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The administration of former US President, Joe Biden, knowingly allowed Israel’s genocide in Gaza to continue long after it had lost any clear military objective, with senior officials in Washington privately admitting it amounted to “killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying”. This damning assessment, along with revelations of political manipulation, diplomatic cover-ups and sabotaged peace efforts, comes from a bombshell investigation aired by Israel’s Channel 13. Details of the investigation have been translated by Drop Site News and shared on X.

The Biden administration allowed Israel unprecedented leeway to carry out its military offensive, despite the enormous death and devastation it inflicted on Gaza. Former Israeli ambassador, Michael Herzog, made a startling admission about Biden’s support: “God did the State of Israel a favour that Biden was the president during this period. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted.” His remarks encapsulated a broader sentiment that the White House gave Benjamin Netanyahu all the political space he needed to execute the military offensive, which has claimed the lives of more than 52,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children.

READ: ICC judges order prosecutor to keep arrest warrant requests confidential in Gaza probes

The investigation, which included interviews with nine current and former US officials, reveals a deeply troubling portrait of US complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Former national security aide, Ilan Goldenberg, stated that the war amounted to “killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying”, with no viable political alternative ever established. Despite the White House’s public messaging about restraining Israel, the internal consensus appeared to be that the administration had no intention of exerting real pressure on the Occupation state.

The Biden administration also shielded Israel from allegations of war crimes, prompting a major backlash from staffers in the State Department. Lawyer Stacy Gilbert, for example, resigned in protest after being excluded from a key report that falsely claimed Israel had not violated US arms laws. Gilbert described the report as “shocking in its mendacity”, pointing out that aid obstruction and settler attacks were well documented, yet ignored. Meanwhile, Washington continued to certify Israeli compliance with US law, ensuring the uninterrupted flow of weapons.

The investigation also revealed that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, deliberately sabotaged hostage negotiations in order to prevent a ceasefire. US officials confirmed that Netanyahu tanked talks out of fear that a deal would compel him to halt the war.

Despite public backlash, Biden’s private approach remained deferential. Even after reportedly telling Netanyahu he was “full of shit” and hanging up mid-call, Biden ultimately maintained support. After briefly halting a shipment of 2,000-lb bombs due to concerns about their use in densely populated areas of Gaza, Netanyahu publicly accused Washington of broader arms delays. Biden, rather than escalating pressure, resumed the shipment process shortly thereafter.

The Channel 13 exposé further confirms that Biden’s reluctance to push Israel was deeply tied to a failed diplomatic initiative with Saudi Arabia. A landmark normalisation deal was in sight, but it required Israeli recognition of Palestinian statehood. These were flatly rejected by Netanyahu’s far-right coalition. Former US ambassador, Jack Lew, said he found Israel’s refusal “shocking”, while Amos Hochstein expressed disbelief that such a strategic opportunity was squandered. Sources confirmed that Netanyahu deliberately stalled negotiations in hopes that President Trump would return to office and claim the diplomatic win for himself.

These revelations lend significant weight to long-standing accusations that the Biden administration has not only provided diplomatic cover for Israel’s propaganda by repeating lies, but also actively enabled what many view as a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Critics note that Biden himself amplified false Israeli claims, such as the widely discredited allegations of Hamas beheading babies, rhetoric that helped to dehumanise a population in order to carry out genocide.

OPINION: Advisory opinions will not stop genocide

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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President Jose Raul Mulino, whose changes to social security laws prompted the protest, called the strike ‘illegal’ and said the company has ‘just cause’ for the layoffs.

Banana producer Chiquita has announced mass layoffs in Panama amid an ongoing strike.

The United States-owned banana giant said on Friday it was letting “all” daily labourers go for the “unjustified abandonment of work at our plantations”.

Workers have been on strike for more than a month, as part of nation-wide industrial action protesting new social security laws lowering pensions. The government has branded the strikes “illegal” and said the sackings are the result of workers’ “intransigence”.

Chiquita said in a statement that the strike had caused “irreversible damage ..[and] at least $75 million in losses”, adding that those affected by the layoffs are required to collect severance payments.

The company did not elaborate on the number of people affected by the decision. However, the Reuters news agency reported that about 5,000 workers out of 6,500 have lost their jobs, referring to an unnamed source.

‘De facto’ or ‘indefinite’ strike

Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino defended Chiquita’s actions at a news conference on Thursday.

“The company will have to act accordingly, dismissing those necessary to save its operation in Bocas [a Caribbean province in Panama]. Believe me, it hurts me, but this intransigence is not good,” he said.

“The strike is illegal,” Mulino added. “The next step according to the Labour Code is dismissal with just cause because this is a de facto strike, not a legitimate strike.”

However, Francisco Smith, secretary-general of the Banana Industry Workers Union (Sitraibana), told the Panamanian television channel Telemetro on Thursday that the strike was legal because the “deputies who approved bill 462 harmed the banana sector”.

Passed in March, Bill 462 introduced changes to the Social Security Fund that could lead to a possible reduction in pensions.

The introduction of the law led to significant anger, with unions, including banana workers, joining a national strike on April 23.

The government and Sitraibana held a preliminary meeting on Thursday to discuss amendments to the bill, which would include protections for banana farmers.

Still, Smith said, “the strike continues, we continue fighting in the streets… The strike is indefinite.”

Panama’s banana industry is a significant part of the country’s economy.

According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, in 2023, Panama exported $273m worth of bananas, making it the 13th largest exporter in the world.

Finance officials from the Group of Seven (G7) nations have threatened they could impose further sanctions on Russia should it fail to agree a ceasefire in its war on Ukraine.

Ending their G7 meeting in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, where foreign ministers were also convening this week, the finance chiefs said on Thursday night that if efforts to end Russia’s “continued brutal war” in Ukraine failed, the group would look at how it could push Moscow to step back.

“If such a ceasefire is not agreed, we will continue to explore all possible options, including options to maximise pressure such as further ramping up sanctions,” a final communique following three days of meetings read.

The G7, comprised of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, also pledged to work together to ensure that no countries that financed the war would be eligible to benefit from Kyiv’s reconstruction.

