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Iran took defiant steps on Monday in response to the intensified Western sanctions aimed at stifling its oil exports, announcing legislation intended to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf shipping lane, and testing missiles in a desert drill clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States.

The legislation calls for Iran's military to block any oil tanker heading through the strait en route to countries no longer buying Iranian crude because of the European Union embargo, which took effect on Sunday. It was unclear whether the legislation would pass or precisely how Iran would enforce it, given that the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet patrols the strait. Pentagon officials have said Iran's military is capable of closing the strait temporarily, and the Obama administration has warned that any such move would constitute a "red line" that would provoke an American response. The strait, connecting the Gulf of Oman to the Persian Gulf, is the conduit for one fifth of the world's oil supply and has been called the world's most important "oil chokepoint" by the United States Department of Energy.

Iranian news services quoted Ibrahim Agha-Mohammadi, a member of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, as saying the panel drafted the legislation "as an answer to the European Union's oil sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran." The European embargo, along with new American restrictions that took effect on Friday, are intended to penalize Iran for refusing to suspend all uranium enrichment. Western nations and Israel suspect the enrichment program is aimed at creating the ability to make nuclear weapons, which Iran denies. While high-level talks have faltered, a meeting of lower level negotiators is planned for Tuesday. In the second saber-rattling step, Iranian news agencies announced that the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps had begun three days of missile testing in the desert region of the central province of Semnan. Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a commander of the exercises, was quoted as saying they were intended as practice responses to attacks by "adventurous nations," a reference to Israel and its most important ally, the United States.

“The civilian population in the Gaza Strip is under direct attack,” dozens of international law experts have warned in a statement laying out numerous Israeli violations of the laws of war, some amounting to war crimes.

“Most of the recent heavy bombings in Gaza lack an acceptable military justification and, instead, appear to be designed to terrorize the civilian population,” says the statement, signed by more than 140 international and criminal law scholars, human rights defenders, legal and other experts. Among them are John Dugard and Richard Falk, both former UN special rapporteurs on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“Gaza’s civilian population has been victimized in the name of a falsely construed right to self-defense,” the statement adds. Israel’s illegal attacks include its assault on the Gaza City neighborhood of [Shujaiya], which the statement says “was one of the bloodiest and most aggressive operations ever conducted by Israel in the Gaza Strip, a form of urban violence constituting a total disrespect of civilian innocence.”

In a pending lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the “no fly” list, in which the government has asserted the state secrets privilege, a federal court signaled that it would consider requiring judicial approval of “no fly” determinations involving U.S. citizens. Judge Anthony J. Trenga, who presides over the case Gulet Mohamed v. Eric Holder in the Eastern District of Virginia, set a hearing on February 24 to allow the government to supplement its argument that the case must be dismissed on state secrets grounds. Judge Trenga has previously rejected government arguments that state secrets required dismissal of the case and concluded the case could proceed without the assertedly privileged documents. (Secrecy News, 10/31/14). In a February 2 order, he told the government to be prepared to explain “how the under seal documents as to which the state secrets privilege is claimed preclude adjudication of the procedural due process claims without their use and disclosure.”

Beyond that, however, Judge Trenga hinted at a possible remedy to the constitutional challenge before the court involving independent judicial review of “no fly” determinations. He asked the government to address “whether, and if so how, national security considerations make it impractical or otherwise undesirable to submit for ex parte, in camera judicial review and approval the placement of United States citizens on the No Fly List, either before a citizen’s placement on the No Fly List or within a specific time period after placement on the No Fly List.” The upcoming hearing will be closed and ex parte.

The ISIS executioner who appeared in several execution videos, speaking with British accent, has been identified as the 26-year-old Mohammed Emwazi who claims that he had been harassed and intimidated by MI5. How are Western intelligence services recruiting targeted persons? Mohammed Emwazi, a.k.a. Jihadi John” from the British capital London has, according to the guardian  been harassed by the British intelligence service MI5.

