Anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil has lost a bid to have his deportation case thrown out. An immigration appeals board issued a final order of removal Thursday, according to the Associated Press, citing Khalil’s legal team. Khalil called the ruling “biased and politically motivated,” adding that he wasn’t surprised by the decision, the outlet reported. His attorneys said he is still pursuing a separate case in federal court and cannot yet be detained or deported. “I have committed no crime. I have broken no law,” Khalil said in a statement. “The only thing I am guilty of is speaking out against the genocide in Palestine — and this administration has weaponized the immigration system to punish me for it.” Khalil, a green card holder from Syria who is of Palestinian descent, was nabbed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March 2025 after helping lead anti-Israel protests at Columbia University. The Department of Homeland Security said at the time that his activities were “aligned to Hamas.” (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images) Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Khalil’s “presence or activities would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest” and pledged to strip the immigration status of foreigners deemed to be “Hamas supporters.” “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” Rubio said on X. A federal judge in New Jersey ordered Khalil’s release from ICE detention in June. Following Thursday’s ruling, Khalil’s lead attorney, Marc Van Der Hout, slammed the Trump administration, accusing it of exerting undue influence over immigration courts, which he argued have sided less with noncitizens. “In all my decades as an immigration lawyer, I have never seen such a baseless and politically motivated decision,” Van Der Hout said. “The BIA’s decision has absolutely no support in the record, violates a federal court order, and we’ll be fighting it until the end.” “Federal courts have already agreed that Mahmoud was targeted for his speech, and there is likely much more evidence of the government’s unlawful retaliation that has yet to come to light. This is a clear continuation of the administration’s retaliation against Mahmoud for exercising his First Amendment rights,” Khalil’s lawyer added. Former ICE Deputy Field Office Director Scott Mechkowski also weighed in, writing on X that Khalil’s case “is an example of how the Immigration System is ‘Broken’!,” adding “This guy should have been removed years ago, but attorneys just keep trying to game the system. Time to deport him already!”

The Texas State Board of Education faces pressure from leftist activists and conservative lawmakers as it meets Friday to consider a push to place more positive references to Islam in the state’s history curriculum.  Officials in the Lone Star State are reviewing social studies standards amid a push from Muslim advocacy groups, which claim current proposals are “exclusionary and Islamophobic.” At the same time, congressional Republicans are urging the board not to give Islam a more prominent role, particularly in response to lobbying from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott.  “It has come to our attention that an extensive lobbying effort is underway to have the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) alter curriculum standards in a way that would diminish American and Texas history,” Rep. Brandon Gill and other Texas Republicans wrote in a Friday letter first obtained by The Daily Wire. The letter went on to describe CAIR as a “transnational criminal organization.” CAIR has denied any connection to terrorism and has sued the state over the designation. Members of CAIR-Texas have attended recent board meetings to voice their opposition to how Muslims are currently represented in state curriculum.  Republicans also pushed back on claims they say are being introduced into the standards. “The petitioners’ efforts claim that Islam influenced our founding, culture, and way of life,” the letter states. “For instance, the (board) recently responded to public testimony asserting that the Alamo is an Islamic building.”  “Such claims are intended to introduce sensationalized or false history into our curriculum, and it is not the (board’s) responsibility to accommodate flagrant lies or cultivate spurious claims of their belonging.” The fight over the standards has been raging for weeks, with local Muslim groups organizing in support of changes. In March, an Islamic center in Houston hosted a discussion on “challenging Islamophobia in Texas schools.”  Gill said that Islam played no major role in the founding or development of Texas and warned against what he described as “revisionist history.” “Students should be taught age-appropriate facts and hard-truths, even when it is uncomfortable. Islam did not play a role in the founding or development of Texas, and to say so would be an outright lie,” he wrote. The other lawmakers who signed onto the letter include Reps. Chip Roy, Wesley Hunt, Michael Cloud, Nathaniel Moran, Ronny Jackson, Lance Gooden, Brian Babin, Keith Self, and Pat Fallon. 

