress's autonomy. It's wild the things they say. But again, this is an administration that

truly lives on a hyperbole and making wild statements like this. It's just factually inaccurate. And again, remember, like, as we're going through the stores, you're seeing it right now, the prices for school supplies. My son goes to start school tomorrow. The prices of clothes. These things are absolutely increasing every week in our stores. incredibly wild for them to make statements like this. And remember, and that's the other thing, if you do care about trade, if you do care about how these things are being implemented,

remember that no other president has needed to do tariffs this way. Every other president has used the regular statutes. In fact, Donald Trump used the other statutes when he was implementing tariffs. It's been done before. We've entered into successful trade agreements lawfully, constitutionally, the way that the Constitution and Congress intended. And Attorney General, you mentioned that these tariffs are, in effect, a tax, but it's also a regressive tax, isn't it? It's hitting more folks on the lower income strata of American society.

Oh, absolutely. And this is what Republicans are trying to do to us right now. On one hand, you see this big, beautiful bill, and I don't even like calling it that, where they're yanking away health care benefits from Americans. They are yanking away food assistance. benefits. On the one hand, and on the other hand, they are passing this hidden regressive tax. It's impacting vulnerable Americans more than the wealthy. It is an entire reshaping of the American economy that is going on right now. And the wild thing that is this, they are doing it without congressional approval when it comes to these tariffs.

Again, I really think we have to start calling them regressive taxes because tariffs makes it feel like foreign businesses are paying. Dan Rayfield, we want to thank you so much for being with us. I want to ask you one unrelated question. In our next segment, we're going to be going to the border to talk about the court blocking the Trump administration from deporting some almost 700 unaccompanied Guatemalan children. But I wanted to ask you about Oregon being a sanctuary state and what exactly that means. Oregon governor Tina Kotech pushed back against claims from the Trump administration that Oregon, obstructing federal immigration enforcement efforts because of its sanctuary law.

Can you talk about what that means for Oregon and the level of cooperation between ICE agents, these raids, and local and state authorities? Yeah, really simply put, in Oregon, we've had sanctuary state laws since the 80s, right? They have coexisted between seven presidential administrations, and they've coexisted peacefully. And really the idea and the spirit behind our sanctuary laws here in Oregon is that we want our local law enforcement doing the things that keep our community safe. We don't want them doing immigration. And we want people to feel safe being able to talk to public safety local law enforcement about the things that are going on in their communities, right? That keeps us all safe.

When you've got a victim of crime, we want witnesses to feel comfortable going to our courts to be able to testify to keep our communities safe. And so we've enacted these laws. And they were enacted in the 80s. And in Oregon, they were nearly unanimous. Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly supported these policies. And so it's a relatively new thing to have the federal government come in and try and effectively force us to use state resources to effectuate immigration laws.

And that's what these laws are designed to protect and prohibit. They've been upheld in Oregon in the past as being constitutional. And so we expect that to continue moving forward. Right now there's a policy disagreement between the federal government and the states about how they want to interact. But I feel very confident in saying that Oregonians want their law enforcement. You're going after the essential public safety things, burglary, murder, the big crimes in our communities to make sure that we're keeping our community safe. and we want people in Oregon feeling comfortable and safe talking to law enforcement and going to our courthouses to testify to keep our communities safe.

Dan Rayfield, want to thank you for being with us, Oregon Attorney General. Speaking to us from Salem, Oregon, he's leading the multi-state lawsuit against Trump's tariffs. When we come back, the Trump administration tried to deport as many as 700 unaccompanied Guatemalan children in the middle of the night over Labor Day weekend. We'll speak with the lawyer who helped stop them. Well, for now, stay with us. that no

to never to never to call not she a

cause that I'm that I do legal or so

attend the gardens are they Disneyland Man a

a truck a old without the license no

important if She was taxista there in his national that's no

important for the Tiosa Yellow Ice by La Santa Cecilia in our

Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org The War and Peace report.