In an article entitled “How Mohammed Emwazi went from fresh Graduate to knife-wielding killer” the newspaper would report that his ordeal began when he traveled to Tanzania in 2009. The domestic British intelligence service MI5 was reportedly already in touch with Emwazi before he left the UK and began appearing in ISIS videos. Emwazi reportedly stated that he had been harassed to such a degree that he filed a complaint with the Independent Police Complaints Commission over his treatment.

What is the most common Forced Recruitment Strategy of the UK’s MI5, the German Verfassunsschutz and other Western European Intelligence Services?  One of the most common recruitment techniques among European intelligence services is to single out persons who committed minor crimes, threaten them with severe consequences or with the possibility to “set them up and let them serve major prison sentences”. After this first round of intimidation they are then approached by a domestic intelligence service who will offer them that “all problems could easily disappear if they cooperate; or else”. Especially the UK’s MI5 and the German Federal as well as State Verfassungsschutz (Constitutional Protection Police) have perfected this recruitment method. The most common “targets” for this recruitment method are individuals of special interest. During the 1960s – 70s this would typically be Communists, Socialists. Since the 1980s and after the end of the so-called cold war in the 90s, the Western European intelligence services began to focus on the new “enemy”, Muslims.

U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order this Monday slapping Venezuela with new sanctions and declaring the Bolivarian nation an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security".  The sanctions target seven individuals accused by the White House of alleged human rights violations and "public corruption", freezing their assets and barring entry into the U.S. The figures include Justo Jose Noguera Pietri, President of the state entity, the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG) and Katherine Nayarith Haringhton Padron, a national level prosecutor currently taking the lead in the trials of several Venezuelan political opposition leaders, including Leopoldo Lopez.  The executive order is the latest in a series of U.S. sanctions imposed on Venezuela over the past few months. On February 3, the Obama administration expanded the list of Venezuelan officials barred from entering the U.S., which now includes the Chief Prosecutor Luis Ortega Diaz. 

The Venezuelan government, for its part, maintains that all of those arrested are in the process of facing trial for criminal offences linked to violent destabilization efforts spearheaded by the opposition. Former Caracas Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma was arrested last month on charges of conspiracy and sedition related to the February 12 thwarted "Blue Coup" attempt. A Venezuelan judge found sufficient evidence linking the opposition figure to air force officials involved in the coup as well as to rightwing terrorist leaders such as Lorent Saleh, who was extradited by Colombian authorities to face charges last year. The other high profile Venezuelan opposition leader currently facing trial is Leopoldo López, who was indicted for his role in leading several months of violent opposition protests last year with the aim of effecting the "exit", or ouster, of the constitutional government. Known as the "guarimbas", these violent protests and street barricades caused the death of 43 people, the majority of whom were security personnel or Chavistas.

"Venezuelan officials past and present who violate the human rights of Venezuelan citizens and engage in acts of public corruption will not be welcome here, and we now have the tools to block their assets and their use of U.S. financial systems," announced White House spokesman Josh Earnest. The U.S. has failed thus far to disclose evidence that might bolster its claims of human rights violations, leading Venezuelan and other regional leaders to condemn what they regard as the arbitrary and political character of U.S. sanctions.  While regional bodies such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) have called for dialogue, Washington has so far refused to support negotiations or to recognise the organisation's stance.

The Harper government’s Bill C-51, or Anti-Terrorism Act, has been in the public domain for over a month. Long enough for us to know that it subverts basic principles of constitutional law, assaults rights of free speech and free assembly, and is viciously anti-democratic. An unprecedented torrent of criticism has been directed against this bill as the government rushes it through Parliament. This has included stern or at least sceptical editorials in all the major newspapers; an open letter, signed by four former Prime Ministers and five former Supreme Court judges, denouncing the bill for exposing Canadians to major violations of their rights; and another letter, signed by a hundred Canadian law professors, explaining the dangers it poses to justice and legality. As its critics have shown, the bill isn’t really about terrorism: it’s about smearing other activities by association—and then suppressing them in ways that would formerly have been flagrantly illegal. The bill targets, among others, people who defend the treaty rights of First Nations, people who oppose tar sands, fracking, and bitumen-carrying pipelines as threats to health and the environment, and people who urge that international law be peacefully applied to ending Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. (Members of this latter group include significant numbers of Canadian Jews.)