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Thursday tried to downplay his viral description of President Donald Trump as “daddy” as a “language problem.” Rutte, 59, set off a wave of memes during a June 2025 presser in The Hague when he used the term to praise Trump’s negotiating and foreign policy tactics. The former Dutch prime minister used the affectionate phrase soon after Trump lashed out at Israel and Iran following their 12-day conflict, saying the two countries “don’t know what the f*ck they’re doing.” Trump is PISSED about the ceasefire violations. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.” pic.twitter.com/DVGHuUP3Oj — Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) June 24, 2025 Rutte, sitting next to the president, said at the time, “Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said “daddy has to sometimes use strong language” on Wednesday, referring to comments made by President Trump about Iran and Israel fighting. Read more: https://t.co/pIyCLeXNO8 pic.twitter.com/91oWCuOgf8 — ABC News (@ABC) June 25, 2025 Hours later at the NATO Summit, Secretary of State Marco Rubio laughed as an international reporter asked Trump how he felt being called “daddy.” “I think he likes me,” Trump said. “If he doesn’t, I’ll let you know. I’ll come back and hit him hard.” “He did it very affectionately. ‘Daddy — you’re my daddy.” Marco Rubio laughs as a reporter asks Trump how it felt being called “daddy” by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte pic.twitter.com/aKBWjy8n5B — Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 25, 2025 Asked again Thursday whether he still considered the commander-in-chief “daddy,” Rutte attributed the remark to a language barrier. “I have to explain to you, because it follows me a little bit,” Rutte said at Washington’s Ronald Reagan Institute forum. “In Dutch, you would say, ‘Hey, the translation of your father is daddy.’ And I would say, ‘Hey, yeah, sometimes daddy has to be angry. So I was not calling him my daddy. But of course, daddy has also a special connotation, and I now have to live with this for the rest of my life.” Q: “Do you still consider [President Trump] ‘daddy’ after yesterday?” @SecGenNATO Mark Rutte: “I was not calling him my daddy, but saying—but of course, ‘daddy’ has also a special connotation, and I have to stay with this for the rest of my life.” pic.twitter.com/sV37k00z8y — CSPAN (@cspan) April 9, 2026 Rutte struck a lighter tone as well, noting Trump had leaned into the moment. “And I own it. The president owns it, because he brought out t-shirts, he made a movie, Daddy is Home, when he returned to the United States, it was so funny,” Rutte said. “This is why I like him so much.”

Escalating his legal battle just weeks before a high-stakes federal trial, Elon Musk has amended his lawsuit against OpenAI, demanding the immediate removal of CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman. The revised filing, submitted this week, also seeks to force the artificial intelligence giant to abandon its for-profit structure and return to its nonprofit roots. The case is scheduled to go before a jury on April 27, 2026, in Oakland, California. The outcome could derail OpenAI’s planned initial public offering (IPO) and set a major precedent for how transformative technologies are governed. In a strategic shift likely intended to neutralize claims that the lawsuit is fueled by personal greed, Musk’s amended complaint clarifies that he is not seeking to personally collect damages, estimated between $134 billion and $150 billion. Instead, Musk has requested that any recovered funds be directed to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm. “He is asking the court to return everything that was taken from a public charity,” said Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff. Musk reinforced this stance publicly on X, suggesting his sole intent is to restore the organization’s founding mission. Musk has alleged that Altman and Brockman “manipulated and misled” him into providing roughly $38 million in seed funding between 2015 and 2018, based on assurances that OpenAI would remain a non-profit dedicated to open-source artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Instead, Musk argues, the leadership engaged in a “wealth machine” scheme, effectively turning OpenAI into a “closed-source de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft. The filing accuses the executives of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and racketeering, claiming they leveraged the reputational and tax benefits of a nonprofit to build a private entity now valued at more than $800 billion. OpenAI has fired back, describing the lawsuit as a “frivolous” campaign driven by “ego, jealousy, and a desire to slow down a competitor.” Today, at the eleventh hour, Elon lodged a court filing pretending to change his tune about attacking the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation. The truth is that this case has always been about Elon generating more power and more money for what he wants. Having increasingly realized that… — OpenAI Newsroom (@OpenAINewsroom) April 7, 2026   The company recently petitioned the attorneys general of California and Delaware to investigate Musk for alleged “anti-competitive behavior,” noting that Musk now operates his own rival AI firm, xAI. OpenAI’s legal team argues that the pivot to a “capped-profit” model was a matter of survival, citing the astronomical costs of developing advanced AI systems, which it says could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars. The company has also pointed to internal emails from 2017  suggesting Musk himself once supported a for-profit shift, provided he maintained majority control. The case gained significant momentum in early 2026 following the discovery of the so-called “Brockman Diaries.” A handwritten 2017 journal entry by Brockman reportedly characterized the nonprofit structure as “a lie,” a piece of evidence U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers cited as critical for the upcoming trial. The court has already confirmed that high-profile figures, including Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, are expected to testify. The conflict is rooted in OpenAI’s 2015 founding. Initially a pure research lab, the organization began shifting its structure shortly after Musk’s departure in 2018: 2015: Founded as a nonprofit; Musk provides initial funding. 2019: Creates a “capped-profit” subsidiary to attract investment, leading to a multi-billion dollar partnership with Microsoft. 2025: Completes a restructuring into a for-profit public benefit corporation. Present: Prepares for a potential late-2026 IPO at a valuation exceeding $850 billion. Legal experts suggest the trial’s implications reach far beyond a personal feud. A victory for Musk could force OpenAI to restructure and raise new questions about nonprofit governance and donor intent. A win for Open AI could affirm the ability of a nonprofit to evolve into profit-generating enterprises despite donor objections.

