lobby

British political commentator and journalist Sami Hamdi has been detained by federal authorities in the United States in what a US Muslim civil rights group has called an “abduction”.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned Hamdi’s detention at San Francisco airport on Sunday as “a blatant affront to free speech”, attributing his arrest to his criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Hamdi, a frequent critic of US and Israeli policy, had addressed a CAIR gala in Sacramento on Saturday evening and was due to speak at another CAIR event in Florida the next day before his detention by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

CAIR said he was stopped at the airport following a coordinated “far-right, Israel First campaign”.

“Our nation must stop abducting critics of the Israeli government at the behest of unhinged Israel First bigots,” it said in a statement. “This is an Israel First policy, not an America First policy, and it must end.”

In a statement seen by Al Jazeera, friends of Hamdi called his arrest “a deeply troubling precedent for freedom of expression and the safety of British citizens abroad”.

The statement called for the United Kingdom Foreign Office to “demand urgent clarification from the US authorities regarding the grounds for Mr Hamdi’s detention”.

Al Jazeera was told that he remains in US custody and has not been deported.

“The detention of a British citizen for expressing political opinions sets a dangerous precedent that no democracy should tolerate,” the statement added.

Hamdi’s father, Mohamed El-Hachmi Hamdi, said in a post on X that his son “has no affiliation” with any political or religious group.

“His stance on Palestine is not aligned with any faction there, but rather with the people’s right to security, peace, freedom and dignity. He is, quite simply, one of the young dreamers of this generation, yearning for a world with more compassion, justice, and solidarity,” he added.

Earlier this morning, ICE agents abducted British Muslim journalist and political commentator Sami Hamdi at San Francisco Airport, apparently in response to his vocal criticism of the Israeli government during his ongoing speaking tour.

We can confirm that Mr. Hamdi has not been… https://t.co/dfcVGvz6UX

— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) October 26, 2025

‘Proud Islamophobe’

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed Hamdi’s detention on Sunday, claiming without evidence that he posed a national security threat. “This individual’s visa was revoked, and he is in ICE custody pending removal,” she wrote on X.

Hamdi has been outspoken in accusing US politicians of actively enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and has been widely quoted, challenging Western governments directly over arms transfers and diplomatic cover for Israeli war crimes.

His detention comes amid a wider pattern of US authorities blocking entry to Palestinian and pro-Palestine voices.

In June, two Palestinian men, Awdah Hathaleen and his cousin, Eid Hathaleen, were denied entry at the same airport and deported to Qatar. Weeks later, Awdah was reportedly killed by an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank.

Far-right activist and ally of US President Donald Trump, Laura Loomer, who has publicly described herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and “white advocate”, immediately celebrated online for playing a part in Hamdi’s detention.

“You’re lucky his only fate is being arrested and deported,” she wrote, falsely branding him “a supporter of HAMAS and the Muslim Brotherhood”.

Loomer has previously pushed conspiracy theories, including the claim that the September 11 attacks in the US were an inside job.

Loomer and others credited the escalation against Hamdi to the RAIR Foundation, a pro-Israel pressure network whose stated mission is to oppose “Islamic supremacy”. RAIR recently accused Hamdi of trying to “expand a foreign political network hostile to American interests” and urged authorities to expel him from the country.

On Sunday, Shaun Maguire, a partner at the tech investment firm Sequoia and a vocal defender of Israel, alleged without evidence that Hamdi had tried to get him fired through an AI-generated email campaign, claiming: “There are jihadists in America whose full time job is to silence us.”

Hamdi’s supporters and civil rights advocates say the opposite is true, and that this detention is yet another case of political retaliation against critics of Israel, enforced at the border level before a single public word is uttered.

CAIR says it intends to fight the deportation order, warning that the US is sending a chilling message to Muslim and Palestinian speakers across the country.

SACRAMENTO — After a long string of losses in California, the tobacco industry is on the verge of some rare victories as industry allies in the Legislature prepare to block new restrictions on smoking and perhaps even succeed in easing current laws.

