Top Kansas Republicans want the Legislature to hold a special session to amend a state law related to transgender people, which they say is "even more important than redistricting."

The move comes after the Kansas Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Attorney General Kris Kobach related to Senate Bill 180. That 2023 law is the subject of a legal dispute over whether it blocks trans people from changing their gender marker on their driver's license.

It also comes at a time when Republicans are moving toward calling a special session on redistricting with a goal of gerrymandering the congressional district maps.

Kansas special session on trans law would be 'more important than redistricting'

Top Kansas Republicans want a special session on SB 180, a law affecting transgender people, they say is "even more important than redistricting."

^{, The Topeka Capital-Journal (The Topeka Capital-Journal)}

https://tanzaniatimes.net/chinas-byd-brings-to-africa-an-electric-car-which-also-acts-as-reservoir-to-power-up-homes-during-outages/

I'm wondering if there is a recommendation for a small camera to take hiking, or just for general convenience. I like to turn my phone off when I'm out so I can properly disconnect, plus I'm winding down my phone dependency in general.

Something to point and shoot would be nice, but I'm potentially interested in learning a bit about using some actual camera techniques.

According to the United States Code, which has a special section for commemorative coins: “No coin issued under this subsection may bear the image of a living former or current President, or of any deceased former President during the 2-year period following the date of the death of that President.”

Archive article: archive.is/28sTn

Bessent Unveils Illegal Plan to Put Trump’s Face on U.S. Coins

Heads it’s Trump, tails it’s... Trump!

^{Farrah Tomazin (The Daily Beast)}

La giornata d’oggi è andata tutto ok, per me, senza incidenti costosi… motivo per cui è proprio il momento perfetto per fare la democristiana — come al solito, ma pericolosamente più del solito; si prega di godere a riguardo — parlando circa la più attuale attualità che ha visto il più sventurato resto del nostro […]

octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…

minioctt

2025-10-03 21:04:43

casini palestrinesi e la rogna del popolo quando puzza di niente o di tutto

La giornata d’oggi è andata tutto ok, per me, senza incidenti costosi… motivo per cui è proprio il momento perfetto per fare la democristiana — come al solito, ma pericolosamente più del solito; si prega di godere a riguardo — parlando circa la più attuale attualità che ha visto il più sventurato resto del nostro paese (o del mondo?) oggi… perché non riesco a capire tutta l’ultima questione a proposito dello sciopero per la Palestina; nel senso che pure stavolta non si riesce ad essere non dico d’accordo tra le parti, ma a stare un minimo tranquilli… 😓

Con lo sciopero di settembre già avevo sentito rogne, ma tutto sommato niente di ché; hanno fatto cose non buone in 1 sola città (il tugurio che già è Milano… quindi in realtà niente di valore fu perduto), e ovviamente i governanti hanno strumentalizzato la cosa, e le pecore che gli vanno appresso hanno quindi urlato… ma per il resto andò tutto bene e poca gente si è lamentata (almeno, su Internet ho visto meno cose cringe, poi boh). Con quello di oggi, però veramente ho letto cose… da un lato troppi cortei disordinati e sfocianti comunque in un dato livello di violenza, dall’altro gente “alternativa”, “contro il pensiero unico” che fa tutta l’indignata ed insulta o augura il male a chi supporta lo sciopero, e di risposta quelli della prima categoria che fanno lo stesso indietro a loro… che schifo. 💔

Se devo essere sincera e dire la mia precisamente — più o meno, perché su tutta la storia ho idee che non si assimilano né al mainstream né ai complottari malefici di cui sopra, e servirebbe un post solo per spiegarle bene, quindi evito ora (…ma, se qualcuno proprio ci tiene, si può presentare di fronte casa mia e andiamo al bar; e, ovviamente, il caffé mi deve essere offerto, quindi astenersi poveri) — questo sciopero non mi sta super a genio… perché, per quanto Israele non mi stia per niente simpatico, neanche certe cose palestinesi le trovo buone… però, capisco e non critico, e anzi farei i complimenti a chi partecipa, perché comunque dietro c’è un’idea di bene e pace (magari poco pensata, ma oggettivamente c’è)… Non è che, visto che le premesse secondo me sono fallate, allora ho il diritto morale di dire le cose brutte. 🙄