Canadian Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said that point was a “very big statement”, calling it a key pillar.

However, the group shied away from naming countries, including China, which the West has previously accused of supplying weapons to Russia.

The communique added that Russia’s sovereign assets in G7 jurisdictions would continue to be blocked until Moscow ended the war and paid reparations to Ukraine for the damage it caused to the country.

‘Clear signal?’

“I think it sends a very clear signal to the world … that the G7 is united in purpose and in action,” Champagne told the closing news conference.

However, the statement omitted mention of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs that are disrupting global trade and supply chains and swelling economic uncertainty.

Differences were also apparent in the approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Trump has unnerved US allies by sidelining them to launch bilateral ceasefire talks with Moscow, in which US officials have adopted many of the Kremlin’s narratives regarding the conflict.

In the statement, the description of the war was watered down from October’s G7 statement, issued before Trump’s re-election, that called it an “illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine”.

Tariffs

According to European Commission executive vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis, the ministers discussed a proposal to lower the $60-a-barrel price cap to $50 on Russian oil exports since Russian crude was selling below that level.

However, the official G7 communique did not present the plan as the US was “not convinced” about lowering the price cap, an unnamed European official told the Reuters news agency.

Hours before the G7 meeting, the European Parliament also greenlit tariffs on Russian fertiliser imports.

According to the European Union bill, duties will be enforced from July 1 and gradually increase over three years, from 6.5 percent to about 100 percent, halting trade.

‘Yet to be agreed’

As international entities continue to place sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine, diplomatic efforts to end the war have increased after the two sides held their first face-to-face meeting last week.

However, Moscow appears set to continue to stall, as it has been doing since the US launched its push to broker a truce.

The Kremlin said on Thursday that new talks were “yet to be agreed” after reports that the Vatican was ready to host a future meeting to discuss a ceasefire.

Still, Russia and Ukraine are trading attacks.

On Friday morning, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defence systems had downed 112 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 24 over the Moscow region.

A day earlier,  Russia said it had fired an Iskander-M missile at part of the city of Pokrov in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.

Getty Images

Winter fuel payment row

Standing charges

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Ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine may soon be under way, but Ukraine’s economic recovery will be hobbled unless the European Union fast-tracks the war-torn country’s membership and provides hundreds of billions of euros’ worth of insurance and investment, experts tell Al Jazeera.

“I think what Ukraine needs is some kind of future where it will have a stable and defendable border, and that will only come, I would think, with EU membership,” historian Phillips O’Brien told Al Jazeera.

The US administration of President Donald Trump last month handed Ukraine and Russia a ceasefire proposal that excluded future NATO membership of Ukraine, satisfying a key Kremlin demand and leaving Ukraine without the security guarantees it seeks.

“What business is actually going to take the risk of getting involved there economically?” asked O’Brien. “With NATO off the table, I think if Ukraine is going to have a chance of rebuilding and being integrated into Europe, it will have to be through a fast-tracked EU membership.”

That membership is by no means assured, although the European Commission started negotiations in record time last June, and Ukraine has the support of EU heavyweights like France and Germany.

If Ukraine becomes an EU member, it would still face a devastated economy requiring vast investment.

The Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) estimated that between Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and November last year, Moscow’s onslaught had destroyed $170bn of infrastructure, with the housing, transport and energy sectors most affected.

That figure did not include the damage incurred in almost a decade of war in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk since 2014 or the loss of 29 percent of Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) from the invasion in 2022. The estimate also did not put a value on the loss of almost a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, which Russia now occupies.

That territory contains almost half of Ukraine’s unexploited mineral wealth, worth an estimated $12.4 trillion, according to SecDev, a Canadian geopolitical risk firm.

It also does not include some types of reconstruction costs, such as chemical decontamination and mine-clearing.

The World Bank put the cost of infrastructure damages slightly higher this year, at $176bn, and predicts the cost of reconstruction and recovery at about $525bn over 10 years.

‘The Kremlin has certainly looted occupied territory’

Economic war has been part of Russia’s strategy since the invasion of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014, argued Maximilian Hess, a risk analyst and Eurasia expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

“The Kremlin has certainly looted occupied territory, including for coking coal, agricultural products, and iron,” Hess told Al Jazeera.

The KSE has estimated Russia stole half a million tonnes of grain, included in the $1.9bn damages bill to the agricultural sector.

Using long-range rocketry, Russia also targeted industrial hubs not under its control.

Ukraine inherited a series of factories from the Soviet Union, including the Kharkiv Tractor Plant, the Zaporizhia Automobile Plant, the Pivdenmash rocket manufacturer in Dnipro and massive steel plants.

“All were targeted by Russian forces,” wrote Hess in his recent book, Economic War. “Russia’s attacks were, of course, primarily aimed at devastating the Ukrainian economy and weakening its ability and will to fight, but they also raised the cost to the West of supporting Ukraine in the conflict, something the Kremlin hoped would lead to reduced support for Kyiv.”

Through occupation and targeting, Russia managed to deprive Ukraine of a flourishing metallurgy sector.

According to the United States Geological Survey, metallurgical production decreased by 66.5 percent as a result of the war.

That is a vast loss, considering that Ukraine once produced almost a third of the iron ore in Europe, Russia and Central Eurasia, half of the region’s manganese ore and a third of its titanium. It remains the only producer of uranium in Europe, an important resource in the continent’s quest for greater energy autonomy.

Ukraine’s claims to have built a $20bn defence industrial base with allied help, a rare wartime economic success story.

That can make up for the losses in metallurgy, Hess said, “but only in part and in different regions of the country from which those mining and metallurgical ones were concentrated. Boosting [metallurgical activities] in places like Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and ideally territory ultimately freed from Russian occupation, will be necessary to win the peace.”

Trump’s minerals deal, and other instruments

Weeks ago, Ukraine and the US signed a memorandum of intent to jointly exploit Ukraine’s mineral wealth.

Ukraine committed to putting half the proceeds from its metallurgical activities into a Reconstruction Fund, but experts doubted the notion that mineral wealth can rebuild Ukraine.