I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We turn out to the Trump

administration's attempt to illegally deport as many as 700 Guatemalan children in the dead of night over Labor Day weekend. The move was temporarily halted at the last minute by a federal judge. The National Immigration Law Center filed an emergency request to stop the deportation flights, arguing the children who arrived in the U.S.

without their parents would face harm and abuse if they were returned to Guatemala. Many of the children are now living in shelters and foster care. One 10-year-old said in a court filing, quote, I do not have any family in Guatemala that can take good care of me. A 16-year-old said she faced, quote, threats against my life in Guatemala, saying if I'm sent back, I believe, I will be in danger, unquote. Over the weekend, some of the kids were loaded onto planes that waited on the tarmac in South Texas. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sukhnanan said she was awakened at 2.35 a.m. to address an emergency filing from the children's lawyers who warned the flights might leave within hours. The judge held a hearing Sunday saying, quote, I have the government

attempting to remove minor children from the country in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend, which is surprising, she said. This all comes as the Trump administration insists it's reuniting the Guatemalan children at their country's request with their families who sought their return. On Monday, Guatemala's president said his country is ready to receive the unaccompanied children. For more, we're joined from McAllen, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border by Avren Olivares, an attorney representing the Guatemalan children. He's vice president of litigation at the National Immigration Law Center. Avren, where I come back to democracy now, explain exactly what took place. I mean, this is so dramatic. Over a holiday weekend in the middle of the night,

a judge has woken up at 2.35 in the morning. Explain here what's at stake. Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for having me. That's exactly right. We started hearing rumors that there were plans to remove Guatemalan children in our custody, in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. These are unaccompanied children who do not have a parent or a guardian with them. and we started putting together a challenge to try to stop it because that is unlawful. There are laws. There are protections for unaccompanied minors that provide how a child can be released from custody to whom and the process if they want to go back to their country.

There are very well-established process that have been in place since at least 2008 with bipartisan support. And the later in the day, keep in mind this Saturday of Labor Day weekend, so the later in the day, the more and more information we were getting that there were plans to pick up the children. So after 11 o'clock, the shelters received a notification from headquarters of the Office of Refugee Resettlement to have their children ready within two hours or four hours for pickup. If this were a benign repatriation to send children back to their parents, it wouldn't be

happening at midnight on Sunday of Labor Day weekend. So we filed that lawsuit around 1 o'clock in the morning and a temporary restraining order simultaneously and then followed the court's emergency procedure, calling the court at 2 o'clock. Somebody got a hold of the judge at 2.30, and that's how we ended up here. And could you, Evan, could you explain the Trafficking Victims Protection and Reauthorization Act, which was, I think, central to your argument to the court? Exactly. That is precisely the law passed in 2008 with widespread bipartisan support. that protects unaccompanied minors.

And the idea behind that law is that young immigrant children who come to the U.S. without a parent or without either parent are very susceptible to exploitation, trafficking. So in order to protect those children from that, they're very clearly established processes. For example, if an adult requests what is called voluntary departure, they can return to their home country. if a child requests voluntary departure, an immigration judge has to approve that. A child advocate has to make a best interest determination to ensure that returning the child is in the best interest of the child.

It does not place the child in danger. The child is what is called of a tender age. There's additional protections so that an assessment can be made, presented to the immigration judge, and only then does the judge allow that to go forward. And then there are procedures also to make sure that there's somebody, back home to receive the children, a proper adult, who government authorities, this does not happen in the middle of the night in a rush without informing anyone, poor children, right?

They were woken up in the middle of the night, put in a bus, taken to the airport, and were there for hours not knowing what was going to happen to them. Luckily, the children were not unlawfully deported. We have 14 days to properly look at the situation and then determine the next steps. And where are these children now, where they return to the shelters where they were being held? They were.

All the children who were on those planes were now back in our custody, according to the government. That's what the government has reported, and we have confirmed as much. And Efreino Alvarez, can you give us a more complete description of who these kids are, where they are throughout the United States? We have plaintiffs in Texas, in California, Pennsylvania, New York, and the class is nationwide of all unaccompanied Guatemalan children in ORR custody. They are in shelters all over the country, right? Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, Arizona, Chicago, all over the country as this happens, right? That is normal.

