Gaza protests spread across U.S., to the doorstep of the White House
CBC
Joe Biden tried taking a victory lap this week, celebrating a coveted foreign policy win. Yet in the streets near his house, he was being jeered over a different foreign crisis — the one that's threatening his presidency.
A few blocks from the White House, students set up tents, building another impromptu encampment as part of Mideast protests proliferating across the country.
This was as Biden was celebrating a hard-fought, long-sought success: the adoption of a foreign-aid law that will arm Ukraine throughout the year.
But the continued arms for Israel in that same law stoked the anger of students from several schools who filled a square with tents outside George Washington University.
One student, Selina Al-Shihabi, said of the president: "He's a really disgusting human being."
"No human could just watch this unfold," she said. "He's a disappointment. It's so sad to see him still providing Israel with those weapons."
Her family lives in Gaza and, she said, she's had relatives killed.
She voted for Biden in 2020. She's volunteered for the Democrats. And now she can't imagine going to a ballot booth this fall and supporting him again. In fact, she says she'd envisioned someday working for the U.S. government, and is now disillusioned by that too.
Of all the threats to Biden's potential re-election, this is atop the list.
A drop in youth turnout could be politically lethal in several close states, meaning Biden needs votes from a group with a rock-bottom opinion of Israel's leadership.
It's no accident that on the very day that foreign-aid bill was signed, Republicans turned the page on a Ukraine debate that had roiled their party.
They sprinted immediately for safer political terrain: the Middle East.
Facing a threat to his leadership, House Speaker Mike Johnson and several of his allies ventured to the encampment at Columbia University in New York.
They scolded the students as being, effectively, allies of Hamas and were greeted with heckles like, "Mike, you suck!"
A project to revitalise Inuttitut and promote pride in Inuit identity in northern Labrador has collected the top award from the 12th annual Arctic Inspiration Prize. At the ceremony in Whitehorse on Tuesday night, judges also endorsed a two-eyed recovery and wellbeing centre, a therapeutic farm school for neurodiverse learners in the Yukon, and an initiative to teach boys and young men traditional fishing skills for Arctic Char in Nunavut, among others. The Arctic Inspiration Prize website says the awards are Canada's largest annual prize. Each year seed funding is offered to new and innovative projects to improve northerners' lives.