An Italian referendum on easing citizenship rules and strengthening labour protections has failed after hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni encouraged voters to boycott the vote.
As polls closed on Monday, it emerged that many citizens had heeded Meloni’s call as only 30 percent of the electorate cast their ballots over two days of voting, far short of the 50 percent plus one needed to make the result legally binding.
The outcome was a clear defeat for the centre-left opposition, which had proposed to halve the period of residence required to apply for Italian citizenship from 10 to five years and to reverse labour market liberalisations introduced a decade ago.
The prime minister said she was “absolutely against” the citizenship proposals, announcing she would turn up at the polls but not cast a vote.
A stated goal of Meloni’s government is to cut irregular immigration, but it has increased the number of immigrant work visas.
The general secretary of the Italian General Confederation of Labour union, Maurizio Landini, slammed the low turnout as a sign of a “clear democratic crisis” in Italy.
“We knew it wouldn’t be a walk in the park,” he said, stressing that millions of Italians had turned up to fight for change.
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party posted on social media that the “only real goal” of the referendum was to bring down the Meloni government, and it added, alongside pictures of opposition leaders: “In the end, it was the Italians who brought you down.”
Opinion polls published in mid-May showed that 46 percent of Italians were aware of the issues driving the referendums.
Activists and opposition parties accused the governing coalition of deliberately dampening interest in sensitive issues that directly affect immigrants and workers.
Campaigners for the change in the citizenship law said it would help the children of non-European Union parents better integrate into a culture they already see as theirs.
Changes to the laws would have affected about 2.5 million foreign nationals.
Other questions in the referendum dealt with labour-related issues like better protections against dismissal, higher severance payments and the conversion of fixed-term contracts into permanent ones.
Opposition forces had hoped that promoting these causes would help them woo working class voters and challenge Meloni, something they have struggled to do since she came to power in 2022.
Khan Younis, Gaza – In the ruins of his home in Khan Younis, 75-year-old Shaker Safi gently thumbs through fading photographs of his son Mohammed’s sporting career.
Medals, trophies, team huddles, and group photos of young athletes coached by Mohammed now serve as a haunting memorial to a dream destroyed by war.
On November 15, 2023, Mohammed Safi – a football coach and physical education teacher – was killed in an Israeli air strike.
He had spent years building a legacy of hope through sport, training at schools and community clubs, and transforming underdog teams into local champions.
A graduate in physical education from Al-Aqsa University, Mohammed was the head coach of Al-Amal Football Club in southern Gaza and was widely admired for his work nurturing young talent aged between six and 16.
“My son dreamt of representing Palestine internationally,” Shaker says, surrounded by remnants of his son’s accolades. “He believed sport could lift youth from despair. But war reached him before he could reach the world.”
Mohammed Safi’s father, Shaker Safi, shows an image of his deceased son holding a football trophy. Mohammed, who was a junior football coach and umpire, was killed in an Israeli air strike in November 2023 [Mohamed-Solaimane/Al Jazeera]
Now displaced, Mohammed’s wife Nermeen and their four children – 16-year-old Shaker Jr, Amir, 14, Alma, 11, and Taif, 7 – live with the painful void created by his death.
The children cling to their father’s last football and coaching notes as keepsakes.
Nermeen, an art teacher, gently wipes away Taif’s tears when she asks, “Why did they take Daddy from us?”
“He was a man of dreams, not politics,” Nermeen says. “He wanted to become an international referee. He wanted his master’s degree. Instead, he was killed for being a symbol of life and youth.”
Mohammed Safi is one of hundreds of athletes and sports professionals who have been killed or displaced since the war began.
According to the Palestinian Olympic Committee, 582 athletes have been killed since October 7, 2023, many of them national team players, coaches, and administrators.
Mohammed Safi’s wife and children are not only dealing with his death, but also displacement created by the war on Gaza [Mohamed-Solaimane/Al Jazeera]
Sports replaced by survival
For those who remain alive in Gaza, survival has replaced sporting ambition.
Yousef Abu Shawarib is a 20-year-old goalkeeper for Rafah’s premier league football club.
