Tensions

 

Shanghai container port in sunset, China. Photo: Envato

The tariff and trade war between the U.S., China, and other nations continues, bringing along with it chaos, confusion and escalating tensions. In response to what the White House called a lack of reciprocity between the U.S.

And its trading partners, President Donald J. Trump signed Executive Order 14257 and imposed across-the-board tariffs on imports. The president said he made the move as part of his administration’s effort to protect American industries, to increase domestic wages, and to decrease the U.S. trade deficit in a time of growing international conflict.

Billed by President Trump as “Liberation Day,” the April 2 fanfare encircling his tariff agenda, purportedly to increase domestic prosperity, diminished after his announcement triggered a steep drop in global stock prices.

The panic led to an amendment a week later relative to China under Executive Order 14259, and for other countries, including a 90-day pause for their implementation, under Executive Order 14266.

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As of Final Call press time, tariffs against various Chinese exports to the U.S. have reached 145% and for most other countries, a baseline of 10% will be added to their products imported after the pause.

Tariffs are defined as taxes on goods and services imported from another country to raise revenues, to influence the exporting country’s decisions, and/or to protect competitive advantages domestically.

However, these taxes are often passed on to consumers, leading to higher prices that may produce an unintended domino effect to no one’s advantage.

In a country where Black and Indigenous populations are often already struggling financially, rising costs on much-needed goods and services will be a hardship on millions of citizens.

Dr. Linwood Tauheed, Ph.D., is an economist and author of “100 Years of African American Economists: Difficulties and Prospects for Black Political Economy in the 21st Century.”

He told The Final Call that imposing tariffs and doing so during a time of growing international conflict is not without precedent and that what is intended to protect domestic economies often has the opposite effect.

“Tariffs have been in play in countries around the world for centuries and tariffs are used by countries to gain an advantage over other countries in trade,” Dr Tauheed said of the ideological agendas often behind a government’s desire to impose them.

“While Western countries declare themselves to be supporters of free trade, they have generally been engaged in tariffed or protectionist trade, and it usually goes in a one-sided way to protect their markets while they want the rest of the world to open their markets to them,” he explained.

“This goes back certainly to the beginning of colonization, so this is the way empires grew, and tariffs were a significant part of that,” Dr. Tauheed continued. He noted that before the federal income tax was established in 1913.

The main source of revenue for the U.S. government was from duties, fees and various other tariffs, but these were later found insufficient to fund the federal government as America’s power and influence grew into the 20th Century.

British tariff’s on imports and exports on the original 13 colonies that would eventually become the United States, was one of the grievances leading to the American Revolutionary War.

For example the Townshend Acts of 1767 imposed duties or tariff’s on imported goods like paper, lead, paint and glass.

These acts were imposed in order to generate money for the British government and for colonial officials. Other tariff’s were imposed that made the colonists pay higher prices for goods.

“They were called ‘import duties’ then, but they were the same thing—taxes on imports. This is what led to more than a decade of growing estrangement between Great Britain and some (though not all) of the North American Colonies, culminating in the Boston Tea Party

And, ultimately, the Declaration of Independence,” noted an April 9 article titled, “How tariffs helped spark the American Revolution,” published on cardinalnews.org.

Today, with America’s current challenges, how will other nations react to increased tariffs, a trade war with China, and the pressures these realities place on supply and demand, international trade and commerce, and America’s dependency on the global supply chain?

The moves the U.S. is enacting have also caused other countries to voice their anger and displeasure at the possible fallout from the Trump administration’s tariffs. America is consistently losing influence on the world stage.

The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, warned decades ago that, “The strong-hold of the American Government is falling to pieces.” He wrote those words in his seminal book, “The Fall of America,” in the chapter “Decline of the Dollar.”

“She has lost her prestige among the nations of the earth. One of the greatest powers of America was her dollar. The loss of such power will bring any nation to weakness, for this is the media of exchange between nations,” the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote.

Elements for a perfect storm?