So, and they vary in age from at least seven. to 17. There have some arrived a couple of months ago this summer. Some arrived longer than that a few months ago, and they have been in ORAC citizens. And the vast majority of them have pending immigration cases. They have open immigration cases. An immigration judge has not determined their claims. Some are eligible for asylum. Some are eligible for what's called a special immigrant juvenile visa. That's when reunification with one or both parents is not possible. So it just varies a lot. The one common denominator here is twofold. They are all children and they are Guatemalan. And your response to the Guatemalan president, Arevolo, saying that they're welcome

to come back to Guatemala, what the children are saying about returning and whose custody they're in right now in the United States? They are currently in the custody of the office of refugee resettlement, which is a federal agency, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. That is where they are supposed to be as unaccompanied minors. The Guatemalan government updated their statement to specify that they welcome any children who wants to return. And some of the children may want to return, and there are processes to be followed in order to do that orderly, not in the middle of the night over a holiday weekend without proper notice. There are processes. And that's all we're asking the court. Require the government to follow

the process required by law. Nothing more. The law is there, has been there for 20 years. Let's just follow the law, follow the normal process. And once that happens, there's no problem if a child is returned, right? But some children, keep in mind,

have asylum claims. They fear persecution in Guatemala, right? So some children do not want to return, and not only do they not want to return, they fear returning because their life, their personal safety is in danger. So it is not true. that all the children want to return.

Efren Olivares, I want to thank you so much for being with us, attorney representing the unaccompanied Guatemalan children, many of whom President Trump has attempted to have deported this past weekend, Labor Day weekend, in the middle of the night. Efraine Olivares is vice president of litigation at the National Immigration Law Center, previously with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Immigrant Justice Program, His book, My Boy Will Die of Sorrow, A Memoir of Immigration from the Front Lines. He was speaking to us from the U.S. Mexico border in McAllen, Texas.

This is Democracy Now. When we come back, we look at the Israeli airstrike in Yemen that killed Yemen's Houthi, Prime Minister, Defense Minister, and other officials. And we'll talk about Gaza with Rami Khoury. Stay with us. What do you, Dharman God, what do you do make, what do you do? What do you?

What do you? What do you do What do you do? Meherly chasm Sune Jano, Jor

No, don't ask, don't ask you don't ask you Ate

go not John Ojot by Sonny Singh, performing in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, Democracy Now.org, the War and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. In Yemen, thousands of mourners attended a funeral today for 12 senior Houthi figures who were killed by Israel in an air strike Thursday. The dead included the Houthi Prime Minister Ahmed Rabeh Raghi. The Houthi military leadership that holds most decision-making power was not targeted. Israel's previously targeted Houthi ports and

infrastructure. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels began launching missiles at Israel, most of which have been intercepted and attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea after the start of Israel's war on Gaza in what they have called actions in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The Houthis controlled Sana'a and much of northern Yemen since 2014. This is Omar al-Bukhaiti, Houthi Deputy Minister of Information. Our message today to those inside and abroad is a message of challenge and steadfastness and that we are standing side by side with our revolutionary and political leadership. We present a convoy of martyrs to join the ranks of the martyrs of the leadership

of the government of change and construction. Many have gone and many will come. We will make sacrifices for the sake of the cause, for the sake of the challenge, for the sake of the steadfastness with our brothers in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowed to continue the retaliation campaign against the Houthis. He addressed the Israeli security cabinet on Sunday. The Houthi terror regime is learning the hard way that it is paying and will continue to pay a very heavy price for its aggression against the state of Israel. Whoever attacks us, we attack them.

Whoever plans to attack us, we attack them. I believe the entire region is learning about the strength and determination of the state of Israel. To discuss this and more, we go to Rami Khoury. He is a Palestinian-American journalist who's covered the Middle East for five decades, Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the American University of Beirut, non-resident senior fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C., joining us from Massachusetts. Rami, thanks so much for being with us. Can you talk about the significance of this Israeli strike on Yemen on Thursday?

And who exactly was killed? Well, thanks for having me. The strike was significant in several ways. It's not a big deal that Israel is killing leaders in different Arab countries all around the region. They've been doing that for decades. It is significant that they are doing this now after there's been a bit of a lull. in Yemeni attacks by Ansarullah, the Houthis. The Americans more or less pulled out of that war in Yemen.