But the Anti-Terrorism Act is more mortally dangerous to Canadian democracy than even these indications would suggest. A central section of the act empowers CSIS agents to obtain judicial warrants—on mere suspicion, with no requirement for supporting evidence—that will allow them to supplement other disruptive actions against purported enemies of Harperland with acts that directly violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other Canadian laws. The only constraints placed on this legalized law-breaking are that CSIS agents shall not “(a) cause, intentionally or by criminal negligence, death or bodily harm to an individual; (b) wilfully attempt in any manner to obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice; or (c) violate the sexual integrity of an individual.”

The second of these prohibitions—occurring in the midst of a bill that seeks systematically to obstruct citizens in the exercise of their rights, pervert justice, and defeat democracy—might tempt one to believe that there is a satirist at work within the Department of Justice. (Note, however, that CSIS agents can obstruct, pervert and defeat to their hearts’ content, so long as they do so haphazardly, rather than “wilfully.”) But the first and third clauses amount to an authorization of torture.

There’s a charming naiveté to the open letter [PDF] by 47 Republican senators that condescendingly seeks to explain features of the U.S. constitutional system to Iran’s leaders that they otherwise “may not fully understand.” The missive warns that, with respect to “your nuclear negotiations with our government ... any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress” could be revoked by the next president “with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Beyond the amusing inaccuracies about U.S. parliamentary order, it seems there are some features of the nuclear negotiations that the signatory senators don’t fully understand — not only on the terms of the deal, but also on who would be party to an agreement. There are no negotiations on Iran’s “nuclear-weapons program” because the world’s intelligence agencies (including those of the U.S. and Israel) do not believe Iran is currently building nuclear weapons, nor has it made a strategic decision to use its civilian nuclear infrastructure to produce a bomb. An active Iranian nuclear-weapons program would render moot the current negotiations, because Iran would be in fundamental violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As things stand, Tehran remains within the terms of the NPT, which allows nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, but monitors member states to prevent weaponization. Tehran and the IAEA remain in dispute over full compliance with all transparency requirements of the NPT, particularly over alleged previous research into weapons design. But Iran’s nuclear facilities remain under constant monitoring by international inspectors who certify that no nuclear material is being diverted.

The current negotiations are focused on strengthening verifiable safeguards against weaponization over-and-above those required by the NPT, yet the Republican-led Congress, egged on by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is warning that those goals are insufficient, and the terms and time-frame of the deal are unacceptable. The key element missing from the GOP Senators’ letter, however, is that the deal is not being negotiated between Iran and the United States; it is being negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 group, in which the U.S. is joined by Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. Even if the U.S. is the key player in that group, the deal being pursued reflects an international consensus — the same consensus that has made sanctions against Iran so effective. This was likely in the mind of Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who dismissed the letter as “of no legal value” and a “propaganda ploy.” Zarif noted that the deal would indeed be an international agreement adopted by the U.N. Security Council, which a new administration would be obliged to uphold — and that any attempt by the White House or Congress to abrogate, unilaterally modify or impede such an agreement would be a breach of U.S. obligations. 

Consider the latest leak sourced to Edward Snowden from the perspective of his detractors. The National Security Agency's defenders would have us believe that Snowden is a thief and a criminal at best, and perhaps a traitorous Russian spy. In their telling, the NSA carries out its mission lawfully, honorably, and without unduly compromising the privacy of innocents. For that reason, they regard Snowden's actions as a wrongheaded slur campaign premised on lies and exaggerations. But their narrative now contradicts itself. The Washington Post's latest article drawing on Snowden's leaked cache of documents includes files "described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained" that "tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded nevertheless."