Stating that Russia is not the Soviet Union of 34 years ago, Dr. Tauheed said that regardless of sanctions and other attempts to isolate the former superpower because of its war in Ukraine, Russia’s vast resources, territory,

And highly educated population has enabled them to become self-sufficient and independent from other economies led by the United States, and with increased tariffs levied against China, Western policies are creating increased cooperation between the two dominant powers of the Eurasian continent.

“From Russia being able to become more self-sufficient, it increased its trade with China, and with India, and the fact that BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is there, it creates a significant ability for those countries to respond to any sanctions from the West and the growing BRICS (aligned) countries that are able to become more and more self-sufficient,”

Dr. Tauheed noted. Western economies realize that they are much more dependent on non-Western economies than they would like to admit, he opined.

During an April 10 interview with Channel 4 News UK, the vice-president of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization, Victor Gao, said that the United States is making a mistake by launching a tariff or trade war with China.

“China is fully prepared to fight to the very end because the world is big enough that the United States is not the totality of the market in the world,” Mr. Gao said during the interview. “So, if the United States wants to go in that direction of completely shutting itself out of the China market, be my guest,” he continued.

“China has been here for 5,000 years,” Mr. Gao said. “Most of the time, there was no United States, and we survived. And if the United States wants to bully China, we will deal with the situation without the United States, and we expect to survive for another 5,000 years,” he said.

Mr. Gao also insisted that a trade war with China will harm the United States more because, for decades, America’s manufacturing base has been exported to foreign countries and because the U.S. makes up only a fraction of China’s export market. “

If China and the United States do not take major measures to direct all these tariff war(s) or trade war(s) launched by the United States, we will have a recession,” Mr. Gao said in part. The “we” Mr. Gao was referring to was the U.S. and possibly also China.

“President Trump needs to realize that Rome is not built overnight,” Gao continued. “To talk about millions of manufacturing jobs going back to the United States, relying on tariff(s) is a futile attempt,”

He said of the time it will take the United States to retool its factories, reeducate its workforce, and rebuild a diminished manufacturing base to standards needed to compete with China in the global market.

Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad is the manager for the Nation of Islam’s farm in Georgia and an agricultural economist. He agreed that a trade war resulting from tariffs will hurt American goods exported to China.

But he also stated they will have a significant impact on domestic food prices while undermining America’s exports of farm products to a market of more than one billion Chinese consumers.

“Now that they’re setting up this trade war, it’s going to affect the general public because the only thing a company is going to do is increase their prices to the consumer,” Dr. Ridgely Muhammad told The Final Call.

“They’re not going to lose, so if tariffs go up 100%, they’ll just double their prices and either you buy it or you don’t. China and all the big corporations don’t just depend on America, they’re worldwide,” he said, noting that nations of the Global South, or the global majority, will buy from China if the U.S. refuses to import Chinese goods.

“The super elite don’t need Black people anymore in America, and they don’t need White folks who are demanding a piece of the pie that they helped the elite to steal,” Dr. Ridgely Muhammad said. “So, in this tariff move, they don’t care anything about the American working class, the middle class, they won’t need them,” he said.

Political scientist, host of Connecting the Dots podcast and author of “Politics: Another Perspective,” Dr. Wilmer Leon, told The Final Call that the tariffs called for by the president appears to have more to do with Republicans supporting Mr. Trump than with traditional conservatives advocating for the positions of Reagan Republicans on free trade and open markets.

He said there is seemingly a blind loyalty to the current administration by political allies, but at the expense of the American economy.

Dr. Leon cited parallels between President Trump’s Executive Orders and the motivations behind the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 at the onset of the Great Depression after the stock market crash of 1929.

“President Hoover didn’t listen to his advisors in the same way Trump isn’t listening to those who should be advising him today, that’s the greatest parallel that I see,” Dr. Leon stated plainly.

“Economists and a number of very prominent businesspeople and financial minds they told Hoover this is not a good idea and Hoover ignored them.

