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After the first round of ceasefire negotiations in Pakistan collapsed over the weekend, we speak to two former nuclear negotiators about prospects for ending the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, including what another nuclear deal might look like. Robert Malley, a U.S. negotiator for the 2015 nuclear deal (which President Trump withdrew from in his first term), says Trump's "mercurial" behavior makes it difficult to predict his objectives and the course of any future talks. "Iran was in full compliance with the JCPOA" and was blindsided by the U.S.'s decision to pull out of the deal, says Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who served as spokesperson for Iran's nuclear negotiation team from 2003 to 2005. Now its leaders "don't know whether the U.S. is really for diplomacy or not."
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The first-ever pope from the United States is clashing with the White House. Pope Leo XIV, head of the Catholic Church, which counts more than a billion people in the world as its members, has spoken out forcefully against war. He said in his Palm Sunday address that Jesus "does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war … [whose] hands are full of blood." In response, President Donald Trump said Pope Leo is "weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy." Trump is also under fire for sharing an AI-generated image that appears to show himself as Jesus Christ. Pressed about the controversy in an interview on Fox News, Trump's Catholic Vice President JD Vance said the pope should "stick to matters of morality."
"I don't know any other more pressing moral issues than war and peace, taking care of the poor, the sick, the homeless, the stranger," says Father James Martin, a writer and Jesuit priest. "I don't understand how Vice President Vance cannot see that war is a moral issue. … This idea that some people don't deserve mercy is completely against the Christian message."
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The Trump administration has fired six more immigration judges in its effort to reshape immigration policy and the immigration courts. Two of the fired judges, Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, had each dismissed high-profile cases brought by the government against international students who had advocated for Palestinian rights, Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi. Around 100 immigration judges have been fired by the Trump administration. Firings in previous administrations were rare.
The Trump administration is eroding "the concept of procedural due process, the idea that you get to have a hearing in the United States" by "firing judges that it perceived as being opposed to the administration's stated goal to deport as many people as possible with the least amount of due process possible," says Carmen Maria Rey Caldas, a former immigration judge in New York who was fired in August.
The firing of so many immigration judges is also "egregious" because noncitizens are "going to be subject to the ruling of judges that are under pressure," says Cyrus Mehta, an attorney who represents Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi.
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