First white South African ‘refugees’ arrive in US as Trump claims they face ‘genocide’
The Trump administration has welcomed 59 white South Africans it has granted refugee status in the US for being deemed victims of racial discrimination, Reuters reports, in a move that has drawn criticism from Democrats and stirred confusion in South Africa.
Donald Trump has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world – even those fleeing war – but in February offered to resettle Afrikaners, the descendants of mostly Dutch settlers, saying they faced discrimination.
Asked on Monday why white South Africans were being prioritized above the victims of famine and war elsewhere in Africa, Trump claimed, without providing evidence, that Afrikaners were being killed. “It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” Trump told reporters at the White House, going further than he has previously in echoing rightwing tropes about their alleged persecution.
He was not favoring Afrikaners because they are white, Trump said, adding that their race “makes no difference to me”.
South Africa maintains there is no evidence of persecution and that claims of a “white genocide” in the country have not been backed up by evidence. Treating white South Africans as refugees fleeing oppression has drawn alarm and ridicule from South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic issue it does not understand.
A state department official said the charter plane carrying the first 59 Afrikaners brought under Trump’s offer had landed at Washington Dulles airport. Some were heading to Democratic-leaning Minnesota, which has a reputation for welcoming refugees, while others planned to go to Republican-led states such as Idaho and Alabama, sources told Reuters.
Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the most senior Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, called the move “baffling”. In a statement on Monday she said:
The decision by this administration to put one group at the front of the line is clearly politically motivated and an effort to rewrite history.
Key events
DNC panel recommends invalidating David Hogg’s election over gender rule violation
Lauren Gambino
A Democratic National Committee panel on Monday recommended that the organization invalidate an internal vice-chair vote that elevated activist David Hogg to the position, determining that the contest had not followed the party’s gender-parity rules.
The decision by the DNC’s credentials committee, which forwards the resolution to the full body of the Democratic National Committee for approval, came after nearly three hours of what appeared to be tortured internal debate. If adopted, it could force Hogg, an activist who has infuriated DNC officials with his pledge to fund primary challenges against “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a Pennsylvania state legislator, to run again for their positions.
The committee’s ruling is ostensibly unrelated to Hogg’s activism – the credential challenge was brought by Kalyn Free, one of the candidates who lost the vice chair race to Hogg. Free argued that the party had not followed parliamentary procedure, putting female candidates at a disadvantage.
But in a statement responding to the ruling, Hogg said it was “impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party which loomed large over this vote”.
“I ran to be DNC Vice Chair to help make the Democratic Party better, not to defend an indefensible status quo that has caused voters in almost every demographic group to move away from us,” Hogg said. “The DNC has pledged to remove me, and this vote has provided an avenue to fast-track that effort.”
Senate Republicans voiced several concerns, from ethical to legal questions, about the possibility of Trump receiving a luxury jet from Qatar, the Hill reports.
“I’m not flying on a Qatari plane. They support Hamas,” said Republican senator Rick Scott of Florida, and a strong Trump supporter. “I don’t know how you make it safe.”
Trump defended the potential gift (a Boeing 747-8 aircraft from the Qatari government intended as a replacement for the current Air Force One fleet) by saying that it would be “stupid” not to accept the offer.
“‘Gosh, let me give you a plane.’ I mean, that seems pretty nice, but they support Hamas, so I don’t know. I don’t know how you make it safe,” Scott said. “I don’t want the president of the United States flying on an unsafe plane.”
Lauren Gambino
Leftwing pundit Hasan Piker says US border agents quizzed him on Trump and Gaza
Hasan Piker, a US-born progressive political commentator, said he was stopped by US Customs and Border Protection agents and questioned about his opinions of Donald Trump and Israeli war policy as he returned to the country on Sunday from France.
Piker, recounting the incident on his Twitch livestream on Monday, said he was led to a private room at Chicago O’Hare airport and interviewed for nearly two hours about his political views.
“The goal here is to put fear into people’s hearts, to have a chilling effect on speech that, like, the government is unafraid of intimidating you,” Piker said. “Does this stop me from saying whatever the fuck I want to say? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. But the reason why I wanted to talk about it was to give you more insight into what the government is doing, and to speak out against this sort of stuff.”
The leftwing streamer has built a mass following on YouTube and Twitch around his blend of political, cultural and social commentary. Piker, born in New Jersey, was carrying a US passport when he re-entered the US on Sunday, after a trip to France with his family to celebrate Mother’s Day.
“I think they did it because they know who the fuck I am, and they wanted to put the fear of god into me,” Piker said.
“This is nothing but lying for likes,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “Claims that his political beliefs triggered the inspection are baseless. Our officers are following the law, not agendas.”
She added: “Upon entering the country, this individual was referred for further inspection – a routine, lawful process that occurs daily, and can apply for any traveler. Once his inspection was complete, he was promptly released.”
Piker repeatedly described the exchange as “cordial” but said he was transparent with the officer interviewing him that he planned to speak out about his experience, which the streamer said felt anything but random and “routine”.
Read the full story here:
A federal judge ruled that the Internal Revenue Service can continue sharing tax data of immigrants with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting individuals living illegally in the US.