Aiding the industry are Republican allies who control the Assembly and oppose new limits on tobacco. At the same time, the industry has shifted its political strategy, and it now doles out far more campaign money to Republican legislators than Democrats, especially in the Assembly.

Consider, for example, the Republican chairman of the Assembly Health Committee, Brett Granlund. A first-term lawmaker from Yucaipa, Granlund accepted a $20,000 check last month from Philip Morris Inc., the world’s largest cigarette maker. During his short tenure in Sacramento, Granlund has received at least $44,500 in campaign contributions from the tobacco industry.

In February, Granlund introduced a bill to make cigarette vending machines more accessible. The bill would weaken a new state law that bans cigarette vending machines anywhere other than in an estimated 5,000 bars in the state.

“I’ll take free enterprise over political correctness any time,” Granlund said in an interview.

Granlund’s bill, which faces its first committee vote today, would allow vending machines in up to 30,000 restaurants around the state and in factories. Supermarkets also could have vending machines, so long as the machines are equipped with locking devices, to guard against minors buying cigarettes.

“I am a free-enterprise, no-tax, smoker,” Granlund added. “It doesn’t matter if I’m chairing the Health Committee. Those [anti-smoking] people don’t have a right to tell everybody else how to live.”

While Granlund’s bill is not assured of passage, it represents a significant change from the days when Democrats controlled the Assembly. Democratic Health Committee chairmen made a practice of refusing tobacco industry campaign money, routinely voting against industry-backed bills, and carrying legislation aimed at restricting cigarette makers.

Under Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle, who selects committee members, every GOP health committee member accepts tobacco money, as do most Democratic members.

“Some of the legislative changes [to limit tobacco] swung the pendulum too far in one direction,” Pringle said, adding that he has “no hesitation” in taking tobacco money. He intends to oppose new anti-tobacco bills and support rollbacks of some restrictions. “That’s what our battle has been on a variety of business bills.”

Tobacco industry spokesmen and their lobbyists in Sacramento do not discuss strategy in any detail, but companies defend their political contributions. They say the money is not intended to buy influence, but rather to support lawmakers who side with them. Even though the tobacco industry has spent millions over the past decade on lobbying and campaigns in California, this state has led the nation in anti-tobacco efforts.

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It started in 1988 when voters approved Proposition 99, which added a 25-cent per pack tax on cigarettes. In 1994, Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation making California the first state to ban smoking in restaurants and most other indoor workplaces. That same year, voters overwhelmingly rejected a 1994 tobacco industry-backed initiative to roll back the restrictions. Now, however, there are indications that California no longer is at the fore of the anti-tobacco fight:

* Seven states have sued the tobacco industry to recoup state money spent on smoking-related illnesses. California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren has balked at bringing a similar suit, though he is “monitoring” the litigation in other states, a spokesman for the Republican attorney general said.

Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco) is pushing a resolution urging Lungren to sue the tobacco industry. But Pringle opposes such litigation, suggesting that Burton’s resolution may fail when it comes up for a vote.

“Isn’t this opening the door to [the state suing over] swimming pools, or automobiles, or second-story balconies, or child cribs?” Pringle asked.

* For three years running, Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature have tried to use a portion of the money raised by the 25-cent per pack cigarette tax for health programs not specifically related to tobacco. Anti-smoking activists have sued, and trial courts have ruled in their favor, saying that the money must be spent on anti-tobacco advertising, education and research.

Wilson has appealed those decisions, and he has no plans to spend $100 million of the disputed money until the cases are resolved. In his new budget, the governor has yet to allocate an additional $81 million in cigarette tax money. He intends to “look for the wisest investment of taxpayer dollars” before spending it, a Wilson spokesman said.

In past years, Democratic legislators agreed with Wilson on diverting the tobacco tax money to other health programs. But this year, Assembly Democratic Leader Richard Katz of Sylmar and state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) are carrying legislation to fully fund the anti-tobacco research and education programs.

* California’s anti-tobacco advertising program, funded by Proposition 99 money, once was the richest in the nation. The campaign was so aggressive that one tobacco company threatened to sue over a TV commercial, which featured clips of industry executives testifying before Congress that tobacco is not addictive. The ad campaign also has powerful critics in the Capitol.