Before the Great Depression, American industrialization was growing and things were going fairly well, but one of the problems today is there is not a lot of American industry to protect because we’ve outsourced everything,” he said.

The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his National Representative, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, have taught and demonstrated the need for Black people to “do-for-self” and not depend solely on the American government to do what they can do for themselves.

Minister Farrakhan noted in a message, “Justice is the Joy of Freedom,” delivered on November 20, 2010, at the Coronado Performing Arts Theatre in Rockford, Illinois, that “Government shouldn’t have to do everything for the citizens, but government should create the atmosphere that the citizen can do for themselves.”

During his message, Minister Farrakhan spoke on conditions impacting Rockford and other cities that were once great hubs of manufacturing and industry. Smaller family-owned companies were acquired by larger companies, which then relocated products to lower-wage markets or sent them overseas to be manufactured, he explained.

“So what happens to the people of Rockford who are blue-collar workers? What happens to the people of Chicago or the people of the urban centers of America who looked to factories to give them a decent wage that they could feed their families?

Now that the factories have closed or have been relocated, the people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are left in the lurch. And Blacks being the most unlearned, the most unskilled, the most dependent, unfortunately, are the worst off,” Minister Farrakhan said.

Many economists on various sides of the political spectrum have expressed doubt that the Trump administration’s tariff action will revitalize the economy, bring back America’s manufacturing and industry, or create millions of jobs for its people.

Divine guidance and a divine solution

The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught and demonstrated what Black people must do to address their economic situation. In his book, “Message to the Blackman in America,” he explains on page 195 that, “It is very hard for an economist to plan a wise program and see his plans carried out, because the so-called American Negroes’ economics are controlled by the White man.

The White man owns the country and the industry. Now, it is difficult to plan an economic program for a dependent people who, for all their lives, have tried to live like the White man.”

Nation of Islam Southwest Regional Student Minister Dr. Abdul Haleem Muhammad of Houston’s Mosque No. 45, who has a background in urban planning and environmental policy, told The Final Call that predictions of tariff-driven price increases, unemployment.

Budget cuts and austerity measures that have laid off or fired thousands of federal employees, may prove to be just the beginning of sorrows for both the American people in general and for Black people in particular.

“We have to go back and examine the cost of rejecting what God gave to the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad. It’s all written in his book, ‘Message to the Blackman in America,’” he said.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said: “Our economic position remains at the bottom of the ladder because of this ineffective leadership and because so many of our people ignore the basic rules of a healthy economic life. We fail to develop self-leadership in economics.”

Student Minister Dr. Abdul Haleem Muhammad quoted from page 194 of “Message to the Blackman in America” and encourages people to read and implement the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s guidance as outlined between pages 194 through 203. In those pages, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad lays a base for how to make an economic program successful.

“Black people have to undergo a total and complete paradigm shift in our thinking to mitigate the fallout of what has begun and what is continuing to come as the days ahead become darker and darker,”

Student Min. Dr. Abdul Haleem Muhammad said. “What is happening with the tariffs, what is happening with the government, and what is happening with Affirmative Action, and so-called DEI?” he asked.

“All of this is for us to hit the reset button so we may know that Pharaoh has let us go and that now is the time for us to let Pharaoh go,” Student Minister Dr. Haleem Muhammad said. “We must get up and ‘do-something-for-self’ as the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan have taught us to do.”

Reflect Jesus

 

Our people need service. They do not need masters, they need servers, and I am honored that in my lifetime I am being blessed to see what I have longed to see since I was a little boy: the unity of us, as a people. How joyous my heart is to be with my Christian family. I told White Arabs that I would not jump over one Black Christian to find unity with a White Arab, even though they are Muslims and I am a Muslim.

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The church is my family. I had a Christian upbringing; I sang in the choir; I carried the cross; I know all the hymns of my church. Sometimes, on Sunday morning while I am changing channels on my television, I hear some of those hymns that I used to sing and I sing quietly to myself and the tears fall from my eyes, because I remember my church.