In May 2024, he and his family fled their home and took shelter at Khan Younis Stadium – the same field where he once played official matches.
Today, the stadium is a shelter for displaced families, its synthetic turf now lined with tents instead of players.
“This is where my coach used to brief me before games,” Yousef says, standing near what used to be the bench area, now a water distribution point. “Now I wait here for water, not for kickoff.”
His routine today involves light, irregular training inside his tent, hoping to preserve a fraction of his fitness. But his dreams of studying sports sciences in Germany and playing professionally are gone.
“Now, I only hope we have something to eat tomorrow,” he tells Al Jazeera. “The war didn’t just destroy fields – it destroyed our futures.”
When he looks at the charred stadium, he doesn’t see a temporary displacement.
“This was not collateral damage. It was systematic. It’s like they want to erase everything about us – even our games.”
Playing organised football out in the open is not a practical option in Gaza anymore. Instead, Yousef Abu Shawarib does fitness training in a tent at Khan Younis Stadium [Mohamed-Solaimane/Al Jazeera]
Hope beneath the rubble
Still, like the patches of grass that survived the blasts, some hope remains.
Shadi Abu Armanah, head coach of Palestine’s amputee football team, had devised a six-month plan to resume training.
His 25 players and five coaching staff had been building momentum before the war on Gaza. The team had competed internationally, including in a 2019 tournament in France. Before hostilities began, they were preparing for another event in November 2023 and an event in West Asia set for October 2025.
“Now, we can’t even gather,” Shadi says. “Every facility we used has been destroyed. The players have lost their homes. Most have lost loved ones. There’s nowhere safe to train – no gear, no field, nothing.”
Supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the team had once symbolised resilience. Training sessions were more than drills – they were lifelines. “For amputees, sport was a second chance,” Shadi says. “Now they are just trying to survive.”
Shadi himself is displaced. His home, too, was bombed. “The clubs I worked for are gone. The players are either dead or scattered. If the war ends today, we’ll still need years to bring back even a fraction of what was lost.”
He adds, “I coached across many clubs and divisions. Almost all their facilities have been reduced to rubble. It’s not just a pause – it’s erasure.”
This multi-purpose sporting venue in Khan Younis used to host basketball and volleyball games until the Israeli military demolished it by aerial bombing. In more recent times, it was repurposed as a refugee shelter, but has since been evacuated [Mohamed-Solaimane/Al Jazeera]
A systematic erasure
The scope of devastation extends beyond personal loss.
According to Asaad al-Majdalawi, vice president of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, Gaza’s entire sporting infrastructure is on the brink of collapse. At least 270 sports facilities have been damaged or destroyed: 189 completely flattened and 81 partially damaged, with initial estimates of material losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Every major component of Gaza’s sports system has been hit,” al-Majdalawi told Al Jazeera. “The Olympic Committee offices, sports federations, clubs, school and university sports programmes – even private sports facilities have been targeted. It’s a comprehensive assault.”
Among the fallen are high-profile athletes like Nagham Abu Samra, Palestine’s international karate champion; Majed Abu Maraheel, the first Palestinian to carry the Olympic flag at the 1996 Atlanta Games; Olympic football coach Hani al-Masdar; and national athletics coach Bilal Abu Sam’an. Hundreds of others remain injured or missing, complicating accurate assessments.
“This is not just loss – it’s extermination,” al-Majdalawi says. “Each athlete was a community pillar. They weren’t numbers. They were symbols of hope, unity, and perseverance. Losing them has deeply wounded the Palestinian society.”
He warns that beyond the immediate human toll, the interruption of sports activities for a year and a half will result in physical, psychological, and professional regression for remaining athletes. “You lose more than muscle and skill – you lose purpose.”
A lone grandstand remains partially intact in an otherwise completely destroyed Khan Younis football stadium. The venue, once a popular cultural and social hub of the Khan Younis sports community, has now become a shelter for thousands of internally displaced Gazans [Mohamed-Solaimane/Al Jazeera]
A global silence
Al-Majdalawi believes the international response has been alarmingly inadequate. When Gaza’s sports community reaches out to global federations, Olympic bodies, and ministers of youth and sport, they’re met with silence.