“Taxpayer dollars should not be used to bash an industry,” Pringle said. “They should be used to provide health information, instead of making it a personal attack on an industry.”

State spending on the high-profile advertising effort has been frozen at $12 million annually for three years, or roughly 40 cents per Californian, down from a peak of $16 million.

Massachusetts now leads the few states that fund anti-tobacco ad campaigns, spending $14 million a year, or $2.33 per resident, according to a study by Connie Pechmann, associate professor of marketing at UC Irvine. Pechmann notes that the tobacco industry spends almost $1 billion a year on promotions and advertising.

* A provision of California’s landmark 1994 workplace smoking ban, which Wilson signed into law, is under attack. That provision required the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration to develop safe standards for secondhand tobacco smoke by 1997, or else the smoking ban would be extended to bars and casinos. However, the agency has concluded that setting a standard would be impossible.

Noting that strong fans and suction would be needed to clear bars and card rooms of smoke, Louis Bonsignore, spokesman for the Department of Industrial Relations, said, “You’d need cards made out of lead to stay on the table.”

Assemblyman Sal Cannella (D-Ceres) is carrying the bill to extend Cal-OSHA’s deadline for setting the standards to the year 2000. The bill appears to have significant support from lawmakers in both parties.

The tobacco industry, long among the largest campaign donors, gave most of its money to Democrats in the 1980s and early 1990s, during Democrat Willie Brown’s tenure as speaker. In his 15 years as speaker, Brown was by far the largest recipient of tobacco money in Sacramento, raising more than $500,000.

But starting in 1994, the flow of money has shifted. On the Sunday before the November 1994 election, Philip Morris gave $125,000 in a single donation to Republican Assembly candidate Steven T. Kuykendall of Rancho Palos Verdes.

Kuykendall used the money to help upset the Democratic incumbent, Betty Karnette, who was an anti-tobacco legislator. With Kuykendall’s victory, Republicans gained a 41-to-39 seat majority in the lower house.

Brown left the Legislature to become San Francisco mayor, and another large Democratic recipient of tobacco money, Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr. (D-Inglewood), is leaving this year because of term limits.

Without Brown and Tucker, there will be only a handful of Assembly Democrats who take tobacco money. But as the number of friendly Democrats decreases, tobacco industry money increasingly finds its way to Republicans.

In 1995, Philip Morris gave $148,400 to Republicans who hold state office, compared to $83,000 to Democrats. A closer look shows that the difference is even more drastic. The company gave 37 of 41 Assembly Republicans a total of $85,000. Assembly Democrats got a total of $53,500, $50,000 of which went to Brown and Tucker.

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Although Democrats hold a majority in the state Senate, Philip Morris last year gave more to Senate Republicans–$34,665–versus $29,500 for Democrats. The company in 1995 gave $22,000 to Republicans who hold statewide office, including the attorney general, treasurer, insurance commissioner and secretary of state, but none to Democrats in statewide office, campaign finance reports show.

The same pattern held for R.J. Reynolds, the nation’s second-largest tobacco company. Reynolds gave a combined $8,000 to Tucker and Brown and $6,000 to other Assembly Democrats, versus $52,250 for Assembly Republicans in 1995. Altogether, Reynolds gave almost $80,000 to Republican state officials and $25,000 to Democrats.

Philip Morris would not discuss its political strategy. A spokeswoman for Reynolds said its “position is to support those candidates whose positions are similar to ours. That’s not surprising.”

Whether campaign money translates into legislative gains this year for the industry remains to be seen. At a minimum, though, chances of new anti-tobacco legislation making it out of Sacramento seem slim, especially in the Republican-controlled Assembly. Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles) is pushing a bill to force state pension funds to divest themselves of tobacco stocks, valued at $750 million, but has little hope that it will survive its first committee vote this week.

Two years ago, Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-North Hollywood), a former Health Committee chairwoman, carried a bill signed into law by Wilson adding a two-cent per pack tax on cigarettes to fund breast cancer research. This year, she introduced bills to permit local government to tax cigarettes, and to bar tobacco companies from passing out cigarettes in promotions. But she has no plans to seek votes on the measures.