…Certo, al contempo non mi piace per niente se, da idee apprezzabili, ci si fa trasportare troppo di lato e si finisce per fare il disastro, e si usa quindi la forza, come stavolta invece è successo in diverse città; qui “da me”, per dire, hanno provato a forzare il blocco anti-blocco della polizia (…non si dice così, ma ci siamo capiti) al porto, che non è buono… così come non è buono che la polizia abbia risposto a sua volta con la violenza fisica, contro anche dei minorenni… ma a cosa mai può portare la violenza se non ad altra violenza? Stop violenza, porca troia. Stop violenza qui da noi e, ovviamente — lo auspico ogni volta che mi ricordo, quindi da diverse volte al giorno a quantomeno svariate volte alla settimana — stop violenza in medio oriente, ma stop violenza sempre e ovunque, che non ce la faccio più a vivere sapendo queste cose. 😭

…Ah, e stop anche ignavismo; c’è tanta gente che all’apparenza sarebbe simile a me in questi pensieri, ma in realtà semplicemente non se ne frega proprio… e anche questo, per me, non è buono affatto, perché non bisogna mai chiudere gli occhi ai mali del mondo solo perché non ci toccano personalmente. Io agli scioperi in piazza non ci sono andata, perché come detto non sono d’accordissimo, e poi stamattina (purtroppo!!!) le mie lezioni c’erano regolarmente… Ma, ieri pomeriggio, all’università, in più di un’ora in cui non avevo nulla da fare, essendo passato lo strambo corteo palestinese (circa ricollegabile ai poli umanistici) che faceva semplicemente un giro con le bandiere e i canti, di mia spontanea volontà l’ho seguito, pur senza spiccicare una sillaba, così, per sfizio… mentre tizi altrettanto strambi e che non conosco (pochi eh, ma comunque), ma lì del polo di informatica, quando questi sono passati a far casino per invogliare gente ad unirsi, hanno ridacchiato o detto cose inutili (…e, stranamente, ma strano solo per modo di dire, questi erano solo ragazzi… le altre ragazze lì non hanno fiatato, similmente a me, pur rimanendo magari nelle proprie cose e non unendosi). Da come fanno, sembra che non gli possa fregare di meno dei bambini che muoiono e tutto quanto… boh, non mi piace che la gente sia così. 😶
Allego due (2) foto che ho scattato ieri, a proposito… di cui una fa ridere, perché vedevo il corteo fermo dove stavo io dalle fessure dell’aula studio… proprio come se li osservassi dalle pareti, dove normalmente vivo. E, nota a margine che forse può tornare utile per qualche burla, almeno per chi vive in ufficio o a scuola: questi qui usavano rotoli di scotch per fare rumore, sbattendoli su parti di metallo o plastica di interni ed esterni, come porte o infissi o boh… e non avevo mai visto niente del genere, ma è geniale, per quanto bordello fa pur essendo per via di un oggetto che in genere non appare rumoroso! (Anche se poi a me, tutto sommato, i cortei bordellosi manco piacciono… preferisco, per così dire, quelli più da anziani, ma pazienza.)
#pace #palestina #scioperi #violenza

cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/47246639

Cindy Clemishire, 55, the woman who publicly identified herself as the victim of Morris’s sexual abuse, was present in the courtroom as he pleaded guilty. In a prepared statement she told him: “There is no such thing as consent from a 12-year-old child. We were never in an ‘inappropriate relationship.’ I was not a ‘young lady’ but a child. You committed a crime against me.”

A leaked transcript of a phone call revealed that in 2005 Morris tried to bribe Clemishire into silence, telling her to “put a price on it”.

He also became a spiritual adviser to Donald Trump. He joined the White House spiritual advisory committee during the first Trump presidency and was part of a campaign to mobilize evangelical voters for him in last year’s presidential campaign.

Trump also visited Gateway church in 2020 where he praised Morris and his senior team as “great people with a great reputation”.

pelespirit

2025-10-03 17:57:28

Megachurch pastor and ex-Trump adviser pleads guilty to child sexual abuse

Cindy Clemishire, 55, the woman who publicly identified herself as the victim of Morris’s sexual abuse, was present in the courtroom as he pleaded guilty. In a prepared statement she told him: “There is no such thing as consent from a 12-year-old child. We were never in an ‘inappropriate relationship.’ I was not a ‘young lady’ but a child. You committed a crime against me.”