“In private, many international officials sympathise,” he says. “But at the decision-making level, Israel seems to operate above the law. There’s no accountability. It’s like sport doesn’t matter when it’s Palestinian. The global and international sports institutions appear complicit through their silence, ignoring all international laws, human rights, and the governing rules of the international sports system,” he says.
He believes that if the war ended today, it would still take five to 10 years to rebuild what has been lost. Even that gloomy timeline is based on the assumption that the blockade ends and international funding becomes available.
“We have been building this sports sector since 1994,” al-Majdalawi says. “It took us decades to accumulate knowledge, experience, and professionalism. Now, it’s all been levelled in months.”
As the war continues, the fate of Gaza’s sports sector hangs by a thread. Yet amid the ruins, fathers like Shaker Safi, athletes like Yousef, and coaches like Shadi hold on to one unyielding belief: that sport will once again be a source of hope, identity, and life for Palestinians.
Yousef Abu Shawarib, who has lived as a refugee at Khan Younis football stadium since May 2024, hopes to survive the war and once again play football on these grounds [Mohamed-Solaimane/Al Jazeera]
Canada will meet NATO’s defence spending threshold of 2 percent this year as it shifts spending away from the United States and strengthens its relationship with the European Union, according to Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Carney made the announcement on Monday, warning that in a “darker” world, Canada must reduce its security dependence on the US. In a speech at the University of Toronto, he said the country would hit the target five years earlier than anticipated.
Canada has been realigning its defence partnerships to better align with the EU, which marks a significant break from Ottawa’s longstanding reliance on the US. The country plans to buy more defence equipment, including fighter planes, from Europe.
His government is also reviewing the planned purchases of F-35 jets from the US to assess alternative options.
“Our military infrastructure and equipment have aged, hindering our military preparedness,” Carney said.
“Only one of our four submarines is seaworthy. Less than half of our maritime fleet and land vehicles are operational. More broadly, we are too reliant on the United States.”
“The threats that Canada faces are multiplying,” he added.
Carney’s pledge follows similar commitments by other NATO members and comes after sustained pressure from US President Donald Trump for allies to increase defence spending. Increasingly, hostile language, including Trump’s jabs at turning Canada into the 51st US state, has increased tensions with Ottawa.
Canada spent 1.33 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence in 2023, according to NATO data.
Since taking office in mid-March, Carney has issued a series of stark warnings about what he describes as a shift in US global leadership under Trump.
“The United States is beginning to monetise its hegemony: charging for access to its markets and reducing its [relative] contributions to our collective security,” Carney said, criticising Trump’s trade policies.
“We should no longer send three-quarters of our defence capital spending to America,” the prime minister added.
He also warned that Canada has “been jolted awake by new threats to our security and sovereignty,” citing Russia and China as key concerns.
Carney framed the increase in defence spending as a strategic necessity “to protect Canadians, not to satisfy NATO accountants”.
The scenes unfolding in Los Angeles should alarm every American who values constitutional governance. Federal troops have been deployed to a major American city not in response to an insurrection or natural disaster, but to suppress protests against immigration enforcement operations. The whole of downtown Los Angeles has been declared an “unlawful assembly area”.
This represents a dangerous escalation that threatens the very foundations of the US democratic system.
What began as routine raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on June 6 quickly spiralled into something far more ominous. Federal agents swept through Los Angeles, detaining 121 individuals from restaurants, stores and apartment buildings. The raids were conducted in broad daylight, with a calculated boldness that seemed designed to provoke.
The community’s response was swift. By the afternoon, protesters had gathered downtown, not as rioters but as a grieving community, holding signs and chanting “Set them free!”.
This was grief made public, anger given voice. But in today’s America, even peaceful displays of grief and anger are not allowed when they go against the narrative set by those in power.
The police responded with force. Tear gas canisters flew. Flash-bang grenades exploded. A peaceful demonstration transformed into a battlefield — not because protesters chose violence, but because the government did.
US President Donald Trump decided to escalate further. He signed a memorandum deploying 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatening to mobilise active-duty Marines if protests continued.
