An estimated 5 million people around the world took to the streets last weekend in the largest show of resistance yet to President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The “Hands Off!” protesters expressed outrage over Elon Musk’s dismantling of federal agencies and programs through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the mass firing of federal workers, and attacks on the rights of immigrants and trans people. Two-thirds of attendees at the Hands Off rally in Washington, D.C. — which drew an estimated 100,000 people, according to organizers — named climate change as one of their top motivations for participating. That’s according to data from Dana Fisher, a sociologist at American University, whose team surveyed the protesters.
The protests were peaceful, with marchers sticking to pre-approved routes and refraining from the kind of civil disobedience that can lead to arrest. That’s in contrast to the array of new tactics the climate movement has implemented in recent years, from the disruptive (blocking roads) to the just plain weird (throwing tomato soup at the glass in front of a Vincent van Gogh painting). These tactics are often unpopular, raising concerns about backlash. But there’s mounting evidence that they work — especially in tandem with more mainstream efforts.
A new review of 50 recent studies finds that protests tend to sway media coverage and public opinion toward the climate cause, without appearing to backfire, even when disruptive tactics are used. The researchers, from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, found that collective action sometimes influenced elections by shifting people’s voting behavior. One study in Germany, for example, found that the Green Party received a larger portion of the vote in areas where climate protests took place.
“People only have so much stamina and attention and will to keep fighting in the face of insurmountable odds,” said Laura Thomas-Walters, a co-author of the review and an activist with Extinction Rebellion U.K. “Let’s use it as effectively as possible.” Thomas-Walters argues that disruption should be aimed at institutions that prop up the status quo, such as banks, corporations, universities, and pension funds, in order to influence decision-makers.
Her review found real-life evidence of the “radical flank effect,” the idea that a more extreme climate group can increase support for more mainstream groups. Two weeks after the group Just Stop Oil blocked a major road around London in November 2022, the public’s support increased for a more moderate group, Friends of the Earth, according to a study published last fall. “You know, it’s ultimately like a good-cop, bad-cop approach,” said James Ozden, a co-author of that study and the founder of the Social Change Lab in London, which conducts research on the effects of protests.
Last month, Just Stop Oil announced that it was ending its three-year resistance campaign, claiming it had achieved its demand of ending new oil and gas licenses in the United Kingdom. But that success came with a cost: Dozens of the group’s protesters have faced jail time. According to Fisher, who has been studying climate activism for two and a half decades, that’s not a fluke. “Activists are met with repression when their activism is starting to resonate and work,” she said.
Just Stop Oil supporters protest outside a court building in London as activists appear in court for different actions, including spilling tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting. Lab Ky Mo / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Climate protests might even lead to reductions in emissions, the review found, though these effects are hard to study and the evidence is still limited. For instance, parts of the U.S. with lower levels of protests during the initial Earth Day in 1970 had higher levels of air pollution 20 years later, compared to places that had better turnout. More recently, a wildly unpopular campaign called Insulate Britain, which blocked roads and demanded that the government retrofit all homes in the United Kingdom, eventually got some of what it wanted, with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson drawing up plans to insulate thousands of homes in 2022.
There are questions, however, about how these results apply to the rapidly changing political environment in the U.S. in the nearly three months since Trump took office. “The political stakes for protest, and the risks around protest as well as the tactics that will work and won’t work, are changing quite substantially,” Fisher said.
Organizers have recently been inspired by research that looks at efforts in other countries to counter authoritarianism, said Saul Levin, the director of campaigns and politics at the Green New Deal Network, a coalition of climate, labor, and justice organizations. He pointed to a paper from last year, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, that found that a democracy has a substantially higher chance of surviving a political push toward autocracy when there’s a strong public resistance. Based on 35 case studies in countries around the world since 1991, the authors found that there was an 8 percent chance of democracy persisting when there was no active anti-authoritarian movement, compared to a 52 percent chance when an active movement existed.
Through surveys of protesters, Fisher has found that climate activists want to remain peaceful, even as she’s seen an alarming increase in support for political violence among left-leaning activists generally. “I do think that it is important to remember that some of the most effective movements that we’ve seen in the United States, as well as globally, have been movements that embrace and commit to peaceful resistance,” Fisher said. “That being said, one of the reasons that those movements have been so successful is because they were met with repression and violence from the state.” In many cases, attempts to repress protests actually fuel resistance and mobilize people.
“The whole idea of the Green New Deal,” Levin said, “was that in order to solve climate change, we need to harness the power of the federal government. They’re destroying the federal government. So inherent to the success of solving climate change is defending these institutions.”
This week on CounterSpin: We’re learning from Jonah Valdez at the Intercept that the Trump administration is now revoking visas and immigration statuses of hundreds of international students under the Student Exchange and Visitor Program—not just those active in pro-Palestinian advocacy, or those with criminal records of any sort. It is, says one immigration attorney, “a concerted effort to go after people who are from countries and religions that the Trump administration wants to get out of the country.”
It is disheartening to see a report like one in Newsweek, about how Trump “loves the idea” of sending US citizens to prisons outside of US jurisdiction, that feels it has to start by explaining “Why It Matters.” But things as they are, we have to be grateful for what straight reporting we get—at a time when some outlets are signing on to shut up if it buys them a moment of peace, which it won’t—and a moment in which staying informed, paying attention, learning what’s happening and how we can stop it, is what we have to work with.
Activists with the campaign group Youth Demand were met with violence and abuse from members of the public on Friday 11 April, as they staged a peaceful protest in central London to draw attention to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. At one point, a lorry driver could be seen accelerating his vehicle directly into activists – until the police finally intervened.
So, in the face of this repression – what does the Telegraph do? Poke fun at Youth Demand and side with the abusive public (and of course, Israel).