There is no power that will separate me from the church. Even though I say that I am a Muslim, without the church our people are lost. The church has been our comfort when we had nothing to hold on to. The corruptors are always busy corrupting the church, mosque and synagogue, so that the house of God is a divided house. Satan is really the master today of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

We hold up the names of Christ, Muhammad and Moses as a shield for the way we live, which is totally opposite of what these men lived and the life that they taught us to live—which says that Satan caused us to deviate even though we claim the great names of our prophets. So, religion, as Karl Marx said, did become the opiate of the people.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was the son and grandson of a Baptist preacher. When he would sit in the church in Sandersville, Georgia, listening to his father, he knew that one day he would preach something different, but he did not know what it was. When he met Master Fard Muhammad and heard what Master Fard Muhammad taught, he began preaching what is called “Islam.” His work in setting up mosques was a protest against the church. It was not that Jesus was off the mark; it was that we were off the mark in the name of Jesus.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

He taught us wisdom and never allowed music in the temple; the music was to be the Word of God. He cleaned us up by teaching the Bible, not the Holy Qur’an. When we came to him, we were like everybody else—liars, thieves, adulterers, murderers and then some—but he used the Bible to call us to live a righteous life. He called us to live the lives of the prophets whose names we honored with our tongues, but our lives were far removed from them.

When I saw his temple and met Brother Minister Malcolm X, he became my mentor. He was one of the finest examples that I could have ever had in my beginning days in Islam. I never heard him curse. He was never late for an appointment. When I would sleep in his house, he would wake me up at 5 a.m. for Fajr prayer. He was an exceedingly disciplined man under the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad never liked whooping in the church, so he made all of his ministers like professors; we had to teach and become lovers of knowledge, because our people are in their condition because of a lack of knowledge. Even though Malcolm X did not go beyond the 8th grade, he had genius sitting in his breast—as genius is in the breast of our people. They just need to be quickened to life. When Malcolm awakened, he began reading everything in the library worth reading, starting with the dictionary, from cover to cover.

Whenever I would sit to be taught by Brother Malcolm, he always broke words down into their meanings; he understood the root of words. He knew that, through words, you can either get tricked or you can be free. The first book he put in my hands was “100 Amazing Facts about the Negro” by J.A. Rogers; then “100 Years of Lynching,” then “17 Million Negroes, 17 Million Dollars.” I had to read all of those books, study my Lessons. Then, I had to read another book by J.A. Rogers, “From Superman to man.” Then, I had to study world history, under his direction. Then, he gave me the Holy Qur’an, the first one that I had ever owned.

100 Amazing facts about the negro

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad started a revolution in the church from his own rebellion against the way of the church. Because of him, a Black Theology emerged in the Christian house. Before the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the African Methodist Episcopal Church was Black conscious. It was the church of Marcus Garvey and many of the revolutionaries. But when the Honorable Elijah Muhammad started teaching us that Jesus was our Brother because he was a Black man, then all of the White images of him came down and we began taking pride in ourselves.

I am so happy to be on the rostrum of this house of God with the head of the Interdenominational Theological Center, because for years we have been at odds, not because we have really been at odds, but because an enemy wants to keep us at odds. If we ever united, we know that the real revolution will take place.

Jesus was a revolutionary. He laid down the path of revolution, if you really understand him. He was not a milquetoast man who was sweet and nice. How can we represent that great man in a punkish manner? Jesus is the key to the freedom of every human being who lives on this earth.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is honored in Islam above all women and above the mothers of all other prophets. Why Mary? Her womb was blessed with a world saviour, a child whose destiny was to perfectly reflect the wisdom, mind, spirit and power of the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Jesus was the man who would once again lift the human from his degraded state to the exalted state that God created human beings to be.

We must understand Jesus the revolutionary because, if the Millions More Movement does not reflect Jesus the revolutionary, it will never be the effective tool for the redemption, reconciliation—of not only Black people, but all humanity—back to God.

