China's Tianfu Cup is back this year.

https://www.nattothoughts.com/p/the-tianfu-cup-returns-under-mps

For more than 60 years, hundreds of unclassified reports from the US defense and intelligence community have assessed the threats to the US from environmental, #water, and #climate risks.

Those reports are disappearing from government websites and the military is being ordered to cancel, and censor, these security analyses.

I've documented, annotated, and linked to them on my website in three blog posts. The first one is here (the next two are there as well):

https://www.gleick.com/blog/climate-change-water-the-environment-and-national-security-an-annotated

Another area where the POTUS is setting up a constitutional challenge with the judicial branch:

"The Associated Press said in a court filing on Wednesday that the Trump administration had defied a federal judge’s order requiring the administration to restore the wire service’s full access to the White House."

"Lawyers for the The A.P. wrote that a White House spokesman had told A.P. reporters on Monday that they would continue to be excluded from the press pool — a small, rotating group of journalists who cover certain events in confined spaces at the White House — because the “case is ‘ongoing.’”

"For the last two months, The A.P.’s access to President Trump has been sharply curtailed over its refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, the name that Mr. Trump designated for the body of water."

"In a temporary order last week, Judge Trevor N. McFadden of the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., said the exclusion violated the First Amendment’s free-speech clause and instructed the White House to restore The A.P.’s access “immediately.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/trump-ap-white-house-access.html

A case study of the i-SOON indictment and leaks reveals that source information may vary but it is important to compare and evaluate information for unique insights.

https://nattothoughts.substack.com/p/indictments-and-leaks-different-but

Zuck said Meta is in a "partnership" with White House; Google is following suit. They are all that stand between you and Trump admin data grabs.

Law enforcement requests for user data from Apple, Google, and Meta mean Big tech can decide whether US authorities have access to your personal info, like location data.

Meanwhile, Europeans are starting to see US data services as “no longer safe”

Here's a resource collection of non-US services, and more:

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-era-digital-expat/

Mahmoud Khalil speaks out for the first time since his arrest. This letter was dictated over the phone from the ICE detention facility in Louisiana:

My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.

Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the
Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his
family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.

Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.

On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.

My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free
Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s
ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.

I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land
since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being
Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.

I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being
targeted.

While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled
my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean
Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining
pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation —
to go unchecked.

Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due
process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration's latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.

If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.

The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.

Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.

https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2025/03/Letter_from_a_Palestinian_Political_Prisoner_in_Louisiana_March_18,_2025.pdf

As the Natto Team was going to publish this piece, US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging eight i-SOON employees and highlighting the importance of companies like i-SOON in China's cyberthreat landscape.

https://nattothoughts.substack.com/p/where-is-i-soon-now

Unimaginable a few weeks ago. But here we are. French university offering refuge to US scholars.

“It targets, but is not limited to, climate and environment, health, and human and social sciences.”

#democracy #science

https://www.404media.co/french-university-to-fund-american-scientists-who-fear-trump-censorship/