Youth Demand facing increasing aggression
Activists, who temporarily blocked traffic in Moorgate at Farringdon Road and Fenchurch Street,, were pelted with eggs by bystanders in a disturbing show of public aggression:
It seems odd that passers by in the middle of the City of London would be carrying enough eggs just to do this on the spur of the moment. As the Canary previously reported, earlier Youth Demand actions this month were targeted by the organised far-right and Zionists.
The protest was part of a sustained campaign by Youth Demand, a growing youth-led movement calling for the UK government to end arms sales to Israel and to take meaningful action against what they rightfully term a genocidal war on the people of Gaza. Demonstrators also demanded that MPs cease taking donations from pro-Israel lobby groups.
At one point on 11 April, a lorry driver was filmed trying to run over Youth Demand supporters:
This is not the first time the public have assaulted Youth Demand supporters. As the Canary previously reported, just yesterday a bystander attacked a non-violent activist, knocking her out and causing her to have two seizures.
MSM complicity with genocide
However, rather than addressing the substance of the protest—the UK’s complicity in Israel’s military actions—the Telegraph chose to mock the young campaigners, dismissively likening them to “Just Stop Oil 2.0” and focusing disproportionately on traffic delays.
This tone reflects a broader media trend of minimising or obscuring the devastating human cost of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
At the time of writing, Israel has killed more than 50,000 people in Gaza since October 2023. This includes over 15,000 children, a harrowing statistic that is too often left unmentioned in mainstream UK media coverage.
Yet, instead of engaging with these shocking figures or the evidence of war crimes—including the targeting of civilian infrastructure, hospitals, and journalists—outlets like the Telegraph continue to centre discomfort to commuters over the mass deaths of civilians.
Youth Demand: courage in the face of repression
Youth Demand’s actions are part of a proud tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience. Faced with a government that has shown little inclination to act, and a media environment more concerned with demonising dissent and propping up Israel than reporting on mass atrocities, these young activists are stepping into the moral vacuum.
Their bravery contrasts starkly with the response of those who assaulted them, egging young people for daring to care about a genocide. Such hostility—enabled and amplified by an irresponsible press—is a reminder of the steep social cost activists face for standing on the right side of history.
As Israeli bombs continue to fall on Gaza, and as the death toll rises daily, the actions of Youth Demand should not be ridiculed—they should be applauded.
Rather than throwing eggs, we should be throwing our weight behind their urgent call for justice.
Microsoft fired two workers who protested the company’s ties to Israel’s assault on Gaza at its 50th anniversary celebration last Friday. The workers protested after leaked documents revealed that Microsoft supplies the Israeli military with AI and cloud technology, as well as an Air Force unit known as the Ofek, to build “kill lists.” “We wanted everyone to know that Microsoft’s cloud and AI are the bombs and bullets of the 21st century,” says Vaniya Agrawal, No Azure for Apartheid organizer and a former Microsoft employee who was fired after disrupting an April 4 discussion between current and former Microsoft CEOs, including Bill Gates.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Microsoft fired two workers who protested the company’s ties to Israel’s assault on Gaza at its 50th anniversary celebration last Friday. The workers protested after leaked documents revealed that Microsoft supplies the Israeli military with AI and cloud technology, as well as an Air Force unit known as the Ofek, to build “kill lists.” “We wanted everyone to know that Microsoft’s cloud and AI are the bombs and bullets of the 21st century,” says Vaniya Agrawal, No Azure for Apartheid organizer and a former Microsoft employee who was fired after disrupting an April 4 discussion between current and former Microsoft CEOs, including Bill Gates.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
A Youth Demand supporter has been violently assaulted by a passer-by as she took part in non-violent action.
She was knocked out and suffered two seizures while on a demonstration with other supporters:
The group were there to demand that the UK government impose a total trade embargo on Israel, and make the super rich and fossil fuel elite pay damages to communities and countries most harmed by fossil fuel burning.
Youth Demand attacked by the public – again
27 supporters of Youth Demand worked in two teams to block traffic on Buckingham Palace Road and Waterloo Road. They then unfurled banners reading ‘Youth Demand an End to Genocide’ and ‘Stop Arming Israel’, and let off smoke flares. Police arrived shortly after and issued a warning under Section 7 of the Public Order Act. Both teams left the road after approximately 15 minutes.
The groups then combined and re-emerged at Holborn Circus where they blocked traffic again:
The group was stood in the road facing traffic:
This is where Zahra, 40, from Newcastle was assaulted. She said:
We were on Holborn crossing. There was a sudden sharp pain at the back of my head, and lights out. I was knocked out and suffered two seizures. I was treated in the back of an ambulance that arrived. I feel violated, violated that someone came behind me to attack me.
I think this was an Islamophobic incident. Because I’m visibly Islamic, I’ve got an Niqaab and an Abaya on, its easy to see I’m of faith. I will continue take action with Youth Demand – one prick won’t stop me.
Zahra continued:
I took direct action today as a niqab wearing Muslim woman because marches have not worked. Those of us of Islamic faith have a responsibility to support our brothers and sisters in Palestine. It is time for niqab wearing women to say stop the bombing and slaughter of innocent children. Stop arming Israel.
None of the other action takers saw who attacked Zahra, as they were all facing in the same direction. A video clip taken shows a man shoving a group of Youth Demand supporters, leaving Zahra with a head injury.
‘Sickening’
A spokesperson for Youth Demand said:
The attack on a peaceful Youth Demand supporter today was sickening. Violent prejudice like this is driving the genocide in Gaza.
The casual violence and ongoing cruelty we see demonstrates that the elites, politicians, and businesses have openly declared war on a civilian population.
They continued:
Netanyahu, who has a warrant issue for his arrest by the International Criminal Court, is freely travelling the globe while the men, women and children of Gaza are kept in an open air prison and treated as target practice by the Israeli Defence Force.