“I’m not taking up any bills on tobacco. It’s obvious they’re going to be killed,” Friedman said.

Investigators are looking into whether a Las Vegas man who went on a deadly shooting spree in Manhattan Monday was targeting the National Football League after it emerged that the gunman was a former Los Angeles high school football player with a documented mental health history.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that the shooter, identified by law enforcement officials as 27-year-old Shane Tamura, appeared to have a grievance with the N.F.L but ended up on the wrong floor.

“He seemed to have blamed the N.F.L.,” the mayor told the WPIX-TV news station. “The N.F.L. headquarters was located in the building, and he mistakenly went up the wrong elevator bank.”

Law enforcement officials have said that Tamura marched into a 44-story office tower on Park Avenue that is the headquarters of the N.F.L and investment firm Blackstone, at around 6:25 pm Monday carrying an M4 assault rifle in his right hand. He immediately opened fire in the lobby, shooting first an NYPD officer, then a woman who took cover behind a pillar and a security guard behind the security desk.

After spraying more gunfire across the lobby, the gunman got into an elevator and went to the 33rd floor, which houses the Rudin Management real estate firm. He then walked around the floor, firing more rounds and shooting and killing another person, before walking down a hallway and fatally shooting himself in the chest. Four people died in the attack along with Tamura.

“Mr. Tamura has a documented mental health history,” New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday night at a news conference, citing Las Vegas law enforcement. “His motives are still under investigation, and we are working to understand why he targeted this particular location.”

Tamura, who was a celebrated varsity high school player at Golden Valley High School in Santa Clarita and Granada Hills Charter School in the San Fernando Valley, had a suicide note in his back pocket alleging that he suffered from CTE, a brain disease linked to head trauma, CNN reported, citing a source with knowledge of the investigation.

In the short three-page note, he appeared to blame football for his problems, referencing former Pittsburgh Steelers player Terry Long, who died by suicide after drinking antifreeze in 2005, and expressing grievances with the N.F.L.

“Terry Long football gave me CTE and it caused me to drink a gallon of antifreeze,” the gunman allegedly wrote. “You can’t go against the NFL, they’ll squash you,” the note said, according to the source.

“Study my brain please,” the note added. “Tell Rick I’m sorry for everything,”

N.F.L. commissioner Roger Goodell reportedly said an NFL employee was seriously injured in the attack. A person with knowledge of the situation told The Times that most of the NFL employees had left by the time the shooter entered the building and that the building was cleared by police from the top down, floor by floor.

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Tuesday called the shooting a “horrific act of violence,” noting that one of the victims was NYPD officer Didarul Islam, who had been in the force for three and a half years and left behind a wife who was eight months pregnant and two young sons. A Bangladeshi immigrant, Islam was off duty at the time of the shooting, working as a security officer in the skyscraper.

“My heart is with his loved ones, his NYPD family and every victim of this tragedy,” Hochul said in a statement.

Hochul also called on Congress to limit the sale of military-grade rifles. The state of New York passed some of the strongest gun laws in the nation, she noted, “but our laws only go so far when an AR-15 can be obtained in a state with weak gun laws and brought into New York to commit mass murder.”

“The time to act is now,” Hochul said. “Congress must summon the courage to stand up to the gun lobby and finally pass a national assault weapons ban before more innocent lives are stolen.”

Tamura played football at Golden Valley High School in the Canyon Country neighborhood of Santa Clarita for three years before transferring to Granada Hills Charter School for his senior year in 2015.

Dan Kelley, Golden Valley coach, said only that he remembered Tamura as “a good athlete.”

In his senior year at Granada Hills, the 5-foot-7, 140-pound player had 126 carries, 600 rushing yards and five touchdowns, according to MaxPreps. He also won several “player of the game” awards.

A 2015 video that circulated on social media Monday night showed Tamura as a high school football player celebrating a win for the Granada Hills Highlanders.

In a post-game interview after a 35-31 win over Kennedy High, Tamura was hailed as a “stand-out running back” by a reporter from the Los Angeles Daily News and asked how the team came through.