The attempted hit piece on one of J.D. Vance’s closest allies in the administration fell apart in a day. Let’s take a step back to understand the context. For years, Elbridge Colby — currently the Undersecretary of War for Policy at the Pentagon, a prominent and respected realist thinker on national security — has been the target of attacks from those seeking to undermine his status within the policy community. These attacks have come primarily from neoconservatives seeking to undermine someone who has the resume of a future secretary of state or the like. Now, as with so many other disputes, Colby has come to serve as a proxy for the true target of criticism: Vice President J.D. Vance, who purportedly shares many of his foreign policy views. The latest assault originated in the The Free Press, which published a freelance writer who made audacious, unsourced claims about conversations that occurred within a January meeting with representatives of the Catholic Church. Concerning a meeting between Pentagon officials and the Apostolic Nuncio Christophe Cardinal Pierre — preceding any critique by the Pope of the current conflict in Iran — The Free Press published claims that read like they were designed by AI to offend Catholics everywhere. Describing the confab as “a bitter lecture warning that the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants—and that the Church had better take its side,” it included the hair-on-fire claim that in the meeting, Pentagon officials — presumably including Colby — “went so far as to invoke the Avignon Papacy, the period in the 1300s when the French Crown leveraged its military power to dominate the papal authority.” The claim was echoed by the ideologically incoherent band of Trump administration critics, in this case including The Atlantic’s David French, Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau, and noted resident of the furthest reaches of the galaxy Candace Owens. Bro podcaster Shawn Ryan suggested that the Trump administration was literally threatening to bomb the Vatican. The report led to this question on the tarmac in Hungary of Vance, who was clearly blindsided by the claims: The only problem with this report is that everyone in the room has said that’s not what happened. This comment in response from Brian Burch, Ambassador to the Holy See, related the views of Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who retired as the Apostolic Nuncio following his 80th birthday: I was pleased to speak today with His Eminence, Cardinal Christophe Pierre. As expected, he confirmed that recent media characterizations of his meeting with Undersecretary Colby are “fabrications” that were “just invented.” Given the intelligence and seriousness of Mr. Colby, I… https://t.co/R2ogLy2HAf — Ambassador Brian Burch (@BrianBurchUSA) April 9, 2026 “I was pleased to speak today with His Eminence, Cardinal Christophe Pierre. As expected, he confirmed that recent media characterizations of his meeting with Undersecretary Colby are ‘fabrication’ that were ‘just invented.’ Given the intelligence and seriousness of Mr. Colby, I was likewise not surprised when His Eminence acknowledged there were no threats of any kind in the meeting. ‘It was a frank and cordial meeting that took place two months ago.’ Threat of Avignon? ‘None.'” In fairness, the participants were smiling an awful lot for just getting threatened with Dresden on the Tiber. Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby @USWPColby had a substantive, respectful, and professional meeting with Cardinal Pierre, the then-Papal Nuncio, and his team on January 22, 2026. During the cordial meeting, they discussed a range of topics, including issues of… pic.twitter.com/McI0sB2wKC — DOW Rapid Response (@DOWResponse) April 9, 2026 The Vatican release this morning is as definitive as it gets, reading in full: As confirmed by His Excellency Christophe Pierre, former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, his meeting with Mr. Elbridge Andrew Colby was part of the Pontifical Representative’s regular duties and provided an opportunity for an exchange of views on matters of mutual interest. The account offered by certain media outlets regarding this meeting does not correspond to the truth in any way. There are denials, and then there are vociferous denials, and then there are unequivocal denials. The Free Press piece remains published, with only an editor’s note giving comment from the Pentagon. The question we should be asking is this: Why would anyone run such a thinly sourced piece attacking the prominently Catholic vice president unless there was an underlying agenda?