I never thought I'd see this day: The founder of Lawfare has finally declared that a national-security-state employee perpetrated a huge civil-liberties violation! Remember this if he ever again claims that NSA critics can't point to a single serious abuse at the agency. Wittes himself now says there's been a serious abuse. The same logic applies to Keith Alexander, James Clapper, Michael Hayden, Stewart Baker, Edward Lucas, John Schindler, and every other anti-Snowden NSA defender. So long as they insist that Snowden is a narcissistic criminal and possible traitor, they have no choice but to admit that the NSA collected and stored intimate photos, emails, and chats belonging to totally innocent Americans and safeguarded them so poorly that a ne'er-do-well could copy them onto thumb drives. 

They have no choice but to admit that the NSA was so bad at judging who could be trusted with this sensitive data that a possible traitor could take it all to China and Russia. Yet these same people continue to insist that the NSA is deserving of our trust, that Americans should keep permitting it to collect and store massive amounts of sensitive data on innocents, and that adequate safeguards are in place to protect that data. To examine the entirety of their position is to see that it is farcical. Here's the reality. The NSA collects and stores the full content of extremely sensitive photographs, emails, chat transcripts, and other documents belong to Americans, itself a violation of the Constitution—but even if you disagree that it's illegal, there's no disputing the fact that the NSA has been proven incapable of safeguarding that data. There is not the chance the data could leak at sometime in the future. It has already been taken and given to reporters. The necessary reform is clear. Unable to safeguard this sensitive data, the NSA shouldn't be allowed to collect and store it.

I’ve written before about the potential significance of the Guantánamo “counsel access” case–Hatim v. Obama–which raised the question of whether new and especially invasive search procedures at Guantánamo were invalid insofar as they interfered with the detainees’ right of access to counsel. Today, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit upheld the procedures, while claiming to duck the far larger and more important constitutional question the district court had reached, i.e., whether the right of access to counsel in these cases is protected by the Suspension Clause. In the process, the Court of Appeals held that the deferential Turner v. Safley test does apply to challenges to conditions of confinement at Guantánamo–a very big win for the government, and a big setback for the detainees.

Outgoing Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said he is keeping "all options on the table" when it comes to publicly releasing the Senate's report on the CIA's now-defunct interrogation program. Following Udall's reelection loss earlier this month, a number of advocates floated the idea of Udall publicly revealing sections of the classified report on the Senate floor before the end of the year. ADVERTISEMENT"I mean I'm going to keep all options on the table," he told The Denver Post on Thursday when asked specifically about the idea. While the plan is unlikely, there is some precedent. The Constitution gives immunity to senators engaging in speech and debate, whether or not they publicly reveal classified information. But Senate rules forbid those types of disclosure.  

Udall is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which drafted the report. Portions of it, including the executive summary, are being redacted for release. But Udall and others have said the administration has been too heavy-handed in the editing process.  <A HREF="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?rt=tf_mfw&ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fthehill07-20%2F8001%2Fdffbe72d-f425-4b83-b07e-357ae9d405f6&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.com Widgets</A> "Transparency and disclosure are critical to the work of the Senate intelligence committee and our democracy, so I'm going to keep all options on the table to ensure the truth comes out," Udall said.Udall said an agreement on the release is close, which would make the revelation on the floor unnecessary. Chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told the newspaper the report is expected to be made public in the coming weeks.

The scope of the state secrets privilege is again a matter of contention, as government attorneys in an ongoing lawsuit told a judge last week that he had construed the privilege too narrowly. Is the state secrets privilege applicable only to discrete items of evidence whose disclosure can be shown to harm the Nation? Or can the privilege be invoked more broadly based on the “context” in which litigation occurs? The proper parameters of the state secrets privilege have never been defined in statute, and so these questions recur. In a pending lawsuit concerning the constitutionality of the “no fly” list (Gulet Mohamed v. Eric Holder), the presiding judge has taken a distinctly skeptical view of the government’s use of the state secrets privilege. Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia last fall denied a government motion to dismiss the case on state secrets grounds (Secrecy News,10/31/14), and he concluded that the government’s claim of privilege to withhold 28 specified documents was inadequately justified.