A leaked transcript of a phone call revealed that in 2005 Morris tried to bribe Clemishire into silence, telling her to “put a price on it”.

He also became a spiritual adviser to Donald Trump. He joined the White House spiritual advisory committee during the first Trump presidency and was part of a campaign to mobilize evangelical voters for him in last year’s presidential campaign.

Trump also visited Gateway church in 2020 where he praised Morris and his senior team as “great people with a great reputation”.

Megachurch pastor and ex-Trump adviser pleads guilty to child sexual abuse

Robert Morris to serve only six months in county jail after charged with five counts of lewd or indecent acts with child

^{Ed Pilkington (The Guardian)}

https://www.science.org/content/article/renowned-u-s-climate-center-trims-staff-ahead-expected-budget-cuts

Holy shit I love my internet service provider said no one ever!

Except, some people do love their ISPs. Across America more than 400 community-owned fiber networks, serving more than 700 communities, bring joy and satisfaction to their customers:

communitynets.org/content/comm…

Many of these are in blood-red states, the kind of places where it's impossible to find a readable copy of Atlas Shrugged because every page of every copy is stuck together. Nevertheless, these publicly owned networks are wildly popular with their subscribers. What's more, there'd be a ton more of them but for the brutal ministration of ALEC, the far-right, dark money policy shop that convinced multiple state governments to ban community broadband, even in places where there was no commercial broadband service:

actions.eko.org/a/att-alec-lob…

One of the great predictors of whether your town will get fast, affordable, future-proof fiber is its history. Many of today's municipal broadband co-ops are descended from rural telephone co-ops, and those telephone co-ops were birthed by the New Deal's rural electrification co-ops. This is the incredibly long shadow that good public spending casts – a century of successful provision of amenities that substantially improve the quality of life of whole regions.

Take Jackson and Owlsley Counties, rural Kentucky counties in Appalachia, some of America's poorest places. Starting in 2009, the local telephone company, the Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative, started pulling fiber to every home in both counties. To get that fiber over rugged mountain passes, they pulled it on the back of a mule named "Ole Bub." Soon, every subscriber had access to symmetrical fiber broadband at speeds of up to 10gb/s, and the region found itself at the center of an economic revival:

web.archive.org/web/2019121005…

The Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative was founded in 1953, as an extension of the town's electrification co-op, itself founded in the 1930s after the passage of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 (the REA was amended in 1949, allowing electrification co-ops to secure low-cost loans for telephone rollouts).

You don't need to live in rural Appalachia to reap the benefit of publicly backed broadband co-ops. In Minnesota's Beltrami County (pop 46,288; density 18.6 people/square mile, median income $33,392/household), the local co-op Paul Bunyan Communications offers symmetrical fiber at speeds up to 10gb/s. But that's just table-stakes: Paul Bunyan doesn't just offer reasonably priced, reliable, screamingly fast broadband – it also pays its members whenever too much cash builds up in its bank account. Paul Bunyan just paid out $3.6 million in refunds to its subscribers:

ilsr.org/article/community-bro…

The payouts are pro-rated based on how much you spend on broadband. Customers who were due $150 or less got a credit on their next bill, while customers owed more than $150 got a check in the mail.

Nice, huh? It gets nicer: in 2018, Paul Bunyan paid back its subscribers $2.2 million; in 2022, they paid back $6.3 million, and last year they paid back $3 million. Paul Bunyan employs 160 people in the county, at fair wages, with good benefits. Every dollar Paul Bunyan makes literally stays in the community.

99% of the county has access to fiber from the co-op. Local business growth has outperformed statewide performance. A local aerospace company owner said that the co-op fiber made the difference between running a business with $300,000 in annual revenue and a business making $3,000,000 per year.

All of this is even cooler when you learn about the kind of internet service the rest of Minnesota has had to cope with. A 2019 Minnesota Commerce Department investigation found that Frontier, the state's leading ISP, had unbelievably badly maintained infrastructure. We're talking about high-capacity long-haul wires draped over shrubs and tree-branches:

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

Minnesotans on Fiber's "free market" service suffered from frequent outages. They paid higher costs for their unreliable, slow DSL lines than Paul Bunyan customers in Beltrami County paid for fiber that was literally thousands of times faster than Frontier's. Unlike Paul Bunyan's cheerful, local customer service, Frontier's service numbers went to "cost-efficient" (busied-out, distant) call centers where you could wait for hours to speak to someone who would either "accidentally" drop your call or simply refuse to help you. Customers frequently lost access to 911 service, and often saw spurious, sky-high charges on their bills that no one would explain or erase.