This is what our government is complicit in, they will not protect us, when the storms of the climate crisis are on our threshold, they will not care.
Mark Preston, a student from Cambridge at the action, said:
I am taking action with Youth Demand today because I feel that I must.
I have no choice but to resist the genocidal UK government, who are determined to raze Palestine to the ground, and to make our planet unliveable.
We have a simple choice facing us today: we can comply with our genocidal government and allow them to slaughter Palestinians by the thousands, destroy our planet, and repress our right to protest, or we can resist, take power into our own hands and bring the imperial regime to its knees. I choose to resist.
Call to action from Youth Demand
The actions come against a backdrop of ongoing atrocities in Gaza and geopolitical uncertainty. President Macron has said that France plans to recognise a Palestinian state within months and could make the move at a UN conference in New York in June on settling the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Meanwhile Trump is reportedly pushing Netanyahu to end the Gaza war within weeks as part of a broader Middle East strategy that includes normalisation with Saudi Arabia.
Israel has persistently denied that its political leaders or military have committed war crimes during its assault on Gaza, in which it has killed more than 50,000 people, most of them civilians. However, a war crimes complaint against 10 Britons who served with the Israeli military was submitted to the police this week. The UK continues to support genocide by supplying arms, whilst conducting more surveillance flights on behalf of Israel over Gaza than any other country.
This is not the first time this week the public have attacked Youth Demand supporters. As the Canary previously reported, on 8 April at a road block a man assaulted members of Youth Demand and tried to steal a journalist’s camera. As the Canary wrote:
Youth Demand are peacefully deploying mid-level civil disobedience in the face of cataclysmic world events. Yet here in the West, agents of the state and the public still believe they can go about their daily business like nothing is happening – and that any disruption to this is disastrous.
Phoebe Plummer was found guilty of conspiracy at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday 9 April, while the jury was unable to reach a verdict for her co-defendant. The pair took action with Just Stop Oil in November 2022 to demand an end to new oil and gas.
Phoebe Plummer: guilty again
Guido Wieser (21) and Phoebe Plummer (23) were on trial at Southwark Crown Court in front of Judge Cole in relation to their role in the actions that caused gridlock on the M25 between 7 and 10 November 2022.
Both defendants were arrested on 10 November 2022 after a vehicle they were travelling in was stopped by police. Phoebe Plummer was held in custody for a month before being released on a three-month electronic tag in connection with the charge.
Phoebe has been bailed until 15 May, when they will be sentenced alongside David Mann and Christopher Ford who pleaded guilty to the charges before trial.
During the trial, the judge ruled out all legal defences that would have allowed the defendants to argue that they were exercising their rights to protest in the face of the grave threat to humanity posed by the climate crisis. The Crown Prosecution Service had previously accepted as agreed facts the findings of the 2020 Net Zero Interim report, which stated:
Climate change is an existential threat to humanity. Without global action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will change catastrophically with almost unimaginable consequences for societies across the world.
In their closing speech, Phoebe Plummer said:
In the body-worn footage of my arrest, one of the things I say is that scientists predict that soon there will be one billion climate refugees globally. The latest peer reviewed science predicts that we will reach that by 2030. One billion is a number so large that I find it difficult to comprehend.
Those people are not a number, or a statistic. They are real people, with names and faces, real people who haven’t caused this crisis, who aren’t to blame, but who are going to lose their homes, their safety, and possibly their lives. I agreed to climb a gantry in November 2022, because I thought it might have an impact that could reduce this suffering.
Another dodgy judge presiding over a Just Stop Oil case
Speaking before the verdict, Phoebe Plummer said:
The courts routinely deny us the ability to justify our actions as reasonable, proportionate and necessary and tell jurors not to acquit a defendant based on their conscience, leaving little leeway to return anything but a guilty verdict. Despite this, I stand by my actions and will not be deterred from engaging in necessary acts of nonviolent civil resistance to oppose injustice.
At one point during the trial the Judge threatened to order the arrests of anyone sitting outside the court holding placards referencing jury equity – the principle that juries can deliver verdicts based on their conscience.
This appeared to contradict a High Court ruling by Justice Saini in the Trudi Warner case last year. However, Judge Cole later backtracked from his view, calling such a measure “too extreme”.
In the second M25 conspiracy trial last month, six supporters were acquitted, while two—Ian Bates and Abigail Percy-Ratcliffe—were found guilty and now await sentencing. The first gantry conspiracy trial saw unprecedented custodial sentences, including five-year and four-year terms for members of the ‘Whole Truth Five’—the longest sentences in UK history for peaceful protest.
Those sentences were partially overturned in March by the Court of Appeal, which ruled that the defendants’ conscientious motivations and article 10 and 11 rights under the ECHR had been improperly disregarded at the time of sentencing.
Despite Phoebe Plummer’s verdict, Just Stop Oil says it “will continue to stand with those being prosecuted for peaceful resistance to fossil fuel expansion in the face of rapidly accelerating climate collapse”.
A social worker and rights activist was sentenced Wednesday to three years and nine months in prison for participating in a riot during Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests.
Jackie Chen was one of several social workers who tried to mediate between police and demonstrators. She carried a loudspeaker and urged police to use restraint and to refrain from firing non-lethal bullets during a protest that took place on Aug. 31, 2019.
At Wednesday’s hearing in the Hong Kong district court, three co-defendants were sentenced to two years and five months in prison after entering a guilty plea. Chen, who pleaded guilty and got the stiffer sentence, had faced up to seven years in prison.
Police made more than 10,000 arrests during and after the 2019 protests, which began as a show of mass public anger at plans to allow the extradition of alleged criminal suspects to mainland China.
They broadened to include demands for fully democratic elections and greater official accountability.
Chen was acquitted in 2020, but prosecutors appealed and won a retrial in another example of the harsh stance that Hong Kong authorities have taken with political cases.