From the time of the fall of Adam, the world has needed a human being who could connect mankind, or man, again with God. Adam’s death was not physical; it was spiritual. His fall represented the fall of all humanity. When the human falls, that human (male or female) begins to live in the underworld of his desires. When Adam’s eyes came open after his rebellion against God, his eyes became open to the world of passion and appetite from the navel down.

Once he fell down to live by his appetite, then greed, lust and covetousness began to take hold of the human mind to degrade the human into a being far less than what God created us to be. He created us in His image and after His likeness. The Holy Qur’an says that Allah (God) created us to be Khalifah, to stand in His place as His successor. You cannot succeed God if you are not god.

David the Psalmist said, “Ye are all gods, children of the Most High God.” But you first have to be His child. It is an error for preachers to say that we are all the children of God. We all have the capacity to be the child of God, but that is a decision that we have to make as to whose child we are going to be.

The Bible says, “As by one man sin entered into the world and death came by sin.” All men have sinned, so all are under death. The Bible also says, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.” What kind of death? Once human beings live in the flesh rather than in the spirit, they become dead to the real power of self. You do not need a television to see or a telephone to hear, when you are alive in the spirit of God as Jesus was, and is.

The Bible says that “Jesus, knowing their thoughts, did” He did not have to have a telephone to listen—like the government uses to listen; they are trying to imitate the natural powers of human beings who live in the spirit of God, but they cannot do it from their minds because they are too wicked.

God allows you to get hints of your powers; sometimes you can see an occurrence before it happens or hear something that you know you were not present to hear. The real ear and eyes are not physical. When your mind is lit with the light of God, you see beyond the eyes and hear beyond the ears. You are naturally endowed with those powers, but those powers have been put to sleep because we are following a people who live diametrically opposed to the way of the Creator.

In the scripture, Jesus says, “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death came by sin.” So by one man should all be made alive.

If you were the devil, the archdeceiver, and knew that Jesus was coming to defeat you and your underworld of transgression, who would you have to deceive the world about? Satan knows that Jesus is the end of his world and the beginning of a new world. Jesus is a door. He said, “If you enter into me, you will be saved.”

Jesus described himself in many ways:

• “I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman.”
• “I am the bread of life.”
• “I am the light of the world.”
• “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
• “I am the good shepherd.”

The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. A man like that is a man who the whole world needs. A man like that can raise us up out of the condition that we are in and raise us up again to become beings that reflect God. The human being is only a stage of development;

you have to grow from the level of an animal to be a human, which means that you have mentally evolved to be able to put the humus (the earth) under the power of a resurrected mind. But that process of evolution and development does not stop with a human being; it continues until you become a divine being reflecting the perfection of the Creator.

That is why Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am you may be also.” The Bible also says that “they will be changed in the twinkling of an eye” and “they will be like him, Jesus.” The Bible says that Jesus was exalted to the “right hand of God” and given power over everything except God, Himself.

Jesus serves as an example that a human being born of a woman could master the forces of the universe, in order to show us our possibilities, that we should never accept what the world has made us; we must be willing to accept what God wants to make us, through Jesus, a revolutionary.

A real revolution is not with the gun; a real revolution is to overthrow the government in your mind. You must ask yourself, who is the king in your dome? Then, you will know whose children you are. If we are the body of Christ, then our hands do the work of Jesus, our mouths speak the will and the word of Jesus, and our feet walk the path of Jesus. But whose children are we?

Satan has performed a magnificent act of deception. The Bible says he would make himself an angel of light. He knows God, because that is the only way that he can deceive us about God. You can be a dumb devil—and most of us are just dumb devils—but Satan is a devil-maker. He is wise becuase he knows how to manipulate people to make them think that they are on the path of God while they have actually strayed from the straight way. So, the Bible says that, “We war not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world and spiritual wickedness in high places.”