The legality of these actions is questionable at best. Under the Insurrection Act, federal troops can only be deployed after a public proclamation calls for citizens to disperse. Such a proclamation has not been made, and Trump has not invoked the act. Governor Gavin Newsom, who has the power to decide on matters of security in the state of California, was not consulted; he was simply informed.
There is no widespread rebellion threatening the authority of the United States. There are no enemy combatants in Los Angeles, just angry, grieving people demanding dignity for their communities. What we’re witnessing is not the lawful execution of federal authority but improvisation masquerading as application of law, the slow erosion of constitutional order, replaced by declaration, spectacle, and muscle.
If challenged in court, this deployment would likely be deemed illegal. But that may not matter – and that is the most chilling aspect of this crisis. We are fast moving towards a place where illegality no longer matters, where muscle has arrived with or without paperwork, and law is merely a facade.
This moment cannot be understood in isolation. As scholar Aime Cesaire observed in his analysis of colonialism, violence in the periphery inevitably returns to the metropole. The tools of oppression developed abroad always find their way home.
In the US, this has been a decades-long process. In 1996, a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act allowed the Pentagon to transfer surplus military-grade weaponry to local police departments. In the following three decades, the same weapons that were used for imperialist violence abroad were transferred to police departments to deploy in poor and marginalised communities.
Then with the start of the “war on terror”, tactics to target and subjugate foreign populations were transferred at home to use against vulnerable communities. Congress passed sweeping laws like the USA PATRIOT Act and amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enabling mass surveillance and intelligence gathering on US soil.
The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists allowed for indefinite military detention of US citizens, while a Supreme Court ruling in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project expanded the “material support” doctrine to criminalise even peaceful engagement with blacklisted groups.
Programmes like Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) turned schools and mosques into surveillance hubs, targeting Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities.
While outside the US government was pursuing a campaign of renditions, torture and illegal detention at Guantanamo Bay, at home, it was deploying lawfare against “suspect” communities.
The 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial introduced “secret evidence” in a US criminal court for the first time, with an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer claiming he could “smell Hamas” on defendants. Georgia’s prosecution of Cop City protesters under “terrorism” charges directly borrowed from this playbook, as did Tennessee’s Bill HB 2348, which extends policing powers to suppress peaceful protests.
After October 2023, the US government violated its own laws in order to participate directly in the genocide in Gaza, providing Israel with weapons and intelligence. The mass repression and erasure that Palestinians had suffered at the hands of their US-backed colonisers were transferred on American soil.
The government launched an unprecedented attack on free speech and academic freedom, cracking down on students protesting the genocide and encouraging retribution against pro-Palestinian voices. We’ve seen tenure revoked, protesters surveilled, and dissent criminalised. Palestinians and their allies have endured a fourfold increase in harassment, doxing, and employment loss; they have also faced violent attacks and murder.
All this started not under Trump, but under his “Democratic” predecessor, former US President Joe Biden, who also increased the budget of police departments by $13bn and expanded ICE’s powers.
The pattern is clear: repressive measures developed to target foreign populations have become tools to suppress all dissent at home.
What is happening in Los Angeles and other cities isn’t about law enforcement; it’s about power projection, about demonstrating that defiance will be met with overwhelming force and quashed.
The legal framework matters less than the spectacle. When federal agents fire flash-bang grenades at protesters outside Home Depot stores, when ICE directors accuse mayors of siding with “chaos and lawlessness”, when FBI officials tweet about hunting down rock throwers, we’re watching the construction of a narrative that justifies state violence.
This is how soft coups unfold: not with tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, but through executive memos, press briefings, and military logistics disguised as public safety. The Insurrection Act becomes a dead letter not through repeal but through irrelevance.
If this precedent stands, federal troops will become the standard response to resistance. Cities that don’t vote for the president will face occupation. Protest will be redefined as rebellion. The next time people gather in the streets demanding justice, they will not face police officers but soldiers.
When a president can deploy troops without following the law, and no one stops him, law loses its power. It becomes theatre, a facade for a system that has abandoned its own principles.