Frontier "strongly disagreed" with the report. But when Frontier went bankrupt (a year later!), we got a look at its internal operations and discovered just how much contempt the company had for its customers:

eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/fron…

By Frontier's own calculations, it could have made an extra $10 billion by investing in fiber rollouts, but it chose not to make that money, because the stock analysts at institutional investment funds would punish any telco that committed to capital expenditures with long-term payouts. Since Frontier's execs were mostly paid in stock, they decided not to risk a drop in their personal net worth, and so they left ten billion on the table and millions of customers stuck on 19th century copper-line infrastructure – technology that dated back to Samuel Morse and the telegraph.

Frontier was especially interested in customers who had no alternatives – no cable or fixed wireless companies that could offer competition for Frontier's own terrible service. These customers were booked as an "asset" and their connections were earmarked for substandard maintenance and slow upgrades. The old Lily Tomlin gag goes, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company." But Frontier really cared about the customers who had no alternative – they cared about royally fucking those customers.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold the marvel that is the efficient free market!

Municipal fiber is a godsend. It's fast, cheap and reliable, and it is an engine for economic development. Of course, the Trump administration is running away from municipal fiber – indeed, from all fiber – as fast as it can, because every fiber installation competes with Elon Musk's satellite based internet service, Skylink:

pluralistic.net/2025/07/24/geo…

The thing is, satellite internet makes sense in a few places – temporary encampments, ships at sea – but it is vastly more expensive than fiber to install and maintain, and it is millions of times slower than fiber. Nor is this something you can fix by filling the sky with more collision-prone, astronomer-demoralizing minisats – no matter how many satellites there are over your head, they're all in the same universe and have to share its single, fixed electromagnetic spectrum. Meanwhile, if you want more broadband in your fiber network, you just pull another bundle of fiber (principle ingredient: sand) through your conduit and you add dozens of new universes' worth of electromagnetic spectra that are each isolated from one another.

Smart politicians aren't being sucked in by Musk's claim that he can billionaire his way out of the intractable laws of physics. They're pulling fiber, and lots of it. In Utah, the aptly named UTOPIA network is serving publicly owned fiber to 21 cities, and private businesses can offer service over that public system, which means that Utahans have their choice of 18 carriers:

pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/sym…

Moreover, these are symmetrical connections, meaning that they are as fast for sending data as they are for receiving it:

pluralistic.net/2021/07/03/bea…

To put this in Information Superhighway terms from the 1990s, a symmetrical broadband connection is necessary for you to be a "netizen," while an asymmetrical connection that beams lots of data to you but isn't capable of letting you talk back is what makes you a "mouse potato."

It's grimly hilarious that the right has done so much damage to public fiber rollouts, given their oft-repeated grievances about being "shadowbanned" by dominant services. With symmetrical fiber, every crank could run their own server – a 4chan in every garage. And if that fiber is provided by the government, then your ISP will be bound by the First Amendment, and legally prohibited from discriminating against customers based on their political speech (something that commercial providers can do to their heart's content):

pluralistic.net/2021/01/17/tur…

The New Deal was a mere blip in the American project, but a century later, America's poorest, worst-served people are still reaping its benefits, with far faster, cheaper connections than you can get from the big telcos that have sewn up New York City and Los Angeles. And in some of those places, the public ISP doesn't just shower their subscribers with fast data – they shower them with millions of dollars.

Scientists at UNSW have achieved a breakthrough in quantum computing by entangling nuclear spins across distances of up to 20 nanometers in a silicon chip - the same scale as modern computer transistors[^1].

The team demonstrated a two-qubit controlled-Z logic operation between the nuclear spins of two phosphorus atoms, with each atom binding separate electrons that mediate the interaction through exchange coupling[^1]. They proved genuine quantum entanglement by preparing and measuring Bell states with 76% fidelity[^1].

"The spin of an atomic nucleus is the cleanest, most isolated quantum object one can find in the solid state," said Professor Andrea Morello from UNSW[^2]. Previous methods required nuclei to be very close together and share a common electron, limiting scalability. This new approach uses separate electrons as "telephones" to let distant nuclei communicate[^2].