It would take years to fully teach this subject, because Jesus is so dynamic a human being. I walk in the path of Jesus. There is no other path for a true revolutionary. A true revolutionary rises up not necessarily from the finest of circumstances, for Jesus was born in an oxstall, so he was born among animals. I walk the path of Jesus, which is not an easy path. Who is arrayed against me?

We live in a modern Rome. Ancient Rome, Sodom and Gomorrah, Persia and Babylon are nothing compared to this country. The government of the United States has always been looking like Cain, after he slew his brother Abel. He knew that the blood of Abel was crying out for justice, so he said that “Every man who sees me will slay me.” That is the mind of a guilty person.

America has done so much evil that she sees death coming from everywhere. White people do not believe we have a heart for forgiveness because they know, that if they were in our shoes they would be plotting to kill them—like this govenment worked against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While they were talking to him in the White House, they were plotting to kill him.

When God gives you revelation, that is your test. If you use the wisdom of God according to the will of God, then you are a child of God. But if you use it to fatten your pockets, then you are the child of Satan, and maybe Satan himself. In the Bible, Revelations 2:9, it reads, “Those who say they are Jews and are not, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan.” This is referring to a specific group of people who claim to be Jews but they are not because they use the wisdom of God for wicked purposes. And there are Christians and Muslims who also use the wisdom of God for wicked purposes.

So, among all of the monothesistc expressions there is gross hypocrisy. Those who try to do what the prophets say are overshadowed by those who use the names of the prophets to shield unclean practice. In trying to walk this path of Jesus, I have angered that Satanic mind because I am pulling the cover off their deceptive practice.

The scripture says, “Let this mind be in you, the same that was in Christ Jesus.”

“Let” is a verb of permission, which means we have to accept an invitation. Christ Jesus had the kind of mind that God offered Adam in the Garden of Eden, which he rebelled against—the mind that Jesus offers us is the mind of God. In order to accept this mind that is offered to us, we have to permit the overthrow of the mind that is in us now. God is calling for a regime change—get rid of the mind of Willie Lynch and accept the mind of God.

Let the mind of Christ Jesus come into your life. If he knocks, let him in, for if you let him in, He will sup with you. This will make Satan angry, because Jesus came to meddle in the lives of people who thought that they had accepted him, but were actually following the mind of Satan.

If you let him in, you will be able to say, “Greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world.”

Psalms 23 reads, “The Lord is my shepherd”—I have no leader but the Lord; “I shall not want”—for anyting that I will not be able to achieve because if He is my shepherd I can do all things in Christ; “he leadeth me besides the still waters, he restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the path of righteousness for his namesake.

Yea though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of my enemies. My cup runneth over, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

This is the Promise of the Lord; this is our inheritance. Let him in and there is nothing that we will not be able to achieve.

He Fears

 There is one thing a (narc)issist fears more than anything else.

If you think about it, you may come to the conclusion that this is the only thing he is afraid of.

The narcissist is afraid of rejection. It’s not about rejecting who he really is because the narcissist abandoned his identity long ago.

The fear is the rejection of his false identity, the role he plays, and the mask he presents.

A narcissist pretends to be someone he is not, and everything he does from the moment he starts devaluing you is a response to rejection.

Thousands assail

 

 

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in all 50 US states on Saturday to participate in the “Hands Off!” rallies, a series of demonstrations aimed at denouncing President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk. 

The coordinated day of action saw nearly 500,000 demonstrators gathering in over 1,200 locations across the United States, including all 50 state capitals, as well as major cities such as New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles.

The protests were organized in response to growing concerns about the Trump administration’s policies and the influence of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on the government’s decision-making processes.

“The aim is to get people to rise up,” said one protester in Washington, DC, one of some 1,200 demonstrations that formed the largest single day of protest against Trump and Musk since they began to overhaul the US government and expand presidential authority.