In other words, the government seems to say here, the state secrets privilege has no limiting principle by which it can be circumscribed and objectively constrained. The State Secrets Protection Act, a bill repeatedly introduced in Congress but never enacted into law, would have made clear that “the state secrets privilege is an evidentiary rule, not a justiciability rule, and can only be asserted with respect to items of evidence that plaintiffs seek in discovery or intend to disclose in litigation.” It would also have set “a standard of review designed to give appropriate respect to the executive branch’s institutional expertise and constitutional role, without undermining the judge’s duty to make an independent determination on each privilege claim.” Essentially, according to a 2008 Senate report, “the bill rejects the  expansion of the state secrets privilege into any manner of justiciability doctrine, and demands that it be applied as a purely evidentiary privilege.” But in the absence of legislative action, the asserted scope of the privilege continues to drift.

The FBI was right to withhold records about an alleged murder plot targeting the leaders of Occupy Houston, to protect its informants, a federal judge ruled. Plaintiff Ryan Noah Shapiro is a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research includes “the policing of dissent … especially in the name of national security” and “examining FBI and other intelligence agency efforts to preserve domestic surveillance capabilities while simultaneously subverting the Freedom of Information Act,” according to his MIT profile. Shapiro sent the FBI three Freedom of Information Act requests in early 2013, asking for records about “a potential plan to gather intelligence against the leaders of [Occupy Wall Street-related protests in Houston] and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership [of the protests] via suppressed sniper rifles.” Shapiro told Courthouse News he learned of the alleged plot from FBI documents obtained by investigative reporter Jason Leopold.

The FBI had refused to give Shapiro any documents until he filed an April 2013 federal complaint in Washington, D.C., after which the agency gave him 17 pages. U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer found last year that the FBI had properly withheld some records, but took issue with its use of Exemption 7 under the FOIA, which protects from disclosure “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes.” Collyer dismissed the lawsuit this week after reviewing the documents in her chambers. Shapiro challenged the FBI’s withholding of the names of its murder plot sources, claiming there is no privacy expectation for people who could be called to testify as trial witnesses. But Collyer found Monday that the FBI correctly invoked FOIA exemption 7(c), which shields law enforcement records from disclosure if they could constitute an invasion of personal privacy. The judge also agreed with the FBI that exemption 7(d) applied to the case. It allows records to be withheld if they “could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source.”

Citing a declaration from FBI agent David Hardy that said the confidential sources are “individuals who are members of organized violent groups,” Collyer said the likelihood of retaliation justified keeping the sources’ identities under wraps. Shapiro vowed to keep fighting for the records. “I’m of course disappointed in, and disagree with, the judge’s ruling. I’m now conferring with my attorney to determine next steps,” Shapiro said in an email. He said he is concerned that the FBI collected dossiers on Occupy protestors while publicly denying it. “The FBI even flatly asserted in a separate FOIA lawsuit of mine that, ‘(T)he FBI determined that it had never opened an investigation on the Occupy movement,'” Shapiro wrote. “Yet, in the course of my FOIA lawsuit against the FBI for records about the sniper plot against Occupy Houston, the FBI contradicted its own position.” Shapiro said that with recently released FBI documents about Occupy Chicago, “We are coming ever closer to finally forcing the FBI to concede it actually possesses a large volume of documents about this FBI-coordinated nationwide investigation of political protesters as supposed terroristic threats to national security.”

There’s a familiar ring to the U.S. calls to arm Ukraine’s post-coup government. That’s because the same big-money players who stand to benefit from belligerent relations with Russia haven’t forgotten a favorite Cold War tune. President Obama has said that he won’t rule out arming Ukraine if a recent truce, which has all but evaporated, fails like its predecessor. His comments echoed the advice of a report issued a week prior by three prominent U.S. think tanks: the Brookings Institute, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Atlantic Council. The report advocated sending $1 billion worth of “defensive” military assistance to Kiev’s pro-Western government. If followed, those recommendations would bring the U.S. and Russia the closest to conflict since the heyday of the Cold War. Russia has said that it would “respond asymmetrically against Washington or its allies on other fronts” if the U.S. supplies weapons to Kiev. The powers with the most skin in the game—France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine—struck a deal on Feb. 12, which outlines the terms for a ceasefire between Kiev and the pro-Russian, breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine. It envisages a withdrawal of heavy weaponry followed by local elections and constitutional reform by the end of 2015, granting more autonomy to the eastern regions.

