3. Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, has issued a fatwa instructing Iranians to avoid social and economic interaction with the Baháʼí, a directive reminiscent of the measures imposed by the Nazi regime in the years leading up to the Holocaust.

2. The Baháʼís have long been persecuted by the Islamic Republic through unjust seizures of property and imprisonment, solely on the basis of their religious beliefs.

OEF vet here: I beg to differ.

Traitors like Cavanaugh get what traitors get. Whether that’s an official thing or not. He helped the same organization that killed and wounded so many of us.

We just wanna talk.

It’s just a systematic dismantling of the country’s interests and although I understand why the evil Republicans are helping him out, I cannot figure out why the Democrats aren’t doing anything to stop him from doing irreversible things to our nation’s best assets.

Why aren’t they even trying?

I just wish people could see that Putin is destroying his lifelong enemy from the inside. He’s not just attacking us. No, he’s systematically alienating every ally, destroying every trade relationship, massively antagonizing our neighbors north and south, firing all the scientific expertise.

14/ For Halimi and his family, those actions would have far-reaching consequences.

Read the full story by @chrisbing.bsky.social and Avi Asher-Schapiro:

13/ Neither the White House nor Musk responded to reporters’ requests for comment.

12/ “DOGE was completely indifferent to the effect their actions had on human beings,” said Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert who has served as a senior advisor for the United Nations and State Department. All it cared about, he said, was making “its enemies look bad.”

11/ Cavanaugh did not respond to questions about his access to these records or how they appeared to conflict with his statements on Fox News. But Cavanaugh defended cuts at the agency as needed and aligning with President Trump's agenda.

10/ But documents obtained by ProPublica show that four weeks earlier, Cavanaugh had received detailed records from USIP outlining Halimi’s work.

These records included invoices, project descriptions, and dates and times showing what Halimi was supposed to be doing on specific days.

9/ On TV, Cavanaugh called the United States Institute of Peace “the least peaceful agency we worked with.”

He told Watters he’d uncovered documents showing USIP was making payments to a contractor associated with the Taliban and that DOGE was unable to find any justification for those payments.

8/ Then came Cavanaugh’s turn. The United States Institute of Peace, he told the assembled men, was making payments to a contractor associated with the Taliban.

As he spoke, the chyron at the bottom of the screen read: “THE TALIBAN GETS DOGED.”

7/ One by one, each of the DOGE members one-upped each other with outrageous — yet often inaccurate — examples of government waste.

With each story, host Jesse Watters egged them on, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. Every so often, the team would burst into laughter.

6/ Halimi and his family were on their own. Maybe, they hoped, this would all blow over if they stayed quiet and laid low.

That’s when Cavanaugh, Musk and other DOGE members made an appearance on Fox News.

5/ Halimi tried his best not to show his panic. He turned to his bosses in Washington to ask for help in clearing his name, but everyone he knew was gone.

DOGE had axed them all. Now USIP was firmly in the hands of someone he’d never heard of: Cavanaugh, who'd been installed as interim president.

4/ First came the flurry of threatening messages.

A week later, the realization of his worst fears: Taliban agents blindfolded his relatives and held them for several days in a remote prison, where they were repeatedly beaten and questioned about Halimi’s work.

3/ Halimi initially wonders if Musk’s accusation is an April Fool’s joke. After all, the decades of work he had done consulting for U.S. diplomats wasn’t in service of the Taliban; it was the opposite.

Little did he know his nightmare was just beginning.

2/ It starts with a viral Elon Musk post.

“United States Institute of Peace Funded Taliban,” the graphic read, falsely claiming that USIP was funding the terrorist group through Halimi, whose work with the independent nonprofit involved providing advice to help US diplomats understand Afghanistan.