“Well, I’ve marched before when he first got elected a number of years ago and I still can’t believe that he got elected again. And I can’t believe that’s he’s tanking the economy and he’s tanking the government and it’s all being done for him and for Elon Musk and all the billionaires and everybody else,” said protester James Utt, 60, an executive assistant from Los Angeles

“It’s not for me, it’s not for the people who live in my neighborhood, it’s for all of these billionaires. I’m glad to see so many people came out today. I mean, we need it. I want more people to show up and get him out of office. He’s terrible,” the protester added.

“What’s at stake is our democracy and it’s important to take a stand and not just silently let it happen,” said Kristen Messina from Santa Monica.

Terry Klein, a retired biomedical scientist, said she drove to the rally to protest Trump’s policies on “everything from immigration to the DOGE stuff to the tariffs this week, to education.”

Demonstrators carried signs reading “hands off our democracy” and “don’t trust Elon Musk,” and chanted “hands off,” as they marched.

Other protesters wore Palestinian keffiyeh scarves and carried “Free Palestine” signs.

Hours before the protests were due to kick off in the United States, hundreds of anti-Trump Americans living in Europe gathered in Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris and London to voice opposition to Trump’s sweeping makeover of US foreign and domestic policies.

“It’s very troubling because America is at a turning point,” said one French-American protester named Rebecca living in Paris.

The “Hands Off!” rallies across the US on Saturday were the largest demonstrations since Trump returned to office in January.

The protests were fueled by a wide range of concerns shared by Americans across the country, including Trump’s controversial immigration policies, such as the travel ban and increased deportations, especially of pro-Palestine college students, as well as his administration’s rollback of environmental regulations, healthcare protections, and social safety nets.

In the case of Elon Musk, protesters voiced concerns over the billionaire’s growing influence in politics, his disregard for workers’ rights and safety, as well as the potential implications of his business ventures, such as SpaceX and Tesla, on job market stability and the privatization of space exploration.

Trump, who shook financial markets with his tariffs announcement this week, spent the day in Florida, playing a round of golf before returning to his Mar-a-Lago residence.

Some four miles from Mar-a-Lago, more than 400 people gathered - and drivers honked their horns in support of protesters who held up signs, including one which read: “Markets tank, Trump golfs.”

The White House has said Trump plans to go golfing again on Sunday.

South Sudanese passport

 

A US Customs and Border Protection officer monitors arrivals at a gate in Atlanta, the United States. (File photo)

The US State Department has revoked all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders over the African country's refusal to take back expatriates.

"I am taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and to restrict any further issuance to prevent entry into the United States, effective immediately," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday.

Rubio said his reason for revoking the visas held by South Sudanese passport holders is their government’s failure to accept the return of its repatriated citizens promptly.

‘Hands off!’ rallies sweep across US: Thousands assail Trump and Musk

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in all 50 US states on Saturday to participate in the “Hands Off!” rallies, a series of demonstrations aimed at denouncing President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.

Rubio also said that he would instruct the State Department to restrict any further issuance of visas to South Sudanese passport holders in the future to prevent entry into the United States.

The US would "prevent further issuance to prevent entry into the United States by South Sudanese passport holders," he said.

However, the US "will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation," Rubio added.

The move was the first time the US State Department has singled out all passport holders from a particular country since Donald Trump assumed power in January.

Opposition to Trump’s claim that US is ‘at war’ with illegal immigrants

Immigration debates in the US have intensified under Trump’s Alien Act, with advocates protesting perceived rights violations and economic scapegoating.

Trump, who has promised his supporters to take a tougher anti-immigration stance during his second term, claims to be "at war" with immigration.

In the meantime, immigrants and their advocates are increasingly taking to US streets to decry the gross violation of internationally recognized human rights.

Zakzaky in Abuja

 

Leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) Sheikh Ibrahim 

Nigerian security agents are planning coordinated attacks on the homes and properties of followers of the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, according to a report.

SaharaReporters reported on Sunday, quoting sources that the operation is scheduled to take place around 2:00 a.m. on Monday in Abuja and surrounding areas, including Maraba.

