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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.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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The prominent British Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah remains imprisoned in Cairo even after he completed his five-year sentence last September. Fattah came to prominence during the Egyptian revolution as a blogger and political activist, and he has been jailed multiple times by the authoritarian government of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for his advocacy. His family and supporters continue to demand his freedom and have pressed the U.K. government to pressure Egypt into releasing him. Fattah’s mother Laila Soueif is now on her 117th day on hunger strike, standing on Downing Street for at least an hour every workday until her son is released. Now Australian journalist Peter Greste has launched his own hunger strike to pressure the British government, saying he owes his life to the Egyptian activist, who helped him survive when he was imprisoned in Egypt in 2013. “I quite literally owe Alaa my life,” says Greste. “He is the most popular, the most recognized political prisoner in the system, and I think they fear his capacity to mobilize people. They fear his capacity to inspire.”
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As one of his last acts in office, President Joe Biden issued a posthumous pardon for Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, who influenced Malcolm X and generations of civil rights leaders. Advocates and congressional leaders had pushed for Biden to pardon Garvey for years, with supporters arguing that Garvey’s 1923 mail fraud conviction was politically motivated and an effort to silence the popular leader who spoke of racial pride and self-reliance. “This electrified a people around the world that were in the midst of oppression,” says Howard University law professor Justin Hansford. Garvey was deported to Jamaica, his birthplace, and died in 1940 in England. Hansford says his story is important to revisit amid Republican attacks on racial justice and Black history, saying the pardon is part of a larger reckoning with U.S. racial injustice. “More of our institutions need to look back and acknowledge the harms of the past,” he says.
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As the Trump administration launches what it touts as the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history, we look at how immigrant communities and advocates are fighting back. The administration already faces some setbacks, including in its attempt to end birthright citizenship, which a federal judge halted Thursday from going into effect because it was “blatantly unconstitutional.” Thursday’s ruling is the first in what’s expected to be a long legal battle against Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. “We’re in a moment where there’s a ton of fear in the community,” says Harold Solis, legal director at Make the Road New York, which has filed its own lawsuit against the government. We also speak with Columbia University historian Mae Ngai, who says the fight over birthright citizenship is part of the long history of restrictionist immigration policies in the country. “What we’re seeing this week is shock and awe. It’s meant to terrorize,” she says. “We have to fight on all levels.”
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Democracy Now! Friday, January 24, 2025
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Democracy Now! Friday, January 24, 2025
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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While a ceasefire is largely holding in Gaza, Israel is intensifying attacks on the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military has killed at least 13 people in a major military operation targeting Jenin that began on Tuesday when Israeli troops raided the city, backed by airstrikes, drones and U.S.-made Apache helicopters, following a six-week siege. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers in the West Bank have been “emboldened” by Trump’s lifting of sanctions on far-right Israeli settler groups. Further violence is increasingly likely, says Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian writer and journalist based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. “We’re seeing Israel wage a war that very much resembles the practices they have committed in Gaza,” with Palestinians left “completely defenseless,” she says. “It’s a very slow slaughter of Palestinians. If you survive a bullet, you don’t know if you’re going to survive daily life.”
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In one of his first executive orders after taking office, President Trump ordered the United States to withdraw from the U.N.’s World Health Organization, putting numerous WHO programs at risk, including efforts to tackle tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, says the move is a “grave mistake for American national interests and our national security,” as well as “an attack on science, public health and public health institutions.” He warns that the U.S. will likely fall behind on public health innovation and disease prevention, putting the country and the world at greater risk to “the next pandemic.”
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Democracy Now! Thursday, January 23, 2025
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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The Trump administration has begun its crackdown on immigrant communities in the United States, with the Department of Homeland Security announcing Tuesday it will allow federal agents to conduct raids at schools, houses of worship and hospitals, ending a yearslong policy that banned Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from arresting people at these sensitive locations. This comes a day after President Trump signed a series of executive orders that included declaring a “national emergency” at the southern border, launching mass raids and deportations, restricting federal funds from sanctuary cities, and claiming to end birthright citizenship, which is protected by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. For more on the fight for immigrant rights, we speak with immigrant rights activists Ravi Ragbir and Amy Gottlieb and lawyer Alina Das. Ragbir received a last-minute pardon from outgoing President Joe Biden that removed the threat of deportation that he has faced for about two decades. “I feel so light and so free,” Ragbir says, vowing to continue his advocacy for other people facing arrest and deportation.
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Many Silicon Valley companies and their billionaire owners have formed “a symbiotic relationship” with Donald Trump, showering the president and his administration with money and adulation in exchange for friendly policies, according to researcher Becca Lewis. She says that while Silicon Valley has always had reactionary currents, the Biden administration’s stricter regulation of the industry led to a decisive break with Democrats, who had previously benefited from Big Tech’s cash and influence. “Now you see a wholehearted embrace of Trump with the hopes of deregulation,” says Lewis.
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President Donald Trump’s return to the White House comes almost exactly 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Citizens United ruling, which opened the floodgates for corporations and billionaires to pour unlimited money into elections. At Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the front row included several of the world’s richest and most powerful men, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook and Google’s Sundar Pichai. Their collective net worth is over $1 trillion. For more on money in politics and the legacy of Citizens United, we speak with Brendan Fischer, the deputy executive director at Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project. “Democrats and Republicans have both embraced super PACs and embraced the megadonors that fund them, but Trump is taking this to another level,” says Fischer, who notes that about 44% of Trump’s election was funded by just 10 megadonors.
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Democracy Now! Wednesday, January 22, 2025
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