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Acclaimed scholar and activist Tariq Ali joins us for a wide-ranging conversation. In Part 1, he responds to Trump’s support of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the U.S.’s capitulation to Israeli aggression in the Middle East and the rise in right-wing authoritarianism around the world. Ali says Donald Trump is “the most right-wing president in recent years” and exposes “in public what his predecessors used to say in private.”
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Is Trump embracing the authoritarian playbook of far-right Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán? Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele walks us through Orbán’s sudden rise to power and how the Trump administration’s recent actions appear to follow his anti-democratic “blueprint,” with Trump “echoing a lot of Orbán’s rhetoric,” consolidating power in the executive branch and bypassing federal checks and balances. “Trump is trying to break things quickly,” says Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University. She also notes Orbán’s involvement in the right-wing Project 2025 initiative and his adoption of the motto “Make Europe Great Again” during Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the European Union last year as further evidence of the close ties between the two leaders. As Orbán works to “consolidate this movement of anti-democratic far-right forces” in Europe, warns Scheppele, Trump is tightening his grasp on the other side of the Atlantic.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Is Trump embracing the authoritarian playbook of far-right Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán? Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele walks us through Orbán’s sudden rise to power and how the Trump administration’s recent actions appear to follow his anti-democratic “blueprint,” with Trump “echoing a lot of Orbán’s rhetoric,” consolidating power in the executive branch and bypassing federal checks and balances. “Trump is trying to break things quickly,” says Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University. She also notes Orbán’s involvement in the right-wing Project 2025 initiative and his adoption of the motto “Make Europe Great Again” during Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the European Union last year as further evidence of the close ties between the two leaders. As Orbán works to “consolidate this movement of anti-democratic far-right forces” in Europe, warns Scheppele, Trump is tightening his grasp on the other side of the Atlantic.
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President Trump has given yet more power to Elon Musk, who is now leading the effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Created in response to the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB helps enforce consumer financial laws for mortgages, credit cards and other financial products. We speak to a former CFPB staffer, Julie Margetta Morgan, who says the consumer watchdog has helped recover $21 billion lost to financial fraud and abuse in its decade-plus of existence. She says that Musk, the world’s richest man and a promoter of cryptocurrency, is attempting to eliminate sources of regulatory oversight as he plans to turn the social media company X, which he owns, into a payments platform. “The thing that stands in his way is having strong regulators who will make him play by the same rules as every other bank. … The actions over the last few weeks have been incredibly bad for individual, everyday Americans, but incredibly good for Elon Musk’s pocketbook.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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President Trump has given yet more power to Elon Musk, who is now leading the effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Created in response to the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB helps enforce consumer financial laws for mortgages, credit cards and other financial products. We speak to a former CFPB staffer, Julie Margetta Morgan, who says the consumer watchdog has helped recover $21 billion lost to financial fraud and abuse in its decade-plus of existence. She says that Musk, the world’s richest man and a promoter of cryptocurrency, is attempting to eliminate sources of regulatory oversight as he plans to turn the social media company X, which he owns, into a payments platform. “The thing that stands in his way is having strong regulators who will make him play by the same rules as every other bank. … The actions over the last few weeks have been incredibly bad for individual, everyday Americans, but incredibly good for Elon Musk’s pocketbook.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Democracy Now! 2025-02-12 Wednesday
- Headlines for February 12, 2025
- Elon Musk Will Personally Profit from Dismantling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Ex-CFPB Official
- "Are We Sleepwalking into Autocracy?" Trump Embraces Authoritarian Playbook of Hungary's Orbán
- Tariq Ali on Trump's Embrace of Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza & Global Rise of the Far Right
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Democracy Now! 2025-02-12 Wednesday
- Headlines for February 12, 2025
- Elon Musk Will Personally Profit from Dismantling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Ex-CFPB Official
- "Are We Sleepwalking into Autocracy?" Trump Embraces Authoritarian Playbook of Hungary's Orbán