Security agents have advised their relatives to avoid locations associated with Shia Muslims in Abuja, Maraba, and other areas, the report said.

"There is a planned attack by security agents on residences and facilities of Al-Zakzaky's followers in Maitama, Asokoro, Garki, Airport Road, Maraba, etc. They said Monday at 2:00 a.m.," one source disclosed.

On March 28, 2025, at least 26 people were reportedly killed and many others injured in an attack on the IMN members by the Nigerian Army on an International Quds Day demonstration in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja.

Video footage of the scenes shows armed forces securing the perimeter as protestors flee for cover while bullet shots are heard.

The footage also shows soldiers dragging the lifeless body of a civilian on the street and dumping it into a pickup while beating two other protesters and forcing them to get into another truck.

While the event was conducted peacefully across Nigeria, the Abuja procession was targeted by the army.

The protesters were marching peacefully after observing Friday prayers at Banex Plaza when Army soldiers stationed near the mosque fired upon them.

In response, the IMN has vowed to take legal action if the Nigerian government and army fail to release detained members, including over 60 minors.

The group's legal representatives, Bala Dakum and Yushau Uthman, talked to journalists on Friday, condemned the March 28 attack and demanded justice for the victims.

“While peacefully carrying out their procession in the Banex area, Wuse II, Abuja, in their thousands, they were unexpectedly confronted by a group of armed soldiers who, without any provocation, began firing live ammunition at them,” they said.

“As a result of this inhumane, callous, cruel, barbaric and horrific attack, about 26 persons lost their lives, over 30 sustained various degrees of life-threatening injuries, and around 274 were arrested by the soldiers,” they added.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) had expressed concern over attacks against protesters after it was revealed that Nigerian authorities were making preparations in this regard as a pretext for an attack.

The Office of the National Security Adviser had stressed the necessity to stop the al-Quds day demonstration to “prevent a breach of the peace” by the pro-Palestinian protesters, according to a leaked internal letter seen by the IHRC.

In the leaked communiqué, Nigerian authorities had warned that though the pro-Palestinian demonstrations were peaceful, the protesters had the potential to seek justice by attacking US and Israeli interests in the country. Therefore, their demos must be stopped.

This method has been used by Nigeria’s pro-Israel officials in recent years to prompt the forces to stage a violent crackdown on the demonstrators.

At least one person was killed, and many more were injured after police opened fire on the Quds Day demo in Abuja in 2023.

In 2014, Nigerian security forces killed 34 demonstrators after opening fire on a rally in Zaria.

World Court

Sudan's acting-Justice Minister Muawia Osman (L) is sitting next to Sudanese Ambassador to the Netherlands Omaima Alsharief as they wait for the start of a hearing before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, on April 10, 2025. (Photo by Albi)

 Khartoum has taken legal action against the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) also known as the World Court for creating the "driving force" behind the ongoing "genocide" in Sudan.

Since 2023, a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has plunged the country into civil war. Khartourm now accuses the UAE of supporting the RSF in its genocide of the non-Arab Masalit people in Sudan's Darfur region.

Opening the case before the ICJ in The Hague, Sudan’s acting justice minister told the court on Thursday that the UAE is the “driving force” behind the "genocide" in Darfur via its alleged support for rebels fighting the Sudanese army.

Muawia Osman told the court that the “ongoing genocide would not be possible without the complicity of the UAE, including the shipment of arms to the RSF”.

“The direct logistical and other support that the UAE has provided and continues to provide to the RSF has been and continues to be the primary driving force behind the genocide now taking place, including killing, rape, forced displacement and looting,” said Osman.

Khartoum demands that the UAE halt its support to the RSF and make “full reparations”, including compensation to the victims of the war.

The UAE, for its part, denies supporting the RSF. "There was no credible evidence presented to support (Sudan's) claims," Reem Ketait, a top official at the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement.

Earlier, Ketait described Sudan’s case as a “blatant misuse of a respected international institution” and “entirely without legal or factual merit."