IndustryStandard

On 7 July, a convoy of federal agents descended upon Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park – in the heart of a predominantly immigrant neighborhood. Chaperones from a summer camp hurried children indoors, as protesters and media rushed to the scene. It was unclear whether immigration officials actually arrested anyone that morning.

City leaders denounced the spectacle as a “political stunt” designed to terrorize Angelenos who have been reckoning with a relentless onslaught of immigration raids that began in early June.

The ubiquitous presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, and the threat of arrest, have become a part of daily life for immigrants across the city and broader region. The raids have also taken an economic toll on neighborhoods like MacArthur Park, where business owners say trade has slowed to a crawl as people choose to stay home.

US president Donald Trump was front and center for Chelsea’s trophy lift and was greeted by widespread boos at the Fifa Club World Cup final at a sold-out MetLife Stadium on Sunday in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Trump was booed while appearing on video boards during the playing of the national anthem before the match, and then later while walking out with Fifa president Gianni Infantino to present the competition’s trophy, individual awards and runners-up medals.

Later, Trump and Infantino jointly carried the Club World Cup trophy to the Chelsea team on the stage. Infantino moved out of frame of television cameras while Trump stayed put, finding himself squarely in focus as Chelsea captain Reece James lifted the trophy and his team-mates celebrated around him.

On the Fourth of July, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that constitutes one of the largest transfers of wealth in history — taking money away from working people and giving it to the nation’s elite.

The bill is the culmination of years of giveaways that have allowed corporations and billionaires to tighten their grip on the government. The law triples the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, slashes taxes for the most wealthy, and pays for it all by cutting health care for as many as 20 million people and gutting funding for public education and meals for school children.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Lee speaks to host Akela Lacy about what Democrats are doing to meet the moment and how they can break through Republican messaging on the bill.

“ Democrats are screaming into a void,” Lee says. “The reality is that we have been talking about Medicaid, and it’s very hard to break through in a 24-hour news cycle and this big bubble where we are in a sea of red coverage, conservative media, conservative narratives, disinformation, misinformation. And to break through in that moment takes more than just us.”

Members of Congress expressed outrage at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deceiving eight men who were recently deported to South Sudan, as revealed earlier this week in an investigation by The Intercept. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called the expulsions “abhorrent.”

Before the men boarded a plane in May, officials told them that they were being sent on a short trip from Texas to another ICE facility in Louisiana. Many hours later, the plane landed in Djibouti.

Two top executives at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the world’s most powerful management consultancies, have been stripped of their leadership roles following revelations that the company helped model the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, a scheme widely condemned as a blueprint for ethnic cleansing.

Internal emails and planning documents obtained by The Financial Times (FT) show that BCG staff helped estimate the cost of forcibly relocating Palestinians from Gaza, a project supported by Israeli and US figures and carried out under the guise of humanitarian reconstruction. BCG also played a larger role than previously admitted in the formation of the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new aid body intended to replace UN-administered support and seen by many as a tool to sideline international law and institutions.

Cultural assimilation to the UK going well

A federal rule designed to make canceling subscriptions as easy as signing up for them has been struck down by a US federal appeals court just days before it was scheduled to take effect.

The US court of appeals for the eighth circuit vacated the Federal Trade Commission’s “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have required companies to allow consumers to cancel subscriptions using the same method they used to sign up, after finding that the commission behind it failed to follow required procedures under the FTC Act during the rule-making process.

“While we certainly do not endorse the use of unfair and deceptive practices in negative option marketing, the procedural deficiencies of the Commission’s rulemaking process are fatal here,” the court wrote, adding that “vacatur of the entire Rule is appropriate in this case because of the prejudice suffered by Petitioners as a result of the Commission’s procedural error”.

War-torn South Sudan has said it is holding a group of eight men controversially deported from the United States.

Only one of them is from South Sudan. The rest comprise two people from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos and Mexico.

The Trump administration is trying to move unwanted migrants to third countries as some nations refuse to accept returnees. Administration officials said the men had been convicted of violent crimes in the US. The decision has been fought in US courts.