London, United Kingdom – Heba Muraisi, a Palestine Action-affiliated activist who has refused food for 72 days in prison, has told Al Jazeera that she “no longer feels hunger”, is suffering with pain and knows that her death may be imminent.

The 31-year-old responded to questions via a friend who regularly visits her in New Hall prison in northern England.

“Physically, I am deteriorating as the days go by. I no longer feel hunger, I feel pain,” Muraisi said. “I don’t think about my life, I think about how or when I could die, but despite this, mentally I’ve never been stronger, more determined and sure, and most importantly, I feel calm and a great sense of ease.”

Muraisi was arrested on November 19, 2024, over her alleged involvement in a break-in months earlier at the UK subsidiary of the Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems in Bristol.

If she survives, she will have spent at least a year and a half in prison before her trial date, which is reportedly due no earlier than June this year – well beyond the UK’s usual six-month pre-trial detention limit.

She is the longest-fasting hunger striker of a group of eight activists who have joined the rolling protest since early November. Four are currently refusing food, including Muraisi and Kamran Ahmed, a 28-year-old who has not eaten for more than two months.

“Even though the risks may be lifelong consequences or a devastating end, I think it’s important to fight for justice and for freedom,” she told Al Jazeera.

‘I can no longer read like how I used to’

In recent weeks, the British media has intensified its coverage of the prison protest, said to be the largest coordinated hunger strike in British history since 1981, when Irish Republican inmates were led by Bobby Sands. Sands died on the 66th day of his protest, becoming a symbol of the Irish Republican cause. Nine others also died of starvation.

“I’m choosing to continue this because for the first time in 15 months, I’m finally being heard,” said Muraisi.

A Londoner of Yemeni origin who had worked as a florist and lifeguard, Muraisi is reportedly suffering from muscle spasms, breathlessness, severe pain and a low white blood cell count. She has been admitted to hospital three times over the past nine weeks.

At times, she has lost the ability to speak, and her memory is declining, friends who have recently visited her have said.

“Since concentrating has become gradually more difficult, I can no longer read like how I used to, so now I listen to the radio a lot,” she told Al Jazeera via the intermediary. “I love music, and it’s a shame I can’t get the CDs I want, but nonetheless I’m grateful to have songs playing.”

Last week, an emergency physician who is advising the hunger strikers told Al Jazeera that he believes Muraisi and Ahmed have reached a critical phase in which death and irreversible health damage are increasingly likely.

Ahmed’s weight has dropped to 56kg from the healthy 74kg he entered jail at; he is suffering from cardiac atrophy, or heart shrinkage, chest pain and twitching, according to his sister, Shahmina Alam. His speech is slurred, he is now partially deaf in his left ear, and his heart rate has intermittently fallen below 40bpm in recent days, she said.

The group of hunger striking activists are among 29 remand prisoners being held in various jails over their alleged involvement in the Bristol incident and a break-in at the Royal Air Force (RAF) base in Oxfordshire. They deny the charges against them.

Their protest demands include bail, the right to a fair trial and the de-proscription of Palestine Action, which the UK in July designated a “terrorist organisation”, putting it on par with ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda. They are calling for all Elbit sites to be closed in the UK and seek an end to what they call censorship in prison, accusing authorities of withholding mail, calls and books.

Muraisi has also asked to be returned to HMP Bronzefield in Surrey as HMP New Hall, where she was moved in October, is about 200 miles away – much further from home.

Palestine Action, which says it supports direct action without violence and accuses the UK government of complicity in Israel’s atrocities, is fighting against the proscription in courts as six of those charged in the Bristol case are currently on trial.

Asked if she can access news about Palestine from jail, Muraisi, who has family members in Gaza, accused prison officials of “systematically” blocking articles and newspapers “sent in for me”.

“Anything Palestine-related, including the book We Are Not Numbers [an anthology of emerging writers from Gaza], has been deemed inappropriate. I rely on those I call for news,” she said.

At the time of publishing, neither the UK Ministry of Justice nor New Hall prison had responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

A US district judge ruled that Trump’s decision singled out states that voted for Democrats in the 2024 elections.

A United States judge has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump acted illegally when it cancelled the payment of $7.6bn in clean energy grants to states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

In a decision on Monday, US District Judge Amit Mehta said the administration’s actions violated the Constitution’s equal protection requirements.

“Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily – if not exclusively – based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024,” Mehta wrote in a summary of the case.

The grants were intended to support hundreds of clean energy projects across 16 states, including California, Colorado, New Jersey and Washington state. The projects included initiatives to create battery plants and hydrogen technology.

But projects in those states were cancelled in October, as the Trump administration sought to ratchet up pressure on Democratic-led states during a heated government shutdown.

At the time, Trump told the network One America News (OAN) that he would take aim at projects closely associated with the Democratic Party.

“We could cut projects that they wanted, favourite projects, and they’d be permanently cut,” he told the network.

Russell Vought, the Trump-appointed director for the Office of Management and Budget, posted on social media that month that “funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda” had been “cancelled”.

The cuts included up to $1.2bn for a hub in California aimed at accelerating hydrogen technology, and up to $1bn for a hydrogen project in the Pacific Northwest.

St Paul, Minnesota, was among the jurisdictions affected by the grant cuts. The city and a coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit to contest the Trump administration’s decision.

Second legal setback

A spokesperson for the US Department of Energy, however, said the Trump administration disagrees with the judge’s ruling.

Officials “stand by our review process, which evaluated these awards individually and determined they did not meet the standards necessary to justify the continued spending of taxpayer dollars”, spokesman Ben Dietderich said.

The Trump administration has repeatedly pledged to cut back on what it considers wasteful government spending.

Monday’s ruling was the second legal setback in just a matter of hours for Trump’s efforts to roll back the clean energy programmes in the US.

A separate federal judge ruled on Monday that work on a major offshore wind farm for Rhode Island and Connecticut can resume, handing the industry at least a temporary victory as Trump seeks to shut it down.

The US president campaigned for the White House on a promise to end the offshore wind industry, saying electric wind turbines – sometimes called windmills – are too expensive and hurt whales and birds.

Instead, Trump has pushed for the US to ramp up fossil fuel production, considered the primary contributor to climate change. The US president has repeatedly defied scientific consensus on climate change and referred to it as a “hoax”.