When Chen was convicted last month, Judge May Chung wrote in her verdict that Chen used her position as a social worker to support the protesters and used the loudspeaker to shout unfounded accusations against the police.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Cantonese.
Direct action group Youth Demand has made April the month they ‘shut it down for Palestine’ in London. Rightly so, given the unprecedented scale of violence and war crimes Israel is meting out in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian territories.
However, Youth Demand have been met with what it calls ‘unprecedented repression’ in London – as its wildcat shut downs clearly start to rattle the state and subservient members of the public.
Youth Demand: mashing up the capital
As the Canaryhas been documenting, Youth Demand have been taking direct action in London. It’s over Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and war crimes and human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
It also staged a protest outside foreign secretary David Lammy’s home address – in what the group has now dubbed ‘Silence of the Lammy’:
However, it has been the road blocks and rallies that have been most frowned upon by the state and the public.
Cops and the public: cracking down
As the Canary previously reported, a rally outside Senate House Library grabbed the attention of the far right. Then, on Tuesday 8 April another rally, this time at the Ministry of Defence, saw cops nick one activist for ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
Also on 8 April at a road block a man assaulted members of Youth Demand and tried to steal a journalist’s camera. As one social media user put it:
This man decided it was a good idea to assault activists this morning, throwing several of them to the floor before grabbing a journalist’s camera and attempting to snatch it off his neck.
Imagine being more angered by a 10 minute delay than 20,000 dead children.
In UK law, “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” refers to an agreement between two or more people to intentionally or recklessly cause a public nuisance, which is now a statutory offense under Section 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2022. This replaced a previous common law offence.
In other words, this is cops and the so-called justice system policing pre-crime: nicking people for planning to do something, rather than actually doing it. Of course, under the Tories PCSC Act this is not new.
The state jailed the Just Stop Oil ‘Whole Truth Five’ for years for organising but not taking part in a protest. Similarly, the state used this argument against a member of Palestine Action.
Just think about this for a minute.
The world is ending – but think of the nuisance from Youth Demand
The Canary has, in the past few hours, reported on Israel burning journalist Ahmad Mansour alive in a tent. He is now dead. Many readers will have seen on social media the image of a decapitated baby; decapitated by Israel when it bombed a UN refugee camp. 50,000 slaughtered Palestinians – mostly women and children – later, yet sycophantic cops and servile members of the public think it’s Youth Demand causing the nuisance in society?
Our world stands on a knife edge – more so perhaps than any time in human history. From the climate crisis to brazen far-right authoritarianism in supposed democracies in the West via Israel’s impunity to commit genocide and a sixth extinction event – the ‘world order’ those in power sell us is falling apart at the seams. Humans will be lucky to make it another half-century.
Youth Demand is rightly responding to this. And let’s be honest, the group’s actions are hardly earth-shattering.
They are peacefully deploying mid-level civil disobedience in the face of cataclysmic world events. Yet here in the West, agents of the state and the public still believe they can go about their daily business like nothing is happening – and that any disruption to this is disastrous.
Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy, and let it be a war of extermination.
Given how the rich and powerful kill the rest of us with impunity day in, day out – maybe she had a point.
However, for now it’s Youth Demand (and others like Palestine Action) on the front line in the UK at least. And given the scale of persecution and repression that’s building around them. they need all our solidarity and support right now.
Featured image and additional images via the Youth Demand
After the biggest anti-Trump protests since the 2017 Women’s March, many major media outlets seemed intent on downplaying the size and significance of the massive demonstration of opposition.
The Washington Post (4/6/25) relegated protesters “across the US” to the Metro section.
Despite the scale and significance of the protests, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post had stories about them on their front pages the next day.
The Washington Post (4/6/25) had a thumbnail at the bottom of the front page with the blurb “Metro: Thousands gather in DC as protesters rally across the US against Trump.”
The New York Times (4/6/25) had a photo below the fold that was captioned: “A Day of Protest: People gathered around the country, including in Asheville, NC, to voice opposition to Trump administration policies. Page 18.”
“People gathered around the country” was how the New York Times (4/6/25) downplayed the massive wave of protest.
A Timesblurb promoting the story in a roundup of stories about “The Trump Administration’s First Hundred Days” minimized the scale and seriousness of the event:
Anti-Trump Protests: Demonstrators packed the streets in several cities to bemoan what they considered a lack of strong opposition to the president and his policies.
The verb “bemoan” is clearly belittling, and the focus of both organizers and participants was obviously on Trump (and Musk), not on the weakness of their opponents. And since when is 1,400 “several”?
The downplaying of the story couldn’t be explained by a lack of audience interest; indeed, people seemed extremely eager to hear about the protests. The protest coverage buried in the Times‘ print edition was the paper’s most-clicked article online that day, according to the paper’s Morning newsletter (4/7/25).
Little broadcast coverage
ABC‘s Good Morning America (4/6/25) offered protesters a few soundbites to speak for themselves.
The major broadcast networks gave the massive protests only passing coverage in most of their programming. On ABC, World News Tonight (4/5/25) gave only 20 seconds to a correspondent in Washington, DC, to explain the signs she was seeing. The network’s morning show, Good Morning America (4/6/25), offered a bit more, with a few soundbites given to protesters to speak for themselves. In a recent FAIR study (4/4/25) of protest coverage, ABC stood out for its blackout of nationwide anti-Trump protests that, even before this past weekend, already outnumbered protests in the same time period during Trump’s first term.
CBS Face the Nation (4/6/25) told viewers that “tens of thousands of people took to the streets yesterday from Washington, DC, to Minnesota and Columbus, Ohio, protesting many of Trump’s policies, Elon Musk and tariffs.” CBS Weekend News (4/6/25) included a short description of the protests only in the context of Trump’s tariffs, airing a soundbite of a protester speaking against them. CBS Sunday Morning (4/6/25) had another, even briefer mention of the protests, in an interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders.