Lead author Dr. Holly Stemp explains the significance: "You have billions of silicon transistors in your pocket or in your bag right now, each one about 20 nanometers in size. This is our real technological breakthrough: getting our cleanest and most isolated quantum objects talking to each other at the same scale as existing electronic devices."[^2]

The method remains compatible with current semiconductor manufacturing, using phosphorus atoms implanted in ultra-pure silicon. Professor Morello notes: "Our method is remarkably robust and scalable. Here we just used two electrons, but in the future we can even add more electrons, and force them in an elongated shape, to spread out the nuclei even further."[^2]

[^1]: Science - Scalable entanglement of nuclear spins mediated by electron exchange
[^2]: SciTechDaily - "Like Talking on the Telephone" – Quantum Breakthrough Lets Individual Atoms Chat Like Never Before

“Like Talking on the Telephone” – Quantum Breakthrough Lets Individual Atoms Chat Like Never Before

Scientists have linked nuclear spins inside silicon chips, marking a leap toward scalable quantum computers. Engineers at UNSW have achieved a major breakthrough in quantum computing by creating what are known as “quantum entangled states.

^{Colin Collins (SciTechDaily)}

The clip, styled like a 1990s commercial, features palm trees, waterfalls, hidden rooms, and an “Orange Man” action figure resembling president Donald Trump that repeats the phrase, “don’t release the files.”

It also includes references to secret surveillance cameras and a massage room, directly invoking allegations of sex trafficking and abuse tied to Epstein’s island.

Epstein, a financier with ties to powerful figures, died in jail in 2019 while facing federal charges. Trump has maintained that he had no involvement in Epstein's crimes.

https://www.newsweek.com/epstein-island-childrens-toys-ad-made-using-sora-2-takes-off-online-10823901

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi fired a federal prosecutor in Miami last week because he had posted critical blog commentary about Donald Trump during his first term as president — a poltically fraught decision that is threatening an upcoming trial.

Prosecutors, who are alleging millions of dollars in false insurance billing for medical equipment, telemedicine and other services, are expected to present more than 40

Coal’s health and climate impacts get no mention in the administration’s latest attempt to breathe life back into the industry.

Trump’s sweeping plan to prop up coal

^{Canary Media}

Conveniently, all canceled projects happen to be in states that voted for Harris.

This is pretty much textbook "the beatings will continue until morale improves."

White House budget director Russ Vought wrote on social media that the state, along with 15 others that backed former Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential bid last year, would see project funding cut. Harris beat Trump in the 2024 election here by more than four percentage points.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said 223 projects were reviewed and, quote, "did not adequately advance the nation's energy needs, were not economically viable and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars," unquote.

"Riiiiiiiiiight." -- Dr. Evil

Cindy Clemishire, 55, the woman who publicly identified herself as the victim of Morris’s sexual abuse, was present in the courtroom as he pleaded guilty. In a prepared statement she told him: “There is no such thing as consent from a 12-year-old child. We were never in an ‘inappropriate relationship.’ I was not a ‘young lady’ but a child. You committed a crime against me.”

A leaked transcript of a phone call revealed that in 2005 Morris tried to bribe Clemishire into silence, telling her to “put a price on it”.

He also became a spiritual adviser to Donald Trump. He joined the White House spiritual advisory committee during the first Trump presidency and was part of a campaign to mobilize evangelical voters for him in last year’s presidential campaign.

Trump also visited Gateway church in 2020 where he praised Morris and his senior team as “great people with a great reputation”.

Megachurch pastor and ex-Trump adviser pleads guilty to child sexual abuse

Robert Morris to serve only six months in county jail after charged with five counts of lewd or indecent acts with child

^{Ed Pilkington (The Guardian)}

Il venerdì sera del Nove si riaccende con Fratelli di Crozza, lo one-man show di Maurizio Crozza in prima serata e in streaming su Discovery+. La nuova stagione mette al centro l’attualità italiana e internazionale con l’inconfondibile satira politica e sociale del comico ligure, pronta a introdurre nuove maschere accanto ai cavalli di battaglia.

ANTICIPAZIONI E NUOVI PERSONAGGI: Fratelli di Crozza, stasera (3 ottobre 2025) debutta l’inedito “Giansalma Sminuzzi”: anticipazioni, personaggi e dove vederlo

Fratelli di Crozza anticipazioni 3 ottobre 2025: debutta Giansalma Sminuzzi

Fratelli di Crozza torna sul Nove: debutta l’inedito “Giansalma Sminuzzi” con il segmento Grado Zero. Anticipazioni e nuovi personaggi.