In a victory for the Trump administration, US district judge Dabney Friedrich rejected a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by non-profit organizations. The groups argued that undocumented immigrants who file taxes should be afforded the same privacy protections as US citizens and legally residing immigrants.
Friedrich, appointed by Donald Trump, had previously denied a temporary order in the case.
This decision comes less than a month after the resignation of former acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause, following the agreement that allowed Ice to provide the IRS with names and addresses of immigrants residing illegally in the US for cross-verification against tax records.
House Republicans are pushing a plan to allocate up to $5bn annually for scholarships that would allow families to send their children to private and religious schools, the Associated Press reports.
This move marks an unprecedented effort to use public money to pay for private education.
The proposal would advance Donald Trump’s agenda of establishing “universal school choice” by providing families nationwide the option to give their children an education different from the one offered in their local public school.
Nearly all households would qualify except those making more than three times the local median income.
“Giving parents the ability to choose the best education for their child makes the (American Dream) possible,” said Bill Cassidy, a Republican Louisiana senator who sponsored a similar proposal in the Senate.
The FBI directed its agents on Monday to increase the time they spend on immigration enforcement and reduce their focus on white-collar crime, Reuters reports.
During a series of meetings, field offices informed agents they would now be expected to dedicate roughly one-third of their time to supporting the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.
Investigations into white-collar crime, the source told Reuters, will be deprioritized through at least the end of 2025.
Rachel Savage
Rachel Savage and David Smith report on the first group of white South Africans to arrive in the US:
The first group of white South Africans granted refugee status by Donald Trump’s administration has arrived in the US, stirring controversy in South Africa as the US president declared the Afrikaners victims of a “genocide”.
The Afrikaners, a minority descended from mainly Dutch colonists, were met at Dulles international airport outside Washington DC by US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, and deputy secretary of homeland security, Troy Edgar, with many given US flags to wave.
Reuters reported that the group numbered 59 adults and children, citing a state department official, while Associated Press said there were 49.
At Dulles airport, Landau told the assembled white South Africans: “It is such an honour for us to receive you here today … it makes me so happy to see you with our flag in your hands.
He invoked his family’s history, saying: “My own father was born in Europe and had to leave his country when Hitler came in … We respect what you have had to deal with these last few years.”
He added: “We’re sending a clear message that the United States really rejects the egregious persecution of people on the basis of race in South Africa.”
On the same day the group arrived in the US, Trump’s government also ended legal protections that had temporarily protected Afghans from deportation, citing an improved security situation in the country, which is ruled by the Taliban.
One consideration for resettling Afrikaners not Afghans was that “they could be easily assimilated into our country,” Landau told reporters at the airport.
Trump suspended the US refugee settlement programme in January, leaving more than 100,000 people approved for refugee resettlement stranded. Then, in February, he signed an executive order directing officials to grant refugee status to Afrikaners, whose leaders ruled during apartheid while violently repressing the Black majority.
Read the full story by Rachel Savage and David Smith here:
Hollywood groups urge Trump to back tax deductions
A coalition of entertainment unions, including the Motion Picture Association, called on Trump on Monday to endorse tax deductions that benefit the entertainment sector.
The letter was sent in response to Trump’s announcement of a 100% tariff on films produced outside the United States.
The letter was also signed by leading writers’ and actors’ guilds, and actors Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone, two of Trump’s selected Hollywood advisers.
“Returning more production to the United States will require a national approach and broad-based policy solutions,” reads the letter.
US Customs and Border Protection reported that there were 8,383 arrests for illegal border crossings from Mexico in April, marking a 17% increase from 7,184 in March.
But this also marks a 94% decrease from nearly 129,000 in April 2024. March’s tally was the slowest monthly rate since 1967.
The border patrol averaged 279 arrests along the Mexican border in April, down from more than 10,000 a day on the busiest days of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Wall Street’s three major indexes climbed sharply on Monday, with the S&P 500 reaching its highest level since early March, following news of a temporary US-China agreement to ease tariffs.
The move offered some hope for relief in the ongoing global trade war that began in early April under Donald Trump.
The agreement sparked investor optimism, prompting a shift toward riskier assets and away from defensive investments. Still, there’s still some uncertainty over the long-term direction of trade policy and where final tariff levels would land.
“It’s a relief rally because there was a lot of anxiety and angst about tariffs between the US and China,” John Praveen, managing director at Paleo Leon in Princeton, New Jersey, told Reuters.
David Smith
Chris Van Hollen, a senator for Maryland, told an audience at the Center for American Progress thinktank in Washington: “To watch the Trump administration apply what I call their global apartheid policy by providing asylum or refugee status to some Afrikaners – white South Africans – while they shut everybody else out is just an outrageous insult to the whole idea of our country, and the whole idea of Dr King that at the end of the day it’s character that counts.”
“We have to call it out for what it is: it’s an application of the global apartheid policy by the Trump administration.”
Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said in a statement: “It is baffling as to why the Trump administration is admitting Afrikaners for resettlement while continuing an indefinite suspension for thousands of legitimate asylum seekers who have fled persecution, often because their lives were at risk.”
Last year, the UN found no South Africans were eligible for refugee status. The decision by this administration to put one group at the front of the line is clearly politically motivated and an effort to rewrite history.”