- Tariq Ali on Trump's Embrace of Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza & Global Rise of the Far Right
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- Netanyahu Threatens to Resume Gaza Assault as Israel Continues to Violate Ceasefire
- Trump Hosts Jordan's King Abdullah at White House, Repeats Threat to "Own" Gaza
- Family Says Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya Was Tortured by Israeli Captors
- Trump Orders Mass Layoffs of Federal Workers and Installs DOGE "Team Leads" at Agencies
- Trump and Elon Musk Defend DOGE in Bizarre Oval Office Press Conference
- White House Fires USAID's Inspector General After Scathing Report
- Court Orders Trump Administration to Halt Plans to Gut National Institutes of Health
- Senate Democrat Accuses Trump FBI Nominee Kash Patel of Perjury
- "No Uniforms, No Badge, No ID": Shocking Surveillance Video Shows Plainclothes ICE Raid
- M23 Rebels Resume Attacks in DRC, Breaking Pause in Fighting That's Killed Thousands
- Trump Welcomes Marc Fogel to White House After "Fair Deal" Wins His Release from Russian Prison
- Reporter Barred from White House Event After AP Refuses Trump's Moniker "Gulf of America"
- Trump Orders U.S. Mint to Halt Production of Pennies
- Trump Revokes Water- and Power-Saving EPA Standards and Bans Paper Straws
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Wednesday Democracy Now! show for rebroadcast – HD
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! for Broadcasters – HD MP4 and was authored by Democracy Now! for Broadcasters – HD MP4.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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We speak with the acclaimed Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd on the publication day for his new book, Perfect Victims. It comes at a time of heightened censorship and attacks on Palestinian expression in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as in the United States and elsewhere. Perfect Victims explores ongoing Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and human rights abuses and the “impossible demand made of the Palestinians” to be sympathetic in the eyes of international observers. He says that pressure leads to “curating yourself in a way that is not offensive to the Western gaze.” El-Kurd also discusses U.S. attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement, President Donald Trump’s calls for ethnically cleansing Gaza, Israeli attacks in the occupied West Bank and his own family’s history of fighting eviction from their home in East Jerusalem.
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We look at a victory for immigrant rights, after a federal judge temporarily blocked the U.S. government from deporting three Venezuelan men to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the Trump administration has started to send thousands of immigrants for detention. Our guest, Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, sought an emergency order to protect the three men, who had been held for about a year at the Otero detention center. The men say they left Venezuela to request asylum in the United States but were rejected. When they saw others from the detention center transferred to Guantánamo, they feared they could be next and asked the judge to preemptively block their transfer. This all comes as the Trump administration recently withdrew temporary protected status for Venezuelans living in the United States. “We decided we had to move and prevent their transfer, their rendition, to the lawless space in Guantánamo,” says Azmy. We also speak with Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Warren says that the United States is “facing a constitutional crisis on a range of issues, and it’s just not clear to any of us whether this administration will actually comply with the rule of law in any context.”
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Democracy Now! co-host Juan González describes how immigrant communities are organizing to fight back against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. “Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance,” he says. “It’s obvious that the neofascist coup we are witnessing will not be defeated simply by legal challenges in the courts. It will have to be confronted in the streets.”
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We look at the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on press freedom, and how the media has responded with bended knee in some cases, with Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. The Trump administration has threatened journalists and media outlets for their coverage, and the Federal Communications Commission is investigating PBS and NPR over its funding sources. Meanwhile, a number of major news organizations face accusations of surrendering to Trump’s threats. In December, ABC settled a defamation suit brought by Trump by making a $15 million donation to his future presidential library. CBS’s parent company Paramount is reportedly in talks to settle a multibillion-dollar lawsuit filed by Trump, who accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. Trump initially sought $10 billion in the lawsuit and is now seeking $20 billion. “What I see here is media organizations that have the power to fight back against Trump but aren’t doing it. I think that’s a failure of courage,” says Jaffer. “Every time one of those media organizations settles a case, the next organization finds it more difficult to resist Trump.”