But not all is quiet on the eastern front. The truce appears to be headed the route of a nearly identical compromise in September, which broke down immediately afterward. Moscow’s national security interests are clear. Washington’s are less so, unless you look at the bottom lines of defense contractors. As for those in the K Street elite pushing Uncle Sam to confront the bear, it isn’t hard to see what they have to gain. Just take a look below at the blow-by-blow history of their Beltway-bandit benefactors:

Syrian opposition figures and Gulf commentators dismissed on Wednesday a Russian draft proposal for a process to solve the Syrian crisis, saying Moscow's aim was to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power and marginalize dissenting voices.A draft document obtained by Reuters on Tuesday showed Moscow would like Damascus and unspecified opposition groups to agree on launching a constitutional reform process of up to 18 months, followed by early presidential elections.Russia, which with Iran has been Assad's top ally during Syria's nearly five-year conflict, has denied any document is being prepared before a second round of international peace talks in Vienna this week.The text, obtained by Reuters, does not rule out Assad's participation in early presidential elections, something his enemies say is impossible if there is to be peace."The Syrian people have never accepted the dictatorship of Assad and they will not accept that it is reintroduced or reformulated in another way," said Monzer Akbik, member of the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition."The Russians are now trying to play the game they have been playing since Geneva," he told Reuters, referring to United Nations-led peace talks that collapsed in 2014.

In the fall of 2015, the world descended into an economic apocalypse that will transform the globe into a single cashless society. This bold prediction is based on trends in nations all over the earth as shown in the article below. As we enter 2016, we are only beginning to see this Epocalypse form through the fog of war. The war I’m talking about is the world war waged furiously by central banks against the Great Recession as the governments they supposedly serve fiddled while their capital burned. The governments and banks of this world advanced rapidly toward forming cashless societies throughout 2015. The citizens of some countries are already embracing the move. In other countries, like the US, citizens fear the loss of autonomy that would come from giving governments and their designated central banks absolute monetary control.

The Epocalypse that I’ve been describing in this series will overcome that resistance during 2016 and 2017 as it wrecks economic havoc to such a degree that cash hold-outs will be ready for whatever holds the greatest promise of saving them from their collapsed monetary systems, fallen banks, deflated stocks and suffocating debt. One has only to think about how quickly and readily American citizens forfeited their constitutional civil liberties after 9/11 when George Bush and congress decreed that search warrants were not necessary if the government branded you a “terrorist.” If this sounds like some wild conspiracy theory, consider the following: no less Sterling standard of global economics than The Economist predicted thirty years ago that by 2018 a global currency would rise like the phoenix out of the ashes of the world’s fiat currencies:

Charging people to keep their money in the bank is hard to do so long as cash is available, as people may just withdraw all of their money from those banks in the form of the national cash and squirrel the cash away. In order to penetrate the twilight zone of economics, central banks need to abolish cash to terminate this escape route. Then they can force savers to spend, thereby increasing the flow of money through the economy, by raising the cost of holding money in a bank account as high as it takes to get people to spend their money. No sense letting perfectly good money waste away in an expensive bank account. Transitioning into a cashless society is the ultimate central planner’s dream as it gives central banks total control over money, and money is their proprietary product.

The U.S. State Department says it is “troubled” by Russia’s decision to ban two of liberal billionaire George Soros' pro-democracy charities and label the organizations a threat to national security. “Today’s designation of the Open Society Foundations and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation as so-called ‘undesirable’ organizations will only further restrict the work of civil society in Russia for the benefit of the Russian people,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Monday. “This action is yet another example of the Russian Government’s growing crackdown on independent voices and a deliberate step to further isolate the Russian people from the world.” A spokesperson from Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office said the activities of the fund are threats to state security and the Russian constitution, Radio Free Europe reports. The Open Society Foundations said in a statement on its website that it was “dismayed” by the decision.