And now there is a big signal that Israel is sending, that they're going to go after top leaders in any country that they feel threatens Israel. So it's significant that they've done this. They know that the attacks haven't really impacted much in Yemen in the sense that the people who were killed, even though they were senior officials were not major decision-making people. The decisions in Yemen are really in the hands of the political leadership council,

which is headed by the head of the Ansada Law movement. And the people in the government, the prime minister, the defense minister and others, carry out the policies that are set by this higher political. political council. So the impact is really to signal to the Yemenis and everybody else in the region that Israel will keep attacking anybody, will kill senior people, they don't care about any laws or reprisals. And this is a troubling fact because it just means that endless war is one of the possibilities that we might face in this region. Yeah, and Romney, I wanted to ask you precisely about that. This continued expansion of the of the targets of Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Iran,

in addition to the genocide that they're perpetrating in Gaza and the continued attacks in the West Bank. What is the impact of this continued expansion of its targets and of the leaders of these various countries on the rest of the Arab governments and leaders of the Middle East? Well, this is significant because the Yemenis have been involved in attacking Israel since the Gaza genocide started. They say it's to support the Palestinians and to put pressure on the Israelis to stop the genocide. Hezbollah said the same thing, that they're attacking to help the Palestinians. The minute that Israel stops the genocide, both Hezbollah and Saarullah and Yemen said they

would stop attacking Israel or Israeli targets. This is different now. This is an Israeli-Yemini conflict, not a conflict in which Yemen is supporting Gaza and Palestinians. And this is the danger here that we've seen this going on for the last probably 10 years or so that the center of gravity of the Israeli-Palestinian, the Zionist-Arabism conflict has expanded from its core in Palestine for the last 75 years, is now involved in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and other places possibly. And this is what's really dangerous about this,

because it might also bring in the Americans again. If the Ansar al-Lah keep attacking ships, they attacked the ship yesterday, a cargo ship off the Saudi coast. And this, of course, disrupts international shipping. It has strategic implications, economic implications for the whole world, which usually means the U.S. is going to step in because if U.S. economic dominance in the world is ever threatened, it takes action because that's its most important goal. And so this is very significant as a symbol of the expanding conflict. And it also reminds us that the Israelis have never had a strategy about how to coexist, how a Jewish majority, Israeli state, which they created in 1948, how that could coexist, not just with the Palestinians,

but with everybody else in the region. They've never had a strategy. Their strategy has been military force, relying on Western imperial powers, first the British, and then after the 50s, the Americans, and intimidating people, killing as many people. And now the next level, of course, genocide in Gaza. The Israelis could possibly take part of Yemen, I would get. they're going to probably take Hodei the Port, which is a strategic for imports in Yemen, and just destroy it, turn it into rubble like they've done in Gaza. I wouldn't put this beyond them, and whether or not this brings about any reaction from the Western, alleged Western democracies who care about human rights remains to be seen.

And in almost all media coverage of what happens in Yemen, the country has always referred to as the Iranian-backs. Houthis in control of Yemen. We never, for instance, talk about the U.S.-backed Israel in our media accounts of what Israel does. What exactly is the relationship between the Houthis and the Iranian government? The Iranian government has clearly helped the Yemenis, and Sa'u'llah is the name of the movement. They've helped them a lot strategically, technologically, in other ways, training. The Yemenis produce a lot of their own military hardware, some of their missiles and other things. They've also got very sophisticated protection capabilities because of the landscape in Yemen,

because of the size of the country, it's massive, full of mountains and valleys and rivers and wadis. So they're able to protect their resources better than, say, Hamas could or Hezbollah could. And the Yemenis have relied heavily on the Iranians and also on Hezbollah. Hezbollah did some of the training of the Ansarullah fighters and the technology. So there is a strategic relationship between Iran and all of the groups in the Arab world that were part of what Iran called the resistance axis, which took a big hit in the last two years.

But as we see, they're still there. They're still fighting. They're still making a statement. And we don't know where this is going to lead. But it could very well lead to a much bigger war in the region and could again draw in the Iranians and the Americans. And Rami Kudi, the two governments, one the Houthi government,

in which the prime minister was just killed by Israel, what level of popular support do they each have in Yemen? Well, the Ansar al-La government that the Houthis created in the north of Yemen controls much of the northern part of Yemen, and the so-called internationally recognized government is the way it's called, who are based in Aden in the south. they control some of the southern regions, some of which are oil-producing regions and strategic port areas. The Ansada-Lah government, like most Arab governments, is not a democratic force.