At this time, we don’t need just legal challenges, we need moral clarity. What’s happening in Los Angeles is not law enforcement: it’s occupation. What’s being called an insurrection is actually resistance to injustice. What’s being framed as public safety is actually political intimidation.
American imperialism has created the infrastructure for exactly this moment. The tools of empire, tested on peoples in the Global South, are now being deployed against American cities. If we don’t recognise this moment for what it is – a fundamental assault on constitutional governance – we will wake up in a country where imperial military force is the primary language of politics.
The US Constitution is only as strong as our willingness to defend it. In Los Angeles, that defence begins now.
As United States President Donald Trump’s administration cracks down on immigrants and protesters in Los Angeles, it has deployed 2,000 members of the National Guard to aid its efforts.
Trump authorised the deployment after the protests began on Friday, following Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests of 44 people in the city for violating immigration laws.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, former Vice President Kamala Harris and many other senior leaders of the Democratic Party have criticised Trump’s deployment. They have described the deployment of the National Guard against protesters as a provocation aimed at further inflaming tensions already roiling the country’s second-largest city.
But what is the National Guard, and why is its deployment such a political flashpoint?
What is the National Guard?
The National Guard is a branch of the US military that can perform state and federal functions.
This means the guard is largely used to respond to state-level emergencies but can also be federalised. The president can also deploy National Guard soldiers to overseas missions.
The guard’s origins trace back to 1636 when it started as citizen-soldier militias in Massachusetts, which is now a US state but was then a British colony.
The National Guard became an organised force after the passage of the Militia Act of 1903. The two world wars solidified its status as an organised branch of the US military.
The Air National Guard was established in 1947 to complement a territorial force.
How many soldiers are in the National Guard?
It had 431,291 members as of 2023, the latest data released by the US Department of Defense.
That included the Army National Guard, which consists of 326,317 soldiers, and the Air National Guard, which has 104,974 members.
Many members of the guard serve part-time while working civilian jobs or attending college.
All members recruited into the guard have to undergo basic training. After this, they attend drills at regular intervals. Typically, drills take place one weekend each month. Every year, members attend a two-week training.
How is the National Guard deployed?
Typically, if a US state is experiencing an emergency that requires a National Guard deployment as a response, the state’s governor may deploy its forces stationed in the state.
However, presidents can also federalise the National Guard from a state, but typically, this requires a governor’s approval to do so.
When is the National Guard deployed?
The guard is deployed in cases of natural disasters or severe weather, civil unrest, war or when election assistance is needed.
In 2005, for instance, about 50,000 National Guard soldiers were deployed after Hurricane Katrina hit multiple southern US states.
In January, Newsom deployed the National Guard as wildfires ravaged several areas of Los Angeles. In recent years, plainclothes National Guard soldiers have staffed polling places during elections.
During the current protests, however, Trump deployed the guard in Los Angeles without Newsom’s approval.
Robert Cohen, professor of history and social studies at New York University, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard without getting Newsom on board was “wrong, but typical of the way Trump’s partisanship pollutes almost all of his major decisions”.
When have presidents federalised the National Guard in the past?
In 1957, President Dwight D Eisenhower federalised the Arkansas National Guard to desegregate public schools after the US Supreme Court’s Brown v Board of Education ruling, which established that racial segregation in public schools is illegal.
In 1992, California Governor Pete Wilson and President George HW Bush, both Republicans, deployed the National Guard to quell riots in Los Angeles. Protests, looting, assaults and arson broke out after four police officers who were filmed beating Rodney King, an African American man, for 15 minutes were acquitted of charges of excessive force.
What is the debate around the National Guard’s deployment?
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prevents the National Guard and other branches of the US military from being used in civilian law enforcement.
Presidents may circumvent this by invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act, which gives the US president the power to deploy the military to suppress an insurrection.
In 1965, President Lyndon B Johnson invoked the act and deployed the guard to protect civil rights marchers in Alabama. He did this without taking Alabama Governor George Wallace, a known segregationist, on board. Before Saturday, this was the last time a US president had deployed the National Guard without the approval of the governor.