“Projects have a long launch period … from five to 10 years,” Maxim Fedoseienko, head of strategic projects at the KSE Institute, told Al Jazeera. “You need to make documentation, environmental impacts assessment, and after that, you can also need three years to build this mine.”

The US and EU might invest in such mines, Fedoseienko said, because “we have more than 24 kinds of materials from the EU list of critical [raw] materials,” but they would only contribute to the Ukrainian economy if investments were equitable.

Trump presented the minerals deal as payback for billions in military aid.

“There’s nothing remotely fair about it. The aid was not given to be paid back,” said O’Brien.

As Fedoseienko put it, “It is not fair if everyone will say, ‘OK, we will help you in a time of war, so you are owned [by] us.’”

In addition to fairness, Ukraine needs money. Some of that needs to come in the form of insurance.

A state-backed war-risk insurance formula Kyiv reached with the United Kingdom in 2023, for example, brought bulk carriers back to Ukraine’s ports and defeated Russian efforts to blockade Ukrainian grain exports.

As a result, Ukraine exported 57.5 million tonnes of agricultural goods in 2023-2024, and was on track to export 77 million tonnes in the 2024-2025 marketing year, which ends in June, its agriculture ministry said.

“There needs to be a substantial expansion of public insurance products in particular, as well as a move to seize frozen Russian assets,” said Hess.

Seizing some $300bn in Russian central bank money held in the EU was deemed controversial, but the measure is now receiving support.

“The Russian state has committed these war crimes, has broken international law, has done this damage to Ukraine –  that actually becomes a just way of helping Ukraine rebuild,” said O’Brien. “[Europeans] have a very strong case for this, but they, right now, lack the political will to do it.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has already repeatedly asked Europe to use the money for Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction.

What Europeans have done in the meantime is going some way towards rebuilding Ukraine.

Some $300m in interest payments proceeding from Russian assets are diverted to reconstruction each year.

A European Commission programme provides 9.3 billion euros ($10.5bn) of financial support designed to leverage investment from the private sector.

Financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank are providing loan guarantees to Ukrainian banks, which gives them liquidity.

“So Ukrainian banks can provide loans to Ukrainian companies to invest and operate in Ukraine. This is a big ecosystem to finance investment and operational needs to the Ukrainian economy,” said Fedoseienko.

Together with the finance ministry, the KSE operates an online portal providing information about the various instruments available, which has already helped bring 165 investments to fruition worth $27bn.

“Is it enough to recover the Ukrainian economy?” Fedoseienko asked. “No, but this is a significant programme to support Ukraine now.”

NBA’s MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander leads Oklahoma City Thunder to Game 2 win over Minnesota Timberwolves in West finals.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 38 points and Jalen Williams added 26 to lead the Oklahoma City Thunder to a 118-103 home win over the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.

The Thunder lead the best-of-seven series 2-0 going into Game 3 on Saturday in Minneapolis.

Gilgeous-Alexander, who was selected the NBA Most Valuable Player on Wednesday and presented with the trophy before Thursday’s game, has scored 30 or more points in five consecutive games.

The 38 points tied a career playoff-high, and he added eight assists and three steals with just one turnover.

Chet Holmgren contributed 22 points in the win.

Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards finished with 32 points, shooting 12 of 26 from the floor but just one of nine on three-point attempts. He also contributed nine rebounds and six assists.

Julius Randle, who helped Minnesota build a first-half lead in Game 1 with a string of three-pointers, wound up with just six points in Game 2. He made just two of 11 shots from the floor – missing all three of his three-point tries – and did not play in the fourth quarter.

The Timberwolves got 17 points from Nickeil Alexander-Walker, plus 10 points and eight rebounds from Naz Reid.

Oklahoma City led by as many as 24 points late in the third quarter, but the Timberwolves clawed within 10 with just more than three minutes remaining.

However, that was as close as Minnesota would get late, as the Thunder repeatedly answered in the closing minutes.

Oklahoma City grabbed control in the third, turning up the pressure on defence once again.

Minnesota didn’t make a field goal for six minutes late in the quarter, missing seven consecutive shots and committing five turnovers as the Thunder stretched their lead to 24 late in the period.

After struggling from the field early in Game 1, Gilgeous-Alexander was much more efficient from the jump in Game 2, not missing a shot until just more than five minutes remained in the first half.

Edwards said he needed to shoot more in Game 2 after attempting just 13 shots on Tuesday in a 114-88 loss. He was aggressive offensively from the start on Thursday, attempting 10 shots in the first quarter (and making four) while adding three assists.

The Timberwolves were within three with just more than two minutes to go in the half before Oklahoma City closed strong.

Gilgeous-Alexander scored all of the Thunder’s points during a 7-2 run to take an eight-point lead into halftime. His spree included drawing a foul on Jaden McDaniels in the closing seconds and sinking a pair of free throws.

The Thunder led 58-50 at the break despite shooting just four of 20 from beyond the arc in the first half.

For a country whose government is not recognised by any nation, Afghanistan’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi has had an unusually busy calendar in recent weeks.

He has hosted his counterpart from Pakistan, spoken on the phone with India’s foreign minister, and jetted to Iran and China. In Beijing, he also met the Pakistani foreign minister again. On Wednesday, he joined trilateral talks with delegations from Pakistan and China.

This, even though the ruling Taliban have historically had tense relations with most of these countries, and currently have taut ties with Pakistan, a one-time ally with whom trust is at an all-time low.

While neither the United Nations nor any of its member states formally recognise the Taliban, analysts say that this diplomatic overdrive suggests that the movement is far from a pariah on the global stage.

So why are multiple countries in Afghanistan’s neighbourhood queueing up to engage diplomatically with the Taliban, while avoiding formal recognition?

We unpack the Taliban’s latest high-level regional engagements and look at why India, Pakistan and Iran are all trying to befriend Afghanistan’s rulers, four years after they marched on Kabul and grabbed power.

Who did Muttaqi meet or speak to in recent weeks?

A timeline of Afghanistan’s recent diplomatic engagements:

• April 19: Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar travels with a high-level delegation to Kabul to meet Muttaqi and other Afghan officials. The two sides discussed an ongoing spat over Pakistan’s repatriation of Afghan refugees, bilateral trade and economic cooperation, the Afghanistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
• May 6: Dar and Muttaqi spoke again on what turned out to be the eve of India’s attack on Pakistan, leading to four days of missile and drone attacks between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. The exchange of fire took place after India accused Pakistan of being involved in the April 22 Pahalgam attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 26 people dead.
• May 15: India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar holds a phone conversation with Muttaqi to express his gratitude for the Taliban’s condemnation of the Pahalgam attacks.
• May 17: Muttaqi arrives in the Iranian capital Tehran to attend the Tehran Dialogue Forum, where he also holds meetings with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and President Massoud Pazeshkian.
• May 21: Muttaqi visits Beijing. Trilateral talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan and China take place aimed at boosting trade and security between the three countries.

Head of the Taliban’s political office in Doha, Qatar, Suhail Shaheen said the group is a “reality of today’s Afghanistan” as it “controls all territory and borders of the country”.

“The regional countries know this fact and, as such, they engage with the Islamic Emirate at various levels, which is a pragmatic and rational approach in my view,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the name by which the Taliban refers to the current Afghan state.

“We believe it is through engagement that we can find solutions to issues,” he added, arguing that formal recognition of the Taliban government “not be delayed furthermore”.

“Our region has its own interests and goals that we should adhere to.”

Why is India warming up to the Taliban?

It’s an unlikely partnership. During the Taliban’s initial rule between 1996 and  2001, the Indian government refused to engage with the Afghan group and did not recognise their rule, which at the time was only recognised by Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

India, which had supported the earlier Soviet-backed government of Mohammad Najibullah, shut down its embassy in Kabul once the Taliban came to power: It viewed the Taliban as a proxy of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, which had supported the mujahideen against Moscow.

Instead, New Delhi supported the anti-Taliban opposition group, the Northern Alliance.

Following the United States-led ousting of the Taliban in 2001, India reopened its Kabul embassy and became a significant development partner for Afghanistan, investing more than $3bn in infrastructure, health, education and water projects, according to its Ministry of External Affairs.

But its embassy and consulates came under repeated, deadly attacks from the Taliban and its allies, including the Haqqani group.

After the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, New Delhi evacuated its embassy and once again refused to recognise the group. However, unlike during the Taliban’s first stint in power, India built diplomatic contacts with the group – first behind closed doors, then, increasingly, publicly.

The logic was simple, say analysts: India realised that by refusing to engage with the Taliban earlier, it had ceded influence in Afghanistan to Pakistan, its regional rival.

In June 2022, less than a year after the Taliban’s return to power, India reopened its embassy in Kabul by deploying a team of “technical experts” to run it. In November 2024, the Taliban appointed an acting consul at the Afghan consulate in Mumbai.

Then, last January, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and Muttaqi both flew to Dubai for a meeting – the highest-level face-to-face interaction between New Delhi and the Taliban to date.

Kabir Taneja, a deputy director at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, says not dealing with “whatever political reality sets in in Kabul was never an option” for India.

“No one is pleased per se that the reality is the Taliban,” Taneja told Al Jazeera. However, while India’s “decades-long” efforts to foster goodwill with the Afghan people have faced challenges since the Taliban takeover, they have not been entirely undone.

“Even the Taliban’s ideological stronghold, the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary, is in India,” he added. “These are ties with the country and its actors that cannot be vanquished, and have to be dealt with realistically and practically,” he added.

What is Pakistan’s calculus?

One of the Taliban’s foremost backers between 1996 and 2021, Pakistan has seen its relationship with the group plummet in recent years.

Since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, Pakistan has seen a surge in violent attacks, which Islamabad attributes to armed groups, such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Pakistan insists that the TTP operates from Afghan territory and blames the ruling Taliban for allowing them sanctuary – a claim the Taliban government denies.

Emerging in 2007 amid the US-led so-called “war on terror”, the Pakistan Taliban has long challenged Islamabad’s authority through a violent rebellion. Though distinct from the Afghan Taliban, the two are seen as ideologically aligned.

Dar’s visit to Kabul and subsequent communication with Muttaqi represent a “tactical, ad hoc thaw” rather than a substantial shift in Pakistan-Afghanistan relations, says Rabia Akhtar, director at the Centre for Security, Strategy and Policy Research at the University of Lahore.

During the recent India-Pakistan crisis, Islamabad grew increasingly concerned about the possibility of Afghanistan allowing its territory to be used by New Delhi against Pakistan, she suggested. “This has increased Islamabad’s urgency to secure its western border,” Akhtar told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s decision earlier this year to expel Afghan refugees – including many who have spent most of their lives in Pakistan – and frequent border closures disrupting trade are also sources of tension in the relationship.

The refugees question, in particular, could prove to be a key factor that will shape future relations between the two countries, Akhtar said.

“While Pakistan has pushed for repatriation of undocumented Afghans, Kabul views such deportations as punitive,” she said. “If this dialogue is an indication of a recognition on both sides that confrontation is unsustainable, especially amidst shifting regional alignments and economic pressures, then that’s a good sign.”

The Taliban’s Shaheen said while Kabul wanted good relations with Islamabad, they should be “reciprocated” and that a “blame game” is not in anyone’s interest.

“We have taken practical steps as far as it concerns us,” he said, noting that Afghanistan had started building checkpoints “along the line adjacent to Pakistan in order to prevent any one from crossing”.

“However, their internal security is the responsibility of their security forces not ours.”

China, at the trilateral talks in Beijing on Wednesday, said Kabul and Islamabad had agreed in principle to upgrade diplomatic ties and would send their respective ambassadors at the earliest.

Nevertheless, Akhtar does not expect the “core mistrust” between the two neighbours, particularly over alleged TTP sanctuaries, to “go away any time soon”.

“We should look at this shift as part of Pakistan’s broader crisis management post-India-Pak crisis rather than structural reconciliation,” Akhtar asserted.

What does Iran want from its ties with the Taliban?

Like India, Tehran refused to recognise the Taliban when it was first in power, while backing the Northern Alliance, especially after the 1998 killing of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif by Taliban fighters.

Iran amassed thousands of troops on its eastern border, nearly going to war with the Taliban over the incident.

Concerned about the extensive US military footprint in the region post-9/11, Iran was said to be quietly engaging with the Taliban, offering limited support in an effort to counter American influence and protect its own strategic interests.

Since the Taliban took back reins of the country nearly four years ago, Iran again showed willingness to build ties with rulers in Kabul on a number of security, humanitarian and trade-related matters, analysts say.

Shaheen, head of the Taliban’s office in Doha, said that both Iran and India previously thought the group was “under the influence of Pakistan”.

“Now they know it is not the reality. In view of this ground reality, they have adopted a new realistic and pragmatic approach, which is good for everyone,” he said.

Ibraheem Bahiss, analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the meeting between Muttaqi and Iranian President Pezeshkian doesn’t signal an “impending official recognition”. However, he said, “pragmatic considerations” have driven Iran to engage the Taliban, given its “key interests” in Afghanistan.

“Security-wise, Tehran wants allies in containing the ISIS [ISIL] local chapter. Tehran has also been seeking to expand its trade relations with Afghanistan, now being one of its major trading partners,” he told Al Jazeera.

In January 2024, twin suicide bombings in Kerman marked one of Iran’s deadliest attacks in decades, killing at least 94 people. The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), an Afghanistan-based offshoot of ISIL, claimed responsibility.

In recent years, ISKP has also emerged as a significant challenge to the Taliban’s rule, having carried out multiple high-profile attacks across Afghanistan.

Bahiss added that Tehran also needed a “willing partner” in addressing the issue of some 780,000 Afghan refugees in Iran, as well as the “transboundary water flowing from Helmand River “.

In May 2023, tensions between the two neighbours flared, leading to border clashes in which two Iranian border guards and one Taliban fighter were killed.

The violence came after former and now deceased Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned the Taliban not to violate a 1973 treaty by restricting the flow of water from the Helmand River to Iran’s eastern regions. Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers denied the accusation.

• Bitcoin Pepe (BPEP) teams up with leading DeFi and gaming platforms to amplify cross-chain utility and drive adoption.
• Bitcoin touches an all-time high and marks the start of the next phase of the 2025 bull run, causing a surge in emerging projects like Bitcoin Pepe.
• Investors flocked to the BPEP presale ahead of the May 31 listing, leading to a $1 million spike within 24 hours.

The world’s first Bitcoin meme layer, Bitcoin Pepe (BPEP), is going viral and is spoken of as ‘Solana on Bitcoin’ after confirming listing on May 31. As the presale nears its end, the project is gearing up for the listing by partnering with diverse projects to provide token holders with cross-platform utility.

Bitcoin Pepe announced partnerships with gaming, content, DeFi, and fair launch platforms like GETE, Crypto Hunters Game, BETV, Plena Finance, and Super Meme. These alliances boost cultural reach and provide practical, real-world use cases, helping increase community growth and institutional support.

The increased demand came as the Bitcoin price surged past its previous all-time high, adding to the growing bullish sentiment in the overall market. At the time of writing, BTC traded at $110,712.04 and is experiencing a minor retracement after peaking at $111,544.

Institutional participation in Bitcoin ETFs is now at an all-time high, as many firms project a $500,000 target for the 2025 market cycle. The increasing bullish pressure in Bitcoin also adds to the momentum of Bitcoin Pepe (BPEP), as the project’s utility is closely tied to the Bitcoin network.

The best crypto presales for the bull run

As the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, heads to new highs, a massive amount of fresh capital is flowing into the market. Let’s explore the top cryptos with strong fundamentals and utility that have the best upside potential in the upcoming bull run.

Bitcoin Pepe: Best meme layer forms strategic partnerships

Shortly after making partnerships and listing announcements, BPEP witnessed a massive $1 million capital inflow in just 24 hours as investors started rushing to the presale to get in before the investment window closes. With this demand, Bitcoin Pepe is one of the best crypto presales in the market, raising a total of over $11m in the presale so far.

Bitcoin Pepe is a revolutionary meme-focused layer 2, building a Solana-like scalable and lightweight infrastructure on the Bitcoin network. Its proprietary PEP-20 token standard bridges the gap between DeFi and memes by allowing meme coins to be launched natively on the largest blockchain.

Already influential partnerships are being formed, for example with Plena Finance and Catemoto, a fair launch platform on Base.

As investor demand spiked, the platform’s staking pools, which hold over 200 million BPEP tokens, are now sold out. Users who have locked in will make impressive passive income with high staking rewards and impressive institutional-grade APYs.

Currently, BPEP is priced at $0.0359, having already raised an impressive $11m in the current presale ending on May 31st. Due to the immense demand, its value is surging exponentially as the presale races into the final lap. With the presale window closing soon, investors must be fast and get BPEP at the lowest price to make significant returns.

SUI bullish shift? Weekly RSI surges above 60

SUI’s recent surge in its weekly RSI below the key 60 threshold signals a shift in momentum, signaling growing optimism among traders and investors. The RSI surge above 60 usually suggests strong buying pressure and growing bullish dominance. This breakout could indicate that buyers are gaining control, potentially leading to a fresh bull rally.

Image Courtesy: TradingView

This development is particularly significant for SUI since the cryptocurrency, which has enjoyed periods of strong upward movement, is now consolidating for the next move. Moreover, SUI’s price has crossed the $4 psychological resistance, signaling a strong bullish structure. Thus, buying pressure has intensified, making it more suitable for buyers to regain control.

However, if the SUI price fails to reclaim this critical level, the bearish momentum could persist, driving the asset toward deeper support zones and confirming a prolonged correction.

Dogecoin (DOGE): How High Can the Price Go?

Simultaneously, traders have been boldly predicting the price of Dogecoin, demonstrating their confidence.  Javon Marks, a market observer, illustrated the first target of $0.739.

