In a historic move, Ireland, Norway and Spain have announced they will recognize Palestine as an independent state, becoming the latest European nations to do so. Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre spoke in Oslo.

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre: “There can be no peace in the Middle East without Palestinians and Israelis having their own states and that there is a two-state solution. There cannot be a two-state solution without a Palestinian state. And in other words, peace in the Middle East requires a Palestinian state.”

Ireland’s new prime minister, Simon Harris, referenced Ireland’s own history of emerging from colonial rule as he announced recognition of a Palestinian state.

Prime Minister Simon Harris: “This is an historic and important day for Ireland and for Palestine. … Taking our place on the world stage and being recognized by others as having the right to be there was a matter of the highest importance for the founders of our state.”

Israel responded to the announcements by recalling its ambassadors from Ireland, Norway and Spain. There are reports Malta and Slovenia may be the next European nations to recognize Palestine.

In Gaza, the official death toll from Israel’s war has topped 35,600 as the humanitarian catastrophe intensifies. The United Nations has suspended all food distribution in the southern Gaza city of Rafah due to escalating Israeli attacks and a lack of supplies. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has admitted none of the humanitarian aid brought in from a new U.S.-made pier in Gaza has actually been distributed to Palestinians.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told senators that the Biden administration is ready to work on efforts to potentially sanction officials at the International Criminal Court after the court’s chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Blinken called the ICC decision “profoundly wrong-headed.”

Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian protesters repeatedly disrupted Blinken Tuesday as he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Many of the protesters had their hands painted red to symbolize blood.

Protester 1: “He is a war criminal! He is a war criminal! The blood of 40,000 people is on his hands! The blood of 40,000 Palestinians is on his hands! He is a war criminal! He is a war criminal!”
Another protester who disrupted Blinken condemned Israel’s killing of 6-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “The People’s Republic of China pursuing a military” —

Protester 2: “Hind Rajab was 6 years old when Israelis killed her! Hind Rajab was 6 years old! Blinken, you will be remembered as the Butcher of Gaza! You will be remembered for murdering innocent Palestinians!”

According to the group CodePink, four protesters were arrested, including former State Department official Ann Wright, who was injured while Capitol Police ejected her from the hearing.

Police violently raided a student encampment at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. At least four protesters were arrested and two others were hospitalized after being pepper-sprayed by police. We will go to Michigan later in the program.
Meanwhile, academic workers at the University of California at Santa Cruz began a strike on Monday to protest the crackdown on pro-Palestinian student protesters. The strike comes days after the UAW local, which represents 48,000 workers in the UC system, voted to authorize a systemwide strike.
In other education news, the faculty at Dartmouth has voted to censure the school’s president, Sian Beilock, for calling in the police to shut down a peaceful student protest in solidarity with Palestine. Meanwhile, the Faculty Senate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has voted no confidence in the school’s chancellor, Javier Reyes, after police arrested more than 130 at a student encampment earlier this month.

Press freedom groups and the Biden administration criticized Israel on Tuesday after Israeli officials seized camera and broadcasting equipment from the Associated Press in an effort to block the news agency from sending a live video feed of Gaza from southern Israel. Israel’s communications minister later reversed the decision, and AP has resumed airing the live video.

Closing arguments will begin next Tuesday in Donald Trump’s criminal hush money and 2016 election interference trial. The defense rested their case Tuesday after Trump declined to take the stand.

Donald Trump’s campaign has removed a social media video that included a reference to “the creation of a unified Reich.” The campaign’s decision came after the former president was widely denounced for adopting a term often associated with the Nazis. President Biden accused Trump of using “Hitler’s language.”

Donald Trump suggested in an interview on Tuesday that he supports restrictions on birth control. He was questioned by a journalist at KDKA in Pittsburgh.

Jon Delano: “Do you support any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception?”

Donald Trump: “Well, we’re looking at that, and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly. And I think it’s something that you’ll find interesting.”

Trump went on to say “some states are going to have different policy than others.” After facing backlash, Trump wrote on social media that he would “never advocate imposing restrictions on birth control.”

Primaries were held Tuesday in Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky and Oregon. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting Donald Trump, won a contested Democratic primary. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is hearing the Trump case in Georgia, also won on Tuesday.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers earlier today at a massive funeral ceremony in Tehran for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash Sunday that also killed Iran’s foreign minister and other officials. Raisi will be buried Thursday in his hometown of Mashhad.

In news from Sudan, Doctors Without Borders reports at least 85 people have died in recent days in fighting in the Darfur city of El Fasher. This comes as the United Nations is warning a genocide may already be occurring in Sudan. Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the U.N. special adviser on the prevention of genocide, addressed the U.N. Security Council.

Alice Wairimu Nderitu: “I would like today to raise my alarm in a clear and unequivocal way about the ongoing situation in Sudan. The situation today bears all the marks of risk of genocide, with strong allegations that this crime has already been committed.”

A Greek judge has dismissed a case against nine Egyptian men accused of smuggling migrants in the Pylos shipwreck that killed some 600 people last June. The decision came just after the men’s trial began. The accused men had said they were being scapegoated and are themselves victims.

In the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, 14 people have been killed in attacks targeting local candidates ahead of the June 2 election. According to one tally, at least 134 people have been killed in politically motivated attacks in Mexico this year, including 24 political candidates. During a debate on Sunday, presidential front-runner Claudia Sheinbaum of the Morena party vowed to continue the policies of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Claudia Sheinbaum: “We are going to build a future of peace and prosperity. Our country’s transformation has already begun, and we will continue it. We have results, and we are going to take them to the whole country.”

Sheinbaum’s top challenger, Xóchitl Gálvez, accused the current government of failing to fight organized crime.

Xóchitl Gálvez: “Security has been a failure in this six-year term. A hundred eighty-six thousand people have been murdered, and 50,000 people have disappeared. What has been the strategy of this government? To hand the country over to organized crime. I propose a new security strategy: no more hugs for the criminals.”

If either of the two front-runners win, they will become the first woman president in Mexico’s history.

The cultural historian and author H. Bruce Franklin has died at the age of 90. Franklin was a former Air Force navigator and intelligence officer who became radicalized by the U.S. war in Vietnam. In 1972, he became the first tenured professor to be fired by Stanford University after the school accused him of inciting students to take over a campus computer center, which had ties to the U.S. military. He later taught at Rutgers University in Newark. He was the author of 20 books on topics ranging from the Vietnam War to Herman Melville. He appeared on Democracy Now! in 2000, where he spoke about Vietnam.

H. Bruce Franklin: “American fantasies made it possible for us to participate in that war, to carry out the most systematic destruction of a nation that any nation has ever done in history, and part of the time thinking that we were there for good reasons, to defend peace and democracy and so on. That was all based on fantasies.”