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Democracy Now! Tuesday, February 11, 2025
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Watch Part 2 of our interview with reporter Chris McGreal, who was Johannesburg correspondent for The Guardian during the last years of apartheid through 2002. His new pieces for The Guardian are headlined “What does Elon Musk believe?” and “How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa.” Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, and McGreal discusses Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, who immigrated to South Africa in 1950 when apartheid became “in many ways reminiscent of the Nazi Nuremberg laws against Jews in the 1930s. They have very similar echoes in stripping Black people of the right to work in certain places, their movements, controlling them, confining them to areas.” McGreal also responds to a new report from Semafor that the South African government is examining how Musk’s companies can invest in the country without complying with the nation’s Black empowerment rules.
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In Part 2 of our interview with the acclaimed Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd, he talks in depth about stories from his new book, Perfect Victims, including about the beloved poet, academic and activist Refaat Alareer, who has finally been laid to rest, more than one year after he was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza along with his sister, brother and four nephews. His family recovered their remains after a neighbor buried them in a yard at the site of the Israeli attack. Alareer was buried in a cemetery in Gaza City’s Shuja’iyya neighborhood, where Alareer was born.
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- Gaza Ceasefire on the Brink of Collapse After Hamas Cites Israel's Violations
- Trump Says Mass Expulsion Plan for Gaza's Palestinians Doesn't Include the Right of Return
- Trump Threatens to Cut Aid to Jordan and Egypt Unless They Accept Palestinians Expelled from Gaza
- Israeli Forces Raid East Jerusalem Bookseller and Seize Books Critical of Occupation
- Federal Judge Rules Trump Unlawfully Defied Order to Unfreeze Federal Funds
- Lawmakers Join Protests at Shuttered Office of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Court Extends Deadline for Elon Musk's Offer of Buyouts for Federal Workers
- Trump Halts Enforcement of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Fires Head of Government Ethics Office
- Trump Administration Will Use IRS Criminal Unit to Pursue Undocumented Immigrants
- "Eric Adams Sold Us Out": DOJ Orders Prosecutors to Drop Case Against NYC Mayor
- Trump Pardons Ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, 5 Years After Commuting Sentence
- Senate Advances Nomination of Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence
- Sam Altman and Elon Musk Troll Each Other over OpenAI; Vance Warns EU Against Tech Regulation
- Pentagon Issues Ban on Transgender Troops; Education Dept. to End Programs for Trans Students
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Tuesday Democracy Now! show for rebroadcast – HD
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! for Broadcasters – HD MP4 and was authored by Democracy Now! for Broadcasters – HD MP4.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Israel “has moved the war from Gaza to the West Bank,” says the Palestinian National Initiative’s Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who joins us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military’s ongoing assault there has displaced over 35,000 Palestinians through evictions, destruction of infrastructure and indiscriminate attacks resulting in over 80 deaths. Barghouti also condemns Donald Trump’s declaration that the U.S. should take over the Gaza Strip. He calls both the “theft of Gaza” and the military campaign in the West Bank war crimes.
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President Trump’s targeting of South Africa is clearly tied to his influential adviser Elon Musk and a coterie of wealthy U.S. oligarchs, “all of whom in some way or other grew up in South Africa as children.” These men are known as the “PayPal Mafia” due to their involvement in the founding of the financial tech company PayPal, explains reporter Chris McGreal. McGreal, a former South Africa correspondent for The Guardian, outlines Musk’s pro-apartheid and neo-Nazi family history, which appears to form the basis of his adherence to a right-wing ideology that believes white South Africans “are the victims of the end of apartheid” and at risk of a “white genocide.”
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Democracy Now! Monday, February 10, 2025
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! Audio and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Monday Democracy Now! show for rebroadcast – HD
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! for Broadcasters – HD MP4 and was authored by Democracy Now! for Broadcasters – HD MP4.This post was originally published on Radio Free.