A report on NBC Nightly News (4/5/25) mentioned “huge turnouts” and “protests in nearly every state.” The item featured several short soundbites from protesters. Meet the Press (4/6/25) also mentioned the protests briefly, with images.
Undercounting dissent
AP (via Politico, 4/5/25) reported that “thousands of protesters assailed Trump.”
NPR All Things Considered (4/5/25) told listeners that “thousands” gathered to protest Trump and Musk. So did the Associated Press (4/5/25)—whose credibility in the crowd-counting department could be judged by the article’s claim that the 2017 Women’s March also only saw “thousands.” (An effort at the time by the Washington Post to tally the US participants came up with a range of 3 million to 5 million—2/7/17.)
ABC World News Tonight (4/5/25) announced that “thousands” gathered on the National Mall in DC.
Over an otherwise commendable piece that compiled interviews with protesters in 11 cities and towns across the country, a USA Today subhead (4/5/25) also estimated “thousands.” It did so despite the fact that the piece led by reporting that “tens of thousands of people are gathering Saturday at rallies across the country”—itself a clear underestimate. The piece later explained that “more than 500,000 people have RSVP’d to attend” the protests, and that “protesters stretched as far as the eye could see along the National Mall and the crowd had been flowing toward the base of the Washington monument for hours.”
Given that there were some 1,400 separate protest events, it’s laughable to suggest that only “thousands” attended. Even if only 10 people showed up to each event, you’d have “tens of thousands”—but every event the paper reported on from small towns and cities (like Stuart, Florida) had at least several hundred if not thousands, while the DC and NYC events appeared to have at least 100,000 participants apiece (American Crisis, 4/8/25). Boston’s protest was reported locally to have involved “nearly 100,000” (CBS‘s WBZ, 4/6/25; NBC Boston, 4/7/25).
It would not be difficult for news organizations with resources like the national newspapers or major TV networks to produce credible estimates of crowd numbers at significant events. The fact that they don’t bother to do so reflects the scant importance these outlets place on the role of protests in the democratic process. Corporate media journalists are apt to regard protesters as akin to spectators rushing onto the field during a game, interfering with an activity best left to professionals.
Better reporting?
CNN.com (4/5/25; “updated” 4/6/25) edited this piece to change an initial “millions of people took part in protests” to a ridiculous “scores.”
CNN stood out among major corporate outlets for not underestimating the size and scope of the protests, with coverage of the protests in most of its shows over the weekend. The network repeatedly cited organizers’ estimates of at least 1,400 protest events across all 50 states, totaling “millions” of attendees (e.g., CNN This Morning, 4/6/25; CNN Inside Politics, 4/6/25). CNN correspondents in multiple US cities described the messages they heard and saw, and they also interviewed protesters on-air to let them speak for themselves.
CNN‘s online account (4/5/25) of the protests, however, originally reported that “millions of people took part in protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk across all 50 states and globally on Saturday,” but was stealth-edited on April 6 to ludicrously claim that “scores of people took part in protests.” We would be interested in hearing CNN‘s explanation for this self-evidently absurd alteration.
On CNN‘s Newsroom (4/6/25), as an indication of heightened interest in Trump opposition, senior data reporter Harry Enten pointed out that Googlesearches for the word “protests” were
up 1,200% versus a year ago…. We see that the percent in number of folks who are searching for protests, interested in going out in those protests is finally matching what we saw in January of 2017, if not exceeding it.
Axios (4/5/25) also reported organizers’ “millions” estimate, including their 500,000 RSVPs and their reports from the field that turnout was far exceeding those RSVPs. (For instance, they reported getting 2,000 RSVPs for Raleigh, NC, where they ultimately saw some 45,000 in attendance.)
Some local papers in the Gannett chain (which also owns USA Today) usefully offered readers information about the protests planned for their states before they took place (e.g., Columbus Dispatch, 4/2/25; Florida’s TCPalm.com, 4/5/25). These stories included why people were protesting, and the times and locations of every scheduled Hands Off! protest in their respective states.
Such coverage treats readers as citizens, and protesting as a basic part of a democratic system—not as an inconsequential sideshow, which is how it’s generally presented in corporate media.
Two Youth Demand supporters have laid body bags at David Lammy’s door to highlight his role in continuing to facilitate Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The supporters are demanding that the UK government impose a total trade embargo on Israel, and make the super rich and fossil fuel elite pay damages to communities and countries most harmed by fossil fuel burning.
Youth Demand: making a stark statement for David Lammy
At around 11am on Tuesday 8 April, two Youth Demand supporters displayed a sign over the foreign secretary’s hedge which read- ‘Lammy Stop Arming Genocide’:
At his door the pair laid child-sized body bags representing the 17,400 children that we know of who have been murdered during Israel’s genocidal rampage since 7 October 2023:
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
David Lammy has admitted that Israel is in breach of international law and yet the UK has cancelled less than 10% of arms sales to Israel. 90% complicity with murder is still complicity with murder. History will rightly view those that supported the systematic slaughter of children with absolute contempt, and David Lammy will be held to account for not having the spine to cease trading with Israel and halting British armed forces from assisting this genocide.
This action came as two groups of Youth Demand supporters once again took to the streets at around 9am, disrupting traffic at Commercial Street, Angel Junction, and Tower Bridge:
The groups could be seen holding banners which read ‘Youth Demand an End to Genocide’ and ‘Stop Arming Israel’:
How can we be trading with a genocidal state?
One of those taking action was Sue Houseman, a mum from Lancaster, who said:
For years I’ve worked with children, helping them understand what’s right and what’s wrong and giving them the confidence to use their voice and to speak up. Our government is breaking international humanitarian law and they are allowing Israel to murder children en masse. We’re providing them with the resources, the bombs, the surveillance equipment they need to kill children day in, day out and the UK government are not doing anything to stop it. If, like me, you are not prepared to put up with that, then please take action this April with Youth Demand.
Also taking action was Cristy North, 37, a live-in carer from Nottingham, who said:
How can we be trading with and arming a genocidal state? The UK government is breaking domestic and international law by doing so. I cannot sit back and watch a genocide take place. I originally come from South Africa. I was a lot younger when apartheid was happening there and I couldn’t do anything about it, but I saw the trauma and the effect it has had on people there and it makes me incredibly sad for this to be happening now in Palestine. We cannot sit back and do nothing, we must call on the government to impose a trade embargo on Israel, because as we saw with apartheid in South Africa, that was the final nail in the coffin that ended apartheid.
The UK is complicit with Israel’s genocide
Israel kills a child every 45 minutes in Gaza. That is an average of 30 children killed every day over the past 535 days. At least 17,400 children have been killed since 7 October 2023 and many more remain lost in rubble. 1,720 of these were babies and one year olds. About half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are children and over the past 17 months, Israeli attacks have left their homes in ruins, destroyed their schools, and overwhelmed their healthcare facilities.
Meanwhile, the UK continues to actively support this genocide. British military bases, arms exports, and logistical support are instrumental in sustaining Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. UK-made components are being utilised in the F-35 fighter jets that have been deployed extensively in Gaza. British citizens have also actively served in Israel’s armed forces, directly contributing to atrocities.
Last month, David Lammy admitted in the House of Commons that Israel’s blockade preventing humanitarian supplies into Gaza, was a breach of international humanitarian law. The government subsequently rowed back on these comments stating their position was that Israel’s actions in Gaza were at ‘clear risk‘ of breaching international humanitarian law.
On April 5, 100,000 gathered at the Washington Monument to tell the Trump administration in no uncertain terms that the DOGE attacks on federal workers at Veterans Affairs, Social Security, the Consumer Finance Bureau, USAID, and more were harming not only Americans but our relationships worldwide. Congressmen Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Al Green (D-TX), and John Garamandi (D-CA) shared with TRNN reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis their determination to fight, the need for a groundswell of public support and Congressman Green’s plan to end President Trump’s term early by filing articles of impeachment.
Videography / Production: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis
Transcript
A transcript will be made available as soon as possible.
Activists linked to campaign group Extinction Rebellion aged four to 83 have occupied the road outside BP St James’s Square London HQ to demand the oil giant reverse their controversial decision to scrap the previous shareholder-backed energy transition strategy.
BP: ‘don’t play games with our futures’
Dozens of school children were at the protest with their families, taking part in themed activities and writing letters to BP CEO, Murray Auchincloss in response to his company’s change of tack.
At the protest the CEO’s face features on signs reading: “WANTED For Destroying Our Future”:
Over the weekend, Chris Packham “sparked fury” according to the Daily Express when he helped erect similar Wanted posters featuring BP’s CEO on London Underground trains:
We've focussed on the big names , Shell , Exxon , BP , but these companies are run by people . People who hide behind those brands to keep their anonymity .
These corporations , and their leaders , are committing ecocide and they must be held accountable .
Extinction Rebellion’s road occupation featured an oil-themed snakes-and-ladders called Turbine and Pipeline:
There were school lollipop ladies carrying lollipops saying “Stop” and “BP no U-Turn”; banners reading “Don’t Play Games With Our Children’s Futures” and “Big Profits Before People”:
The Oil Slickers were in flowing black robes:
Drummers and BP sunflower logos dripping with oil were also present:
In an emotive display one activist dressed as a BP executive slowly poured oil over three kneeling rebels, and then onto a long row of empty children’s shoes lined up in front of the building, symbolising what BP’s strategy U-turn means for our children’s futures:
Lobbying from dark money think tanks
BP’s board has been criticised for not giving shareholders the opportunity to vote on the strategy U-turn after a majority of shareholders endorsed the previous plan in 2023.
The board is investing in what could become stranded assets, and even betting against its own analysts’ forecasts. Even shareholders who don’t prioritize climate risk should be concerned about BP’s financial stability.
In 2018 BP were revealed to be the “dark money” behind the Tufton Street charity the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a secretive right wing think tank paid to influence government ministers. BP had been funding them every year for the last 51 years.
In return, the IEA lobbied ministers on issues ranging from safety and environmental standards to tax rates, and advocated for increased North Sea drilling and a revival of fracking.
Monday’s action was a collaboration between XR’s Cut The Ties To Fossil Fuels campaign, XR Families, and XR Grandparents And Elders.
BP: it must be stopped
BBC wildlife presenter and campaigner Chris Packham said:
BP’s U-turn shows oil companies were never serious about the green transition. It’s clear that unless we stop them they will burn every last drop of oil – while their shareholders fill their pockets.
That means we’ll see more flooding, superstorms, drought and hunger. And no future for our kids. The free market isn’t fixing this – the government needs to regulate these companies or change their legal structure.
The government is allowing continuing ‘greenwash’ of fossil fuel companies through their advertising and sponsorship. If, like me, you believe there should be a ban on this, please sign my parliamentary petition so we can get a debate in parliament.
Katherine Hill, 45, a maternity worker present at the action with her three children said:
We are here because of the U-turn. BP is doubling down on planet-killing fossil fuel extraction and slashing renewable investments. We are here to question and to make these climate criminals think about all the young lives they are condemning to a hothouse planet.
Caroline Hartnell, 74, grandmother from Wandsworth, London also present said:
BP has cynically used its immense power and wealth to influence government energy policy to maximise oil and gas extraction, despite the clear scientific consensus that continuing to burn fossil fuels is accelerating climate change and will kill billions of people. They are burning my children and grandchildren’s future and they are clearly not going to stop or even slow down. These people should be in the dock for what they are doing.
Featured image and additional images via Gareth Morris and Kirk Pritchard
Dozens of Youth Demand supporters have taken to the streets, demanding that the UK government impose a total trade embargo on Israel, and make the super rich and fossil fuel elite pay damages to communities and countries most harmed by fossil fuel burning.
The actions were a surprise – as the group had previously stated it would be taking direct action every Tuesday and Saturday during April. This wildcat swarm seems to indicate that Youth Demand will be causing more disruption than previously thought – and rightly so:
Good morning London, we are shutting it DOWN!
We will stop business as usual until the Government enforces a full trade embargo on Israel and ends its complicity in genocide. It’s as simple as that.
At around 9am on Monday 7 April, 35 supporters of Youth Demand in two teams blocked traffic on Kensington Gore, near the Royal Albert Hall and at Poultry, near the Bank of England.
They stepped onto pedestrian crossings while the lights were red, unfurled banners reading ‘Youth Demand an End to Genocide’ and ‘Stop Arming Israel’, and let off smoke flares:
Police arrived shortly after and issued a warning under Section 7 of the Public Order Act. Both teams left the road after approximately 15 minutes.
The two groups reemerged at Elephant and Castle and at Holborn where they blocked traffic again:
Then, at around 12:15 the groups combined to disrupt traffic on Vauxhall Bridge near Milbank, where a motorcyclist drove through a banner, ripping it from the hands of the Youth Demand supporters. The teams left the road after around 20 minutes. There were no arrests:
One of those taking action was Carlos Español-Espinel, 33, a PhD student from Cambridge, who said
Israel is continuing to slaughter Palestinian children, aid workers, medics, journalists and the people of Gaza with impunity. Dropping bombs on tents, blocking aid shipments, starving people, while it bulldozes their homes. The UK government and media refuses to even call it what it is. It is genocide, bloody genocide.
The British State is actively contributing to the killing spree, selling bombs to Israel and failing to arrest UK citizens who commit war crimes in Gaza. I’m here to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and demand that the UK government impose a total trade embargo on Israel.
Also taking action today is Connie Chilcott, 23, a student from Falmouth who said
I can’t stand by and watch as our government puts profits over the lives of Palestinians. The cowardice we see in the Labour government is disgusting, and we won’t stand for it anymore. As young people, we demand better. We demand a total trade embargo on Israel.
We refuse to be ruled by liars, war criminals and arsonists. We will not let them get away with this. We refuse to be ignored. It’s time for young people to take to the streets day after day and shut London down. Only sustained mass resistance can put an end to genocide. It’s time to disrupt: join us!
Today’s actions come against a backdrop of ongoing atrocities in Gaza.
Israel: the atrocities continue
In the latest news Israel has bombed a tent housing journalists near Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing at least two and wounding seven others. This brings to 50 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks in the last 24 hours.
Israel has changed its account of the killing of 15 paramedics and emergency responders who were killed one after another on 23 March and buried in a shallow grave where their bodies were found a week later by officials from the United Nations and the Palestinian Red Crescent. Video footage emerged which contradicted its original story.
Israel has persistently denied that its political leaders or military have committed war crimes during its assault on Gaza, in which it has killed more than 50,000 people, most of them civilians.
However, a war crimes complaint against 10 Britons who served with the Israeli military in Gaza was submitted to the Met police yesterday by one of the UK’s leading human rights lawyers. The UK continues to support genocide by supplying arms, whilst conducting more surveillance flights on behalf of Israel over Gaza than any other country.
Youth Demand: stepping up
The three separate road blocks come after Youth Demand were also out in London on Saturday 5 April.
At around 11am, around 65 supporters of Youth Demand gathered at Brunswick Square Gardens to discuss today’s actions as well as the principles of nonviolence. The supporters divided into two teams and at around 12:15pm a group of 40 blocked traffic on Euston Road near King’s Cross station:
The groups could be seen holding signs which read ‘Youth Demand an End to Genocide’ and ‘Stop Arming Israel’, and could be heard chanting ‘stop killing babies’. Police arrived shortly after and issued a warning under Section 7 of the Public Order Act. The group left the road after approximately 10 minutes.
At 1:30pm this group moved to block Old Street Junction until about 1:55pm. Meanwhile another group of 20 people took action at Baker Street for around half an hour:
All this came after cops raided a Quaker meeting house in Westminster where Youth Demand were gathering. The raid caused widespread outrage – even from politicians – and caused protests and rallies.
Youth Demand said:
Young people will not accept these crimes against humanity and we will not be led by war criminals and arsonists. We cannot allow those in power to get away with facilitating the systematic annihilation of an entire culture. It’s time to take to the streets day after day and to demand better.
Only sustained mass resistance can put an end to this genocide. Sign up to take action at youthdemand.org
The European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) has submitted legal submissions to the Birmingham University Misconduct Panel on behalf of Mariyah Ali and Antonia Listrat, urging the university to dismiss the proceedings against the students.
The students were targeted for protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza and for demanding that the university divest from arms companies like BAE Systems. Their hearing, set for Monday 7 April, is part of a nationwide crackdown on Palestine solidarity across UK campuses.
Birmingham University: cracking down on pro-Palestinian voices
Despite mounting condemnation—including from Coventry MP Zarah Sultana, who called the disciplinary action “an assault on democratic rights”, and Gina Romero, United Nations Special Rapporteur, who expressed concern over “harassment, intimidation, and reprisals” against Birmingham University students for peaceful protest —the university has pressed ahead with punitive measures.
The student body has shown overwhelming support—electing Antonia as Guild President and Mariyah as Ethnic Minorities Officer and passing a Palestine solidarity motion (later blocked by union trustees). This disciplinary action directly contradicts the democratic will of students. Silencing elected representatives for protest sets a dangerous precedent for campus democracy.