United States debt has long been considered the safest of all safe havens.
But, Washington has just lost its pristine reputation as a borrower.
Moody’s has downgraded the nation from its top-notch AAA rating, becoming the last of the big three agencies to do so.
The ratings agency has cited the United States’s growing debt – now at $36 trillion, almost 120 percent of gross domestic product – and rising debt service costs.
Against this backdrop, President Donald Trump is pushing what he calls the “one big, beautiful bill”.
Critics warn his tax cut package could add trillions more to the already ballooning deficit.

Genaro Garcia Luna, formerly a high-ranking government official, is serving a 38-year sentence for accepting bribes.

A Florida court has ordered Mexico’s former head of public security to pay more than $748m to his home country for his alleged involvement in government corruption.

Thursday’s ruling brought to a close a civil case first filed in September 2021 by the Mexican government.

The case centred on Genaro Garcia Luna, who served as Mexico’s security chief from 2006 to 2012. Garcia Luna is currently serving more than 38 years in a United States prison for allegedly accepting millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel.

The Mexican government alleges that Garcia Luna also stole millions in taxpayer funds, and it has pledged to seek restitution, namely by filing a legal complaint in Miami, Florida, where it says some of the illegal activity took place.

On Thursday, Judge Lisa Walsh in Miami-Dade County not only required Garcia Luna to pay millions, but she also ordered his wife, Linda Cristina Pereyra, to pay $1.7bn. Altogether, the total neared $2.4bn.

In its initial 2021 complaint, the Mexican government – led at the time by former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – accused Garcia Luna, his wife and their co-defendants of having “concealed funds stolen from the government” and smuggling the money to places like Barbados and the US.

“Under the direction of the Defendant GARCIA LUNA, the funds unlawfully taken from the government of MEXICO were used to build a money-laundering empire,” the complaint wrote.

It alleged those funds were used to finance “lavish lifestyles” for Garcia Luna and his co-conspirators, including real estate holdings, bank accounts and vintage cars, among them Mustangs from the 1960s and ’70s.

Separately, Garcia Luna faced criminal charges for corruption, with US authorities accusing him of pocketing millions while in office for working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel.

Through his work with Mexico’s federal police and as its security chief, US prosecutors say Garcia Luna accessed information that he later used to tip off the Sinaloa cartel, letting them know about investigations and the movements of rival criminal groups.

Garcia Luna was also accused of helping the cartel move its shipments of cocaine to destinations like the US, sometimes using Mexico’s federal police as bodyguards – and even allowing cartel members to wear official uniforms.

In exchange, prosecutors say the cartel left money for him in hiding places, one of which was a French restaurant across the street from the US embassy in Mexico City. Some bundles of cash – offered in $100 bills – totalled up to $10,000.

After leaving office in 2012, Garcia Luna moved to the US. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. His defence lawyers have described him as a successful businessman living in Florida.

But in February 2023, a federal jury in Brooklyn, New York, convicted Garcia Luna on drug-related charges, including international cocaine conspiracy and conspiracy to import cocaine. The following year, in October, he was sentenced to decades in prison.

The Mexican government, however, alleged in its civil lawsuit that Garcia Luna also led a “government-contracting scheme” that included bid-tampering and striking dubious deals as a form of money laundering.

Those contracts included deals for surveillance and communications equipment. The Associated Press news agency reported that one such contract was falsified, and others were inflated.

Garcia Luna is the highest-level Mexican government official to be convicted in the US.

Federal prosecutors have filed charges against a man suspected of fatally shooting two Israeli embassy staff workers in the United States capital of Washington, DC.

In a federal court on Thursday, Elias Rodriguez was accused of two counts of first-degree murder, as well as charges of murdering foreign officials, causing death with a firearm and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence.

In a news conference afterwards, interim US Attorney Jeanine Pirro warned that those charges were only the beginning — and that her prosecutors were combing through evidence for other crimes.

“This is a horrific crime, and these crimes are not going to be tolerated by me and by this office,” Pirro said.

“We’re going to continue to investigate this as a hate crime and a crime of terrorism, and we will add additional charges as the evidence warrants.”

Rodriguez is accused of shooting Israeli citizen Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, an American, both employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC.

The attack took place around 9:08pm US Eastern time on Wednesday evening (01:08 GMT Thursday), as the two employees were leaving an event hosted by the pro-Israel American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.

Israeli embassy staff have said that the young couple were set to be engaged in the coming days.

“A young couple — at the beginning of their life’s journey, about to be engaged, in another country — had their bodies removed in the cold of the night, in a foreign city, in a body bag. We are not going to tolerate that anymore,” said Pirro, appearing to allude primarily to Lischinsky’s foreign roots.

“This is the kind of case that picks at old sores and old scars, because these kinds of cases remind us of what has happened in the past that we can never and must never forget.”

She pointed out that the Wednesday night attack took place at a museum that includes one of Washington’s oldest synagogues in the centre of the city.

Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said that the suspect chanted, “Free Palestine! Free Palestine!” after the shooting. Rodriguez, who hailed from Chicago, appears to have identified himself to police and was arrested shortly after the shooting.

An affidavit from the Federal Bureau of Investigation notes that Rodriguez told police, “I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza.”

The shooting, which has been widely condemned, comes as Israel faces growing global anger over its war on Gaza, where a blockade has left millions of Palestinians without food or basic supplies.

Experts at human rights organisations and the United Nations have compared the war, which has killed at least 53,000 people, to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Since the war began on October 7, 2023, Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities have all reported upticks in harassment and racism.

In the aftermath of Wednesday’s shooting, officials spoke out against anti-Semitism, and the administration of President Donald Trump promised to pursue every legal avenue against the suspect.

“The Department of Justice will be prosecuting the perpetrator responsible for this to the fullest extent of the law,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday. “Hatred has no place in the United States of America under President Donald Trump.”

She went on to compare antiwar protests at US universities, which have been largely peaceful, to “ anti-Semitic illegal behaviour”. Protest leaders, however, have largely disavowed anti-Jewish hate.

In the wake of the shooting, one US Congress member told Fox News that the “Palestinian cause” was “evil”. Republican Representative Randy Fine continued by suggesting the Gaza war should end like World War II did, with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

“We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender,” he said. “That needs to be the same here. There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this culture, and it needs to be defeated.”