Prosecutors started investigating the charity fund in July after Russian senators flagged a list of 12 groups that required a closer look over their supposed anti-Russian activities, RT reports. Other groups on the list include the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, the MacArthur Foundation and Freedom House. Once a group in Russia is recognized as “undesirable,” its assets in the country must be frozen, its offices closed and the distribution of any of its materials is outlawed, RT reports. Violators of the ban could face heavy fines and jail time.

The FBI has expanded its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of State to determine whether her Clinton Foundation work violated public corruption laws, according to Fox News. The report is based on accounts by three unnamed sources. “The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed,” one of the sources told Fox. Critics of Clinton have questioned whether her work with her family’s foundation during her time as secretary of State may have constituted a conflict of interest, and whether the foundation’s donors wielded influence over her while she was in office. The FBI’s investigation up until now has been focused on the classified information shared in the emails.

The State Department has released over 3,000 emails from Clinton’s private server, 1,340 of which were deemed classified at some level. One of the Fox sources also said that the FBI is especially eager to pursue a high-profile public corruption case in the wake of what they believe was overly lenient treatment of former CIA Director David Petraeus, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor last year for mishandling classified information after it was revealed that he had given classified information to his mistress. Clinton, who is the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary, has denied knowingly sending or receiving classified information over her private server.

The Trump administration on Tuesday sued California over its sanctuary policies for undocumented immigrants, setting off a chorus of near-unanimous defiance from California lawmakers.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday evening in the U.S. Eastern District of California, marks a turning point in the ongoing battle between the Trump administration and state and local jurisdictions over how far cities and states can go to block their officers from enforcing federal immigration law. The suit targets three California laws – Senate Bill 54, Assembly bill 450 and Assembly bill 103 – that the federal government say violate the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution and interfere with the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

“The Trump administration is now going on the offense and is going to use any tools in its tool box to enforce immigration laws,” said a U.S. source who has spoken about the plans with senior administration officials. “They have no expectation in winning in District Court or the 9th Circuit. This is a case that is intended to be ultimately successful in the Supreme Court.”

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Sunday called for an end to violence in the Gaza Strip, adding the Palestinian territories were subject to a preliminary examination by her office and she was monitoring events there closely.

Following the deaths of 29 Palestinians in protest clashes with Israeli forces in the past two weeks, Fatou Bensouda said in a statement “any new alleged crime committed in the context of the situation in Palestine may be subjected to my Office’s scrutiny”. The ICC prosecutor opened a preliminary investigation into alleged crimes committed in occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, in January 2015, after Palestine was officially admitted as a member of the court. Israel is not a member of the court but if Israeli citizens commit war crimes or crimes against humanity on the territory of a member state they could fall under the ICC’s jurisdiction. “Violence against civilians - in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza – could constitute crimes ... as could the use of civilian presence for the purpose of shielding military activities,” Bensouda said. Bensouda said she would record “any instance of incitement or resort to unlawful force” by either side in the conflict. A preliminary examination is the earliest phase of a case at the ICC. In it, the prosecutor gathers information and studies whether crimes may have been committed that reach the level of gravity required to open a formal investigation, and whether the court would have jurisdiction.

Sen. Rand Paul’s expression of opposition to a $1.1 billion U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia — which has been brutally bombing civilian targets in Yemen using U.S.-made weapons for more than a year now — alarmed CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday afternoon. Blitzer’s concern: That stopping the sale could result in fewer jobs for arms manufacturers. “So for you this is a moral issue,” he told Paul during the Kentucky Republican’s appearance on CNN. “Because you know, there’s a lot of jobs at stake. Certainly if a lot of these defense contractors stop selling war planes, other sophisticated equipment to Saudi Arabia, there’s going to be a significant loss of jobs, of revenue here in the United States. That’s secondary from your standpoint?” Paul stayed on message. “Well not only is it a moral question, its a constitutional question,” Paul said. “Our founding fathers very directly and specifically did not give the president the power to go to war. They gave it to Congress. So Congress needs to step up and this is what I’m doing.” Watch the exchange: