What if we had an entire foreign policy based on the petty resentments and insecurities of mediocre weak men?

With SASSOUFIT and @rwchr.bsky.social we’re proud today to recommend targeted sanctions against two members of Congo-Brazzaville’s ruling Sassou Nguesso family for allegedly embezzling public funds and laundering them into U.S. real estate. @andreangombet.bsky.social

Human Rights First has filed a lawsuit with co-counsel Ballard Spahr against Egypt for a violent attack on two American brothers in Midtown Manhattan while they were exercising their right to protest. Learn more: humanrightsfirst.org/library/huma...

Canada has stood with America when we were at our lowest, has fought and died in wars alongside us, has done everything a nation could to help and be amicable with another. And now America has gratuitously stabbed Canada in the back, and continues to do so. Things can never be the same again.

PEN America echoes @peninternational.bsky.social and @englishpen.bsky.social – Jimmy Lai’s 20-year sentence is an egregious abuse and a catastrophic blow to free speech in Hong Kong.

This will be an interesting case to watch for accountability for transnational repression in the US: humanrightsfirst.org/library/huma...

"For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career...cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism." (gift link)

"@humanrightsfirst.org, with co-counsel Ballard Spahr, has filed a lawsuit against Egypt on behalf of two American brothers—including a minor—who were beaten by Egyptian security agents in New York City in an attack caught on video in broad daylight."

Today is a dark day, first for those losing their jobs, and for the media industry at-large, and for those of us who rely on that coverage -- whether it's to be informed citizens capable of holding our governments to account or to be able to do our work in policy and advocacy.

Iranians protested their regime for weeks amid the isolation of an internet shutdown and brutal state assault. @selopez.bsky.social reflects on the impact of writers like imprisoned Nobel Peace Laureate Narges Mohammadi, whose voices reverberate nevertheless: www.justsecurity.org/130031/iran-...

Human Rights First strongly supports UN Special Rapporteur Satterthwaite’s call for the U.S. government to lift its sanctions targeting the International Criminal Court and end its attack on those seeking justice for atrocities. Thank you for your leadership @unsr-judges.bsky.social.

Our client Yunseo Chung isn’t accused of a crime. She’s being targeted for deportation for attending a peaceful protest. Our Special Counsel Joshua Colangelo-Bryan updates on our fight to protect her First Amendment rights against the government’s recent appeal.

The Prime Minister of Belgium speaks:

This is pure, unabashed bigotry. If a politician said this about any other faith, they would rightfully be run out of their party. But this kind of despicable anti-Muslim rhetoric is so normalized that a sitting Senator uses it without consequence. A stain on our Congress.

"Ireland has been crystal clear that the future of Greenland is a matter to be determined by Denmark and by the Greenlandic people, in line with well-established democratic principles and international law." "This is a position that will not change."

RM @meeks.house.gov: I will be offering a resolution to terminate these illegal and absurd tariffs immediately.
 
I'm here in Copenhagen and in every conversation I've had, officials have made clear: Greenland is not for sale.

Old enough to remember when the U.S. was using economic coercion to punish aggression and territorial conquest rather than in service of those illegal objectives.

Congress could end this nonsense at any time.

We must unconstitutionally impose more taxes on Americans because the threat of illegal aggression against a heretofore American ally hasn't worked out as smoothly as we imagined.

UN experts* today expressed grave concern about statements made by the President of the United States of America regarding Greenland, including suggestions that the territory should be placed under U.S. control and that force could be used to achieve such an outcome. www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...

one of the most consequential choices a nation makes is when to use military force. that choice is now claimed by one person, without constraint and, thanks to john roberts’ court, without accountability. that is not democracy but tyranny.

This is the kind of thing that the Founders explicitly designed our constitution to prevent; a president who has seized wealth for his own benefit without any intervention from Congress, which in our system is supposed to be the holder of the power of the purse.

Coward.