Separately, the Israeli government denounced the shooting as an attack against its state.

“We are witness to the terrible cost of the antisemitism and wild incitement against the State of Israel,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

A Cameroonian soldier was killed and three others were wounded during a two-night attack by Boko Haram terrorists from 19 to 20 May. The assault occurred in Kerawa, a locality on the border with Nigeria, within the Kolofata sub-division of the Mayo-Sava division in the Far North region.

A member of the local vigilante committee said the assailants, who came from Nigeria, targeted a Cameroonian military post. “After opening fire on the post, the assailants quickly fled towards the Nigeria-Cameroon border,” he stated.

The recent attack highlights an alarming trend, as Boko Haram terrorists have become more aggressive since March, utilising previously unseen sophisticated weaponry during their operations. Notably, one major incident occurred on the night of March 24 to 25, 2025, in Wulgo, in the Logone-et-Chari division, where 12 Cameroonian soldiers lost their lives. 

This week’s deadly assault serves as a reminder that, despite claims of a retreat by the terrorists, the threat they pose remains constant within the Lake Chad Basin. Even with strong responses from the Cameroonian army, Boko Haram continues to conduct violent operations, instilling fear and destabilising the border areas with Nigeria. This comes despite repeated assertions from the military that they have broken the back of Boko Haram in the region.

As part of its intensified violent campaign, Boko Haram/ISWAP increased the deployment of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) along critical highways in the Lake Chad region, especially in Nigeria. Over the past month, numerous IED detonations occurred, resulting in casualties among both civilians and security forces.

Recent developments have seen two significant bridges – one in the Gujiba local government area of Yobe State and the other in the Biu local government area of Borno State – damaged by IED blasts attributed to the terrorist group. These incidents have significantly disrupted mobility, making entire routes perilous and putting commuters at heightened risk of attacks, particularly in resettled communities that are already unstable.

The destruction of these essential infrastructures also threatens humanitarian efforts and the region’s economic stability. Human rights groups, humanitarian organisations, and local media have cautioned for months that resettling populations without adequate security measures may expose them to reprisals and further displacement.

• PEPE leads the meme coin rally with 70% gains and a daily trading volume of over $2.8 billion as renewed risk-on sentiment drives speculative assets higher across the board.
• Dogwifhat (WIF) and BONK post double-digit gains alongside broader meme coin momentum, signaling the sector’s return to form, while Dogecoin has rallied almost 50% over the past month.
• Bitcoin Pepe has raised $11m ahead of its May 31st launch, positioning itself as the infrastructure play that could capture massive value as meme coins regain mainstream attention.

Meme coins are rocketing right now, and the data backs up what traders are seeing across their screens.

PEPE just surged some 10% in 24 hours, recording over $2.8 billion in daily trading volume, while Solana’s Dogwifhat (WIF) climbed some 20% and BONK gained over 10%. Fartcoin also managed some 20% growth in just a day, showing this isn’t just isolated strength—it’s broad-based interest returning to the meme sector.

The original meme coin, Dogecoin, is also participating in this revival, trading around $0.2426 with impressive 47.90% monthly gains. Not long ago, 21Shares filed for a Dogecoin ETF, which would be a momentous moment for the meme coin sector.

🚨 Hot off the press: 21Shares just dropped a filing with Nasdaq for a Dogecoin ETF! Get ready—the meme coin king could soon be a staple for everyday investors! 🐶💸 pic.twitter.com/iOK43lgbMx

— Eywana ✳️ DeFi Dryad (@eywanadefi) May 21, 2025

A crypto market that rewards risk

This meme coin revival creates perfect conditions for an exciting presale project, Bitcoin Pepe, which has already raised an impressive $11m ahead of its May 31st launch.

Unlike pure speculation, Bitcoin Pepe brings serious infrastructure to the party—touted as “Solana on Bitcoin” through its revolutionary PEP-20 token standard. As WIF, BONK, DOGE, and PEPE show renewed strength across multiple chains, Bitcoin Pepe’s combination of meme appeal with genuine utility could position it as a standout performer.

The token price is still low, and with rumored tier 1 exchange listings ready to go, early investors might have made a very profitable decision by getting involved.

Bitcoin Pepe (BPEP): Meme + utility = long-term winner

Bitcoin Pepe stands apart from the typical meme coin playbook by bringing real infrastructure to the table. As the world’s first meme-centric ICO on Bitcoin, launching imminently on May 31st, Bitcoin Pepe aims to solve Bitcoin’s biggest limitation—slow speed and high gas fees.

While other meme coins rely purely on hype cycles and community enthusiasm, Bitcoin Pepe is developing what developers are calling “Solana on Bitcoin” through its cutting-edge PEP-20 token standard, bringing thousands of transactions per second to Bitcoin’s trusted network.

It’s a big deal, as meme-centric crypto plays have been plagued by their lack of usability beyond trading alone. Bitcoin Pepe aims to break that image, creating something that contributes to crypto’s biggest, most trusted ecosystem—Bitcoin—and the $2 trillion opportunity that comes with it.

The project has locked in some excellent partnerships across gaming, DeFi, and content creation, building a robust ecosystem around its core layer 2 functionality.

Key names include Plena Finance, which brings BPEP integration to mobile-first DeFi through their crypto super app, and GETE Network, positioning Bitcoin Pepe as the backbone for Bitcoin-based gaming infrastructure.

On the content side, BE__TV’s Web3 short video platform will showcase PEP-20 tokens through creator campaigns and viral content distribution, while GemuPlay’s 200+ casual games create real utility by integrating BPEP into prize pools and reward mechanics across the Web3 gaming economy.

With its end-of-month deadline now thoroughly in the wing mirror, all staking pools have completely sold out, with yields ranging from 75% to 10,000% APY—indicating serious smart money positioning ahead of the launch.

Currently at $0.0359 in stage 12, with $11m already raised, Bitcoin Pepe’s timing couldn’t be better.

As PEPE, WIF, and BONK show renewed strength, Bitcoin Pepe elegantly combines meme coin appeal with infrastructure that Bitcoin truly needs—among the best meme coins to buy now for short-term pumps and long-term utility gains.