^{Redazione (Atom Heart Magazine)}

Proseguono oggi le manifestazioni pro Gaza in tutta Italia, in concomitanza con lo sciopero generale indetto da Usb, Cgil, Cub e Sgb e che coinvolge settori pubblici e privati. In numerose città si registrano cortei, blocchi stradali legati alla protesta contro il blocco di Israele alla missione della Global Sumud Flotilla.

LEGGI L'ARTICOLO: Manifestazioni pro Gaza oggi in tutta Italia: i cortei e i blocchi

Manifestazioni pro Gaza oggi: cortei e blocchi in tutta Italia

Sciopero generale e cortei pro Gaza oggi. Piazze piene a Milano, Bologna, Pisa, Messina, Livorno, Roma, Firenze, Napoli.

^{Redazione (Atom Heart Magazine)}

I had to temporarily move out. It took a few trips to move all my belongings.

No electric, so rather slow speed, but thankfully very little traffic here.

La fuori il mondo sta diventando di cemento.
La fuori chi corre corre su asfalto.
La fuori ci sono ancora Alberi che resistono.

Quando corriamo lo facciamo all'aperto, i più fortunati possono correre in un bosco o in montagna, altri lo fanno in un parco cittadino.
Quello che accomuna i vari ambienti sono gli alberi gli alberi sono esseri viventi magnifici che ci aiutano in molti aspetti della vita.

Indipendemente dal nostro livello di esperienza nella corsa quando siamo demotivati nell'uscire per un motivo o per l'altro pensiamo ad una cosa assurda: ora esco e vado a trovare gli alberi.

Loro sono sempre li che ci aspettano e allugnare un po' per conoscere nuovi alberi ci rafforza ci motiva, ci rilassa.

Forse è da matti pensare di uscire per andare a trovare gli alberi ma in fondo corriamo per noi la normalità è la nostra normalità quella di chi non corre non ci importa!

Buone corse

Run Hard Ride Smart

cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6322111

At least 600,000 Palestinians are currently under siege in Gaza City amid the Israeli army's ongoing bombardment, encirclement, and expulsion campaign, the New Arab reported on 2 October.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that all Palestinians remaining in the city must abandon their homes, pass Israeli checkpoints, and move to tent encampments in the south, stressing that anyone who stays will be considered a “terrorist” or “terrorist supporter” and targeted by invading Israeli forces.

Now is the “last opportunity for Gaza residents” to move south, Katz said.

Israeli forces have currently blocked all travel northward on the Rashid coastal road, cutting off the city's last surviving lifeline for humanitarian aid and preventing Palestinians who had moved south temporarily in search of food and shelter from returning.

“The only safe road for bringing in food and medicine has been cut. Announcements and speeches mean nothing if aid cannot reach civilians,” stated Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson of the Gaza civil defense, in a press statement.

While the Israeli military expected a mass exodus to the south, between 600,000 and 700,000 Palestinians remain in Gaza City, the UN estimated

Full Article

cross-posted from: hexbear.net/post/6315507

cross-posted from: ibbit.at/post/70371

Since coming to the U.S. from the West Bank in 2016, Leqaa Kordia has sent thousands of dollars to family living in Palestine. Some was money she earned working as a waitress; some was from her mother and neighbors in Paterson, New Jersey, who would “pool it together to send to help out our family,” Kordia explained in a recent court affidavit.

Remittances like these are a typical part of the financial lives of immigrant families. But since Kordia, 32, was arrested in March by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Trump administration has pointed to these wire transfers as evidence that she potentially supports Hamas, in a bid to keep her at an ICE detention center in Texas.

“It was quite upsetting to hear the government claim that any transfer of money to Palestine and/or Palestinians was inherently suspicious,” Kordia’s mother, a naturalized U.S. citizen, wrote in another affidavit.

Kordia’s arrest came days after immigration agents grabbed Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil in New York City. In error-riddled statements and social media blasts, the Department of Homeland Security emphasized Kordia’s participation in a pro-Palestine protest a year earlier, near Columbia.