It is there because it took over in a military coup some years ago, and they enforce their incumbency on their rule by autocratic means. And now they've stepped that up, by the way, in the last couple of months, there's much more internal monitoring, repression, arrests, because they're being attacked, as we saw earlier this week. And they have a lot of support, but they don't have unanimous support. And this is something that applies to all governments in the Arab world, that they have some genuine support, but not unanimous. And there's people in North Yemen who would rather not have perpetual warfare as their destiny, but they can't do anything about it. And in the South, of course, it's the same thing, the people in the South,

who are headed by various former officials in Unified Yemen with Yemeni support, sorry, with Saudi support, a United Arab Emirates support. The UAE has a kind of a base in the south of Yemen now. and some international support. These are not, you know, wildly loved democratic movements, but they are in power. And people like, many people in Yemen, North Yemen, like the fact that they resist,

even though they're going to get the hell, you know, beaten up really badly, because this is what the Israelis and the Americans do. They use their military power. But they like the resistance is a part of, their philosophy part of their DNA. And the Yemenis have been resisting for about the last 2,000 years. They've had all kinds of, every, you know, colonial, imperial, regional power has tried to attack them. Even from the Romans in the first century, there was a Roman general

who tried to go down and take over the spice roots, and they threw them out. So this is part of the regional scene. Ramikuri, I wanted to ask you about Gaza. And West Bank. The latest news, Israeli attacks since dawn, have killed at least 54 Palestinians, including people seeking food. The attacks coming as Gaza health officials recorded another 13 deaths due to starvation, three of them kids, bringing the number of starvation deaths in Gaza to more than 360. According to a leading global monitor, more than half a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are suffering catastrophic hunger due to Israel's blockade. This comes as the world's leading Genocide Scholars Association has approved a resolution

establishing Israel's policies and action in Gaza, meet the legal definition of genocide as found in the Genocide Convention, constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity. I want to play for you, Melanie O'Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. This resolution declaring what is happening in Gaza as genocide passed by an overwhelming majority far beyond the two-thirds majority required. Ramihuri, if you can respond to this genocide finding by the largest genocide scholars association and the conditions in Gaza and now what I think it's been established,

something like 42,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been displaced in the killings by Israeli settlers of Palestinians continues. Yeah, first of all, what the Israelis are doing in the West Bank and Gaza and elsewhere in East Jerusalem is nothing new. It's just a bigger scale. And it's more out in the open. It's reported now, especially by social media. And even Western mainstream media has started to talk about it. Progressive media, honest media like yourselves, have been talking about it for many years. But the world sees now what has been happening in Gaza. And we keep sending the message that this has been going on since the 19th. 1930s, when the Zionist movement came in and said, we want a Jewish state in a land that was 93% Arab-Palestinian. But this is an ongoing genocide, and the statement by the International Association of Genocide Scholars is very significant, not at the level that is going to suddenly stop the genocide, but it's significant because of the nature of this group. I talked yesterday to my friend Omar Bartow, who you've had on your show. He's a leading Israeli-American genocide and Holocaust scholar teaches at Brown University.

And I asked him, why is this important? And he said it's important because the nature of this group. This association is a relatively conservative group. There's another more leftist progressive dynamic association. But these guys are pretty low-key. They're careful about what they do. And the fact that they came out with such a big majority, I think 85% of them voted that this Israeli Israel is carrying out of genocide, that's significant because it makes it pretty obvious to the whole world, if anybody needed more proof, that even conservative scholars and dependent serious students of this gruesome process of genocide and the Holocaust and mass atrocities, they are coming right out and saying, this is a genocide. The big question is what will happen next?

We have 10 seconds. Will any of the major Western powers take action? Will the signatories of the Genocide Convention do what they're supposed to do, which is stop the genocide by any means possible? Rami Khourdi, we want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian American journalist, public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, also a non-resident senior fellow at the Arab Center in Washington. D.C. Democracy Now produced with Mike Burke, Renee Feldstein, Nguzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nirmine Sheikh, Maria Tedesena, Nicole Salazar, Sarah Nassar. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.