Dogecoin (DOGE): The OG with staying power

PEPE: Technical strength meets cultural phenomenon

We can’t overlook PEPE, which has established itself as the premier Ethereum-based meme coin, combining the cultural power of one of the internet’s most recognizable memes with impressive technical momentum.

Currently trading around $0.00001450 after a massive 70% pump over the month, PEPE shows how memes can maintain long-term momentum.

Above: Pepe surges over 70% over a month. Source: CoinMarketCap.

The project benefits from Ethereum’s established DeFi ecosystem, allowing for more sophisticated trading strategies. Pepe undoubtedly remains one of the best meme coins for its established reputation and long-term viral appeal.

Quality beats hype for long-term meme gains

Bitcoin Pepe is right there waiting, bringing serious infrastructure to the meme coin space through its PEP-20 standard, solving Bitcoin’s scalability issues. Unlike the meme sector’s many speculative plays, Bitcoin Pepe offers utility that could drive adoption long after the initial hype fades.

With Bitcoin Pepe’s May 31st launch now imminent and $11m already raised, the timing aligns perfectly with green signals across alts and meme coins.

The powerful combination of infrastructure utility, meme culture appeal, and timing creates the kind of opportunity that defines long-term winners in the crypto space—the stars are aligning for this to be one of the top cryptos to buy now for both short-term upside and long-term gains.

Don’t chase yesterday’s pumps—position yourself in projects building tomorrow’s meme coin infrastructure while the sector regains its footing. View the official Bitcoin Pepe website to invest now.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not provide financial advice. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, and the market can be unpredictable. Always perform thorough research before making any cryptocurrency-related decisions.

The United States Supreme Court has reached a deadlock in a case over whether a religious charter school in Oklahoma should be publicly funded.

Thursday’s tie vote allows a lower court ruling to stand. Previously, Oklahoma’s state-level Supreme Court had barred the use of government funds to establish the St Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, citing constitutional limits to the government’s role in religion.

But the US Supreme Court’s split vote on Thursday leaves an avenue open for other, similar cases to advance. With no decision from the highest court in the country, no new precedent has been set to govern funding for charter schools, which are independent institutions that receive government funding.

It is relatively rare, though, that a Supreme Court case should end in a tie vote. The Houston Law Review in 2020 estimated that there had only been 183 ties at the Supreme Court since 1791, out of more than 28,000 cases.

Normally, there are nine justices on the court’s bench — an odd number, to ensure that the judges are not evenly split.

But Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the hearings over the St Isidore school. Though she did not indicate her reasons, it is widely believed that Barrett stepped away from the case to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

Barrett has a close personal relationship with an adviser to the St Isidore school, lawyer Nicole Garnett. As young legal professionals in the late 1990s, they clerked together on the Supreme Court, and they eventually taught together at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

When US President Donald Trump nominated Barrett to the Supreme Court in 2020, Garnett even wrote an opinion column in the newspaper USA Today, praising her friend as “remarkable” and describing their lives as “completely intertwined”.

The Supreme Court’s brief, two-line announcement on Thursday acknowledged Barrett’s absence.

“The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court,” it read. “JUSTICE BARRETT took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.”

That left the court split four to four, though the precise breakdown was not provided. Chief Justice John Roberts is thought to have joined with the three left-leaning justices on the bench to oppose the school’s use of government funds.

The Supreme Court currently has a conservative supermajority, with six justices leaning rightward.

In the past, the court has signalled receptiveness to expanding religious freedoms in the US, including in cases that tested the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution.

While that clause bars the government from “the establishment of religion”, what qualifies as establishing a religion remains unclear — and is a source of ongoing legal debate.

The Oklahoma case stretches back to 2023, when the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City submitted an application to open a taxpayer-funded charter school that would share Catholic teachings.

The school would have been the first of its kind, offering public, religious education online for children from kindergarten through high school. The plan was to open the following year.

The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board initially voted down the proposal in April, only to give it the go-ahead in June by a narrow vote of three to two.

That teed up a legal showdown, with opponents calling the school a clear violation of the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. But supporters argued that barriers to establishing a Catholic charter school limited their freedom of religion.

Plans for the school even ended up dividing Oklahoma’s government. The state attorney general, Gentner Drummond, opposed the charter school as a form of “state-funded religion”. The governor, Kevin Stitt, supported the proposal. Both men are Republicans.

In Oklahoma, as in the majority of other US states, charter schools are considered part of the public school system.

When the case reached the state-level Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2024, that distinction became pivotal. The fact that St Isidore was a public — not private — school ultimately caused the court to strike it down, for fear of constitutional violations.

The judges ruled in a six-to-two decision that establishing St Isidore with state funds would make it a “surrogate of the state”, just like “any other state-sponsored charter school”.

The school, the judges explained, would “require students to spend time in religious instruction and activities, as well as permit state spending in direct support of the religious curriculum and activities within St. Isidore — all in violation of the establishment clause”.

The school’s backers appealed to the Supreme Court, leading to arguments being held in April. It was unclear at the time which way the high court seemed to be leaning, with Roberts pressing both sides with questions.

But conservatives on the Supreme Court’s bench seemed in favour of backing St Isidore’s appeal. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for instance, argued that withholding taxpayer funds from the religious school “seems like rank discrimination against religion”.

“All the religious school is saying is, ‘Don’t exclude us on account of our religion,’” he said.

The left-leaning justices, meanwhile, indicated that a ruling in favour of St Isidore would pave the way for public schools to become religious institutions, a slippery slope that could require the government to fund faith-based education of all stripes.

On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has backed a separate lawsuit against the school, framed the deadlock at the Supreme Court as a victory for the separation of church and state.

“The very idea of a religious public school is a constitutional oxymoron. The Supreme Court’s ruling affirms that a religious school can’t be a public school and a public school can’t be religious,” said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

But proponents pledged to keep on fighting. Jim Campbell, who argued in favour of St Isidore on behalf of Oklahoma’s charter school board, noted that the court may “revisit the issue in the future”, given the deadlock.

“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” he said.