Unlike Khalil and other high-profile activists targeted for deportation, however, Kordia remains in custody despite findings from two different judges — one in immigration court, one in federal district court — that she should be released. She’s lost significant weight while in the Prairieland Detention Facility, near Dallas–Fort Worth, which has roaches, broken showers, and barely any halal food suitable for a practicing Muslim, Kordia alleged in a habeas petition.

To keep her at Prairieland, government attorneys tried to paint Kordia as a potential Hamas supporter and thus a danger if released on bond. In immigration court, they pointed to wire transfers Kordia sent to Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East over the years, without any evidence that these funds were for anything other than fuel, water, or medical expenses for her family members.

“She didn’t always have a lot of money to send, but she sent whatever she could,” wrote one of Kordia’s cousins, who lives in Florida, in another affidavit.

It took weeks for Kordia’s legal team to track down family members who received remittances as far back as 2017. Some were still in Gaza and the West Bank, while others had evacuated to Egypt and Dubai.

“In 2022, during one of the aggressions in Gaza, my building was destroyed and we needed money to rebuild,” wrote Kordia’s aunt, who ran a hair salon out of her home in Gaza before fleeing to Cairo. “My sister was in great need after that incident, so I asked Leqaa for her assistance in sending money,” Kordia’s mother explained.

After Kordia’s attorneys submitted these sworn statements, ICE attorneys switched arguments, and they barely addressed her wire transfers at a hearing in late August, according to Sarah Sherman-Stokes, one of Kordia’s attorneys.

“In the blink of an eye, it became a non-issue,” Sherman-Stokes, a professor at Boston University’s immigrants’ rights clinic, told The Intercept. “Because it was such a charade from the beginning.”

From the start, the Trump administration’s case against Kordia has been slippery and ever-changing.

“What we’re seeing is that the Department [of Homeland Security] is throwing whatever they can at the wall and seeing what sticks,” Sherman-Stokes said.

The sole formal claim against Kordia in immigration court is that she overstayed her student visa, which she let expire in 2022 on the mistaken belief that her mother’s family visa petition gave Kordia lawful status. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved this petition in May 2021, according to court filings, which Kordia thought meant she was close to getting a green card.

But soon after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, Homeland Security Investigations, the intelligence division of ICE, devoted considerable resources to investigating Kordia for purported “national security violations,” according to court records.

Starting in early March, agents from HSI’s Newark office put a trace on Kordia’s WhatsApp account, interviewed her family and friends in Paterson, and even got a four-page report from the New York City Police Department about her arrest at a protest in April 2024, along with dozens of other people.

Since the charges were quickly dropped, Kordia’s arrest report was supposed to be sealed, and New York laws prohibit NYPD from assisting federal agencies with civil immigration enforcement. The city’s Department of Investigation told The Intercept that its inquiry about NYPD’s sharing of records with HSI is ongoing, and a public report should be issued by the end of the year.

HSI also subpoenaed Kordia’s records from Western Union and MoneyGram, which showed Kordia sent money abroad as recently as February 2025.

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Once in ICE custody, it was Kordia’s legal burden to prove to an immigration judge that she should be released on bond. At a hearing in April, ICE attorneys pointed to her protest arrest and remittances to argue that she was a danger to the community and potentially a Hamas supporter.

“They first tried to argue that exercising her free speech rights by attending a protest somehow made her a danger to U.S. security,” Sherman-Stokes explained, and when that didn’t work, “they moved on to suggesting that she was sending nefarious money transactions to people in the Middle East.”

From the start, the immigration judge didn’t buy it.

“In the absence of evidence of any connection to terrorist organizations, the Court cannot find that [Kordia] is supporting a terrorist organization by sending money to a family member in Palestine,” wrote Immigration Judge Tara Naselow-Nahas in an April ruling that ordered Kordia released on a $20,000 bond.

ICE attorneys appealed that order to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which, like immigration courts, sits within the Department of Justice rather than the federal judiciary, and Kordia remained at Prairieland.

While the BIA deliberated, a magistrate judge in federal court found in late June that Kordia’s due process rights were likely violated by her ongoing detention and recommended that she be released. But a district court judge ordered the magistrate judge to hear additional argument from the government.

In early August, the BIA remanded the bond order back to the immigration judge for “more complete findings of fact” about Kordia’s money transfers.