Further ironies in the new War Powers report for the Venezuela invasion. "Maduro unlawfully refused to peacefully cede power after Venezuelans voted him out of office in the most recent election." 6/n

Must have garbled translating "special military operation" from the original Russian.

The foreign policy of a personalist dictatorship. There are no constraints.

he's just gonna keep doing illegal shit as long as everyone keeps letting him

What JD Vance really means by this is that Maduro is bound by US laws but Trump is not.

Vance’s use of quotes is deliberate, not illiterate like Trump’s. Here, it signifies that legality itself is a dubious or frivolous concept as applied to the actions of the regime. It conveys not just that it’s wrong to say the acts were illegal, but ridiculous to use law as a metric at all.

My colleague @dooleydooley.bsky.social from Kharkiv: “Trump's public assurances that “Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed …They’re going to be helping. Russia’s going to be helping,” are widely mocked here.”

it’s a war of aggression. no other way to describe it as a matter of law. not a viable claim of self defense in view.

What kind of news organization holds news stories because the government officials credibly accused of grotesque human rights abuses refuse to comment on the record? www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/b...

Thanks to Middle East Eye for covering @humanrightsfirst.org's push for the U.S. government to acknowledge that the ongoing torture in Bahrain's prisons requires, among other things, a visa ban on the country's long-serving interior minister.

Will a copy of the federal indictment charging him with corruption be in it?

The United States and Russia continue to sanction and threaten ICC judges. Just disgraceful.

I see we’re at the naming buildings after the incumbent leader stage of personalist rule

Human Rights First has submitted evidence and a recommendation urging the U.S. government to impose #GlobalMagnitsky sanctions and a mandatory visa ban against Bahrain’s interior minister, based on the torture and cruel treatment of prisoners in facilities under his supervision.

We at @humanrightsfirst.org are calling for targeted sanctions against Bahrain’s Minister of the Interior for failing to stop torture in prisons @drewerydyke.bsky.social @jongambrell.bsky.social @elizlanders.bsky.social

Almost certainly not, is our answer; but advocates and Congress should use the occasion of this upcoming report to scrutinize the administration's record and highlight the human impacts of U.S. backsliding on anti-corruption.

The sanctions that Trump has imposed on the ICC and UN rapporteurs have been deterring American human rights advocates and scholars from exercising their First Amendment rights. This letter--obtained by @mesa1966.bsky.social & @knightcolumbia.org--should help. knightcolumbia.org/content/trum...

DC statehood now.

What oil, what land, what assets did Venezuela steal from the US? And when? A social media post from an alternative reality.

Thank you to Rep. Jamie Raskin for joining our event honoring Baldwin Award winner Dang Dinh Bach and for calling on Vietnam to free him. We’re grateful for your leadership alongside @lofgren.house.gov, @repmcgovern.bsky.social, and Rep. Derek Tran.

Today I’m leading my colleagues in calling on the government of Vietnam to immediately release internationally respected environmental activist and attorney Dang Dinh Bach. Mr. Bach's detention on phony charges violates his basic human rights—and we demand his release and freedom.

A million Muslims live in New York City. We belong here, as does every other New Yorker. This is vile Islamophobia from the Councilwoman and it has no place in our city.

Pardons would prevent federal prosecutions, sure. Federal prosecutions aren’t the only way to write the closing chapter to a lawless authoritarian regime.

When the winner of the Nobel peace prize smuggled herself over the water and out of Venezuela to attend the ceremony in Oslo this week, her allies called the Pentagon to ask them not to arbitrarily murder her. www.wsj.com/world/americ...

Our Substack is now LIVE! Human Rights First's CEO @uzraz.bsky.social launches our substack with a piece arguing that human rights can’t be limited to vague “natural rights” ideas. Universal rights, grounded in law, protect everyone and are essential for U.S. credibility at home and abroad.

Also, this is an invitation to international criminals, just like these kinds of program are everywhere else

The Trump administration that deported these Russians is the same government that this February condemned Thailand's forcible return of 40+ Uyghurs to China, where they would face the risk of "persecution, forced labor, and torture."