“We definitely had to stay disciplined,” Tamura said, noting the team was down 10-0 in the first quarter. “Our coach kept saying, ‘Don’t hold your heads down. Don’t hold your heads down.’ … We just had to stay disciplined and come together as a team.”

Tamura scored several touchdowns, the reporter noted, including a pivotal one in the fourth quarter with under four minutes to go.

Tamura graduated in 2016, MaxPreps said.

The initial investigation indicates that Tamura had traveled from Las Vegas to New York, driving a black BMW cross country through Colorado, Nebraska and New Jersey over the weekend.

Law enforcement said that officers searched the vehicle the gunman double parked on Park Avenue between 51st and 52nd streets and found a rifle case with rounds, a loaded revolver ammunition and magazines, a backpack and medication prescribed to Tamura. No explosives were inside.

Times staff writers Eric Sondheimer and Sam Farmer contributed to this report.

So-called Hollywood ambassadors Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone joined with a coalition of entertainment industry groups for a letter delivered this week to President Trump urging him to support tax measures and a federal tax incentive that would help bring film and TV production back to the U.S.

The letter is signed by Voight, Stallone, all the major Hollywood unions and trade groups such as the Motion Picture Assn., the Producers Guild of America and the Independent Film & Television Alliance, indicating widespread support from the entertainment industry.

“Returning more production to the United States will require a national approach and broad-based policy solutions … as well as longer term initiatives such as implementing a federal film and television tax incentive,” the letter states.

In the letter, which was obtained by The Times, the groups say they support Trump’s proposal to create a new 15% corporate tax rate for domestic manufacturing activities that would use a provision from the old Section 199 of the federal tax code as a model.

Under the previous Section 199, which expired in 2017, film and TV productions that were made in the U.S. qualified as domestic manufacturing and were eligible for that tax deduction, the letter states.

The letter also asks Trump to extend Section 181 of the federal tax code and increase the caps on tax-deductible qualified film and TV production expenditures, as well as reinstating the ability to carry back losses, which the groups say would give production companies more financial stability.

The tax measures — particularly Sections 199 and 181 — are issues the entertainment industry has long advocated for, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly. The letter itself came together over the weekend, they said. It was intended to present different measures that shared the same goal of increasing domestic production, one person said.

“Everything we can do to help producers mange their budgets is important,” said Susan Sprung, chief executive of the Producers Guild of America. “In an ideal world, we’d want a federal tax incentive, in addition to these tax provisions, but we want to advocate to make it as easy as possible to produce in the United States and make it as cost-effective as possible.”

Last week, Trump threw the entertainment industry into chaos after initially suggesting a 100% tariff on films made in other countries. Then, California Gov. Gavin Newsom jumped into the mix, calling for a $7.5-billion federal tax incentive to keep more productions in the U.S.

The proposals on the federal level come as states are upping their own film and TV tax credits to better compete against each other and other countries. Late last week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the state’s budget, which increased the cap for its film tax credit to $800 million a year, up from $700 million.

The expanded tax incentive program allocates $100 million for independent studios and gives additional incentives to companies that produce two or more projects in New York and commit to at least $100 million in qualified spending.

The program was also extended through 2036, which could help attract TV producers, who often want to know that their filming location is committed if they’re embarking on a series.

Production in New York has been slow, and the state needed this boost, said Michael Hackman, chief executive of Hackman Capital Partners, which owns two film and TV studio properties in the state, as well as several facilities in California. The increase from New York could also push California to increase its own film and TV tax credit program.

Last year, Newsom called to increase the annual amount allocated to California‘s film and TV tax credit program from $330 million to $750 million.

Two bills are currently going through the state legislature that would expand California’s incentive, including increasing the tax credit to cover up to 35% of qualified expenditures (or 40% in areas outside the Greater Los Angeles region), as well as expanding the types of productions that would be eligible for an incentive.

“We have the best infrastructure, the best talent, we have everything going for us,” Hackman said. “So if our state legislature can get more competitive with our tax credits, I think more productions will stay. But if they don’t, this will result in more productions continuing to leave the state and going to New York and to other locations.”