“It is a testament to the entrenched nature of anti-Palestinian sentiment that the mere fact of sending remittances to family abroad was enough for DHS and the immigration appeals body to aver that Leqaa was supposedly a threat,” said Naz Ahmad, co-director of the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project at CUNY law school, which also represents Kordia.

The BIA’s remand order set off the quest to track down Kordia’s family members for affidavits swearing they had not used any of her money to support Hamas.

“Not only do we have to contact them to prove they are who say they are, and that they received money for a medical procedure or because their house was bombed during the Israeli military campaign,” said Sherman-Stokes. They also had to ask each one a “horrible question,” she said: “Can you prove to me that you’re not a terrorist?”

Kordia’s brother, a tailor in Ramallah in the West Bank, wrote in an affidavit that the money she sent helped him open his shop in 2021, where he sells curtains. Other transfers helped cover rent, gas, electricity, and hospital bills for Kordia’s niece.

A cousin, who now lives in Dubai, wrote that a February 2025 transfer helped pay for a medical procedure. Three other cousins in Gaza and Cairo attested that Kordia’s transfers helped cover living expenses and medical bills.

“To further insist that Leqaa justify every single penny sent to a family member overseas, at a time when some of the same are living through a genocide, only underscored the pernicious nature of the government’s empty allegations,” said Ahmad.

In her own affidavit, Kordia wrote that, since 2023, she’s lost “nearly 175 family members — almost an entire generation — to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

In late August, the immigration judge again found that Kordia’s remittances were not grounds to keep her at Prairieland.

“The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that the money was sent to [Kordia’s] extended family members who were in desperate need of financial assistance,” wrote Naselow-Nahas.

Again, Naselow-Nahas ordered Kordia’s release on a $20,000 bond, and again, the Trump administration appealed to the BIA. Now, ICE attorneys argue she’s a flight risk because she consulted with an attorney before surrendering in March.

“Adding insult to injury, the government abandoned its ‘dangerousness’ claim based on the remittances and swiftly pivoted to a flimsy ‘flight risk’ argument to prolong Leqaa’s confinement punitively,” said Sadaf Hasan, an attorney at Muslim Advocates, another legal nonprofit that represents her. “These tactics reflect the dehumanizing and racist imperatives of the administration to weaponize immigration laws to punish Palestinian identity and the growing movement for Palestinian advocacy.”

“They have so little evidence, yet they continue to appeal and appeal and appeal.”

Sherman-Stokes said that, based on more than a decade working in deportation defense, it’s not unusual for the government to make spurious arguments or offer little evidence.

“What’s uncommon here is the government’s unwillingness to admit defeat,” she said. “They have so little evidence, yet they continue to appeal and appeal and appeal in the face of an immigration judge finding not once but twice that she should be released,” Sherman-Stokes said.
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The government’s targeting of Palestinian people or Muslim immigrants is also hardly new. From the post-9/11 “Muslim registry” to the first Trump administration’s “Muslim ban,” Middle Eastern immigrants have faced additional scrutiny for decades.

“But it certainly seems to have escalated,” said Sherman-Stokes, who called the government’s arguments about Kordia’s money transfers “vague and spurious claims that are really grounded in racism and xenophobia.”

Sherman-Stokes said it was also unusual for Kordia to be held in detention indefinitely based just on her overstayed visa, without any criminal conviction.

“She exercised her First Amendment rights along with thousands of other people,” Sherman-Stokes said. “This is someone we should welcome into the country, not demonize.”

“This is someone we should welcome into the country, not demonize.”

Kordia’s habeas petition for release is currently pending in federal court, and on Tuesday she filed a brief urging her immediate release despite the government’s “procedural gamesmanship.” Briefs are due to the BIA next week, and Kordia’s next hearing in immigration court is scheduled for October 23.

After more than six months in Prairieland, Kordia is eager to be back with her family in New Jersey. Before moving to the U.S., she and her mother were apart for nearly two decades, since Kordia stayed with her father in the West Bank after her parents divorced. On top of working multiple jobs and collecting money for family abroad, Kordia helped look after her half-brother, Omar, who has autism, and helped her mother, who has limited mobility and other health issues, with errands and cleaning.

“Against my will, I was separated from my mother for nearly twenty years,” Kordia wrote. “Being separated from her again is unbearable.”

The post She Sent Money to Family in Gaza. ICE Claimed It’s Evidence She Supports Hamas. appeared first on The Intercept.

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