A joint investigation by Liberty Investigates and Sky News revealed that at least 28+ UK universities have disciplined 113+ students and staff for Palestine activism since October 2023. Moreover, some institutions have collaborated with police and private spies to surveil and intimidate protesters, fuelling a climate of fear.
Under the Education Act 1986 and Human Rights Act 1998, universities are legally bound to protect freedom of expression, including the right to protest and challenge institutional policies. The University of Birmingham is violating these obligations by penalising students for their political beliefs and setting a dangerous precedent that stifles dissent. Such actions create a ‘chilling effect’, deterring students from engaging in critical debate and undermining the very purpose of higher education as a space for open inquiry.
The ELSC calls on Birmingham University to immediately dismiss these charges and uphold its legal duty to protect freedom of speech, expression, and assembly on campus. We urge students, staff, and the wider public to oppose this repression and stand in solidarity with those facing retaliation for their activism.
Punished for opposing genocide and war crimes
Anna Ost, Senior Legal Officer at ELSC, said:
We are deeply concerned that the university’s intention and effect in targeting these two students is to dissuade the wider University community from speaking out for Palestine. The University needs to change its approach, drop the disciplinaries, and demonstrate that fundamental freedoms are still promoted on its campus.
Mariyah Ali said:
The disciplinary process against Antonia and me is a blatant attempt to suppress dissent and silence the wider student movement. This authoritarian crackdown is not just an attack on our right to protest—it is a display of institutional Islamophobia and bureaucratic repression. The student movement for Palestine is stronger than ever. Instead of charging students, the University of Birmingham must focus on divesting from companies complicit in genocide and war crimes.
Antonia Listrat said:
Protest is an integral part of campus life and of a healthy and progressive society. As far-right rhetoric rises throughout the world, we need to make a huge effort to protect our rights and uphold international law and morality. Enabling genocide and profiting from human rights violations is quite a violent stance that the University of Birmingham has taken. Funding genocide is violent, protesting genocide is peaceful.
“Resistance is alive and well in the United States.”
So declared the headline of a March 19 article on the nonprofit news site Waging Nonviolence. Authors Erica Chenoweth, Jeremy Pressman and Soha Hammam, political scientists at Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium, outlined how—despite a common belief that grassroots public resistance against the depredations of the Trump Administration is lacking or lukewarm—protests are actually rising dramatically.
These demonstrations, the piece said, “may not look like the mass marches of 2017, but research shows they are far more numerous and frequent—while also shifting to more powerful forms of resistance.”
They note that while
the reconfigured Peoples’ March of 2025—held on January 18—saw lower turnout than the 2017 Women’s March, that date also saw the most protests in a single day for over a year. And since January 22, we’ve seen more than twice as many street protests than took place during the same period eight years ago.
The Crowd Counting Consortium, founded in 2017 to collect “publicly available data on political crowds reported in the United States,” tracked more than 2,000 protests in February alone.
Chart: Waging Nonviolence
The acts of collective resistance documented by the CCC—as well as by other activism-tracking initiatives, such the “We the People Dissent”Substack—span every state. They focus on advocacy for diverse constituencies and issues under attack from the current administration, including public education, Medicaid and reproductive, immigrant, Palestinian, labor and LGBTQ rights.
Their common thread is opposition to Trump’s fascistic ideology and rapid rash of likely unconstitutional executive orders, such as freezing federal budget outlays approved by Congress, the mass firing of government workers and the dismantling of institutions by the “Department” of Government Efficiency by unelected “adviser” Elon Musk.
But if you relied on articles and broadcasts from the legacy national news media during early 2025, you wouldn’t know the extent of grassroots action prompted by this discontent. A FAIR examination of five major outlets found that coverage of anti-Trump/pro-democracy protests roughly overlapping CCC’s study timeframe (January 22 to February 26) was minimal, and downplayed the significance of this opposition, especially around the inauguration.
Mostly tepid coverage
FAIR examined reporting on three organized protest events occurring concurrently in Washington, DC, and across the US: The People’s March (January 18), the “50501” demonstrations in all state capitals (February 5) and the Presidents Day protests, sometimes dubbed “No Kings Day” (February 17). Using the Nexis news database and the outlets’ websites, we looked at the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today, and at ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America, CBS Evening News and CBS Mornings—the top morning and evening national news programs on ABC and CBS—within four days of each of these dates. (NBC was not included in the study because its transcripts are no longer available on Nexis.)
Broadcast coverage was abysmal. None of the four network shows in our study ran any reports focused on any of the three protest events. ABC World News Tonight mentioned none of the events, and GMA referred to only one of them in passing. In their coverage of the January 18 protests, CBS Evening News and Mornings gave more coverage to speculation about violent protest than they did to actual (nonviolent) protest.
The newspapers had more coverage, but their stories tended to be relatively short, buried deep in the paper, or in the form of wire-service reprints. Longer pieces often downplayed the protests’ size and disparaged their significance. The Times and Post tended to focus on DC-based protests, whereas USA Today offered more thorough and accurate articles about the growing nationwide resistance movement.
The People’s March
The January 18 march, centered in Washington, DC, near Inauguration Day, was a reboot of the attendance record–setting 2017 Women’s March spearheaded by feminist nonprofits. The People’s March had a broadened focus on peaceful organizing around a range of progressive issues, and included solidarity actions in every state.
According to CCC data (available for download at the site), on January 18 alone, 352 protests, rallies, demonstrations or marches opposing Donald Trump and/or administration policy were recorded across the country. Though dispersed in a way the Women’s March was not, tens of thousands nonetheless participated in hundreds of acts of protest and civil disobedience around the country.
More than 200 additional on-the-street actions occurred on January 19–20, many linked to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but also including messages against Trump’s agenda, according to CCC data.
We found no mention of any of the People’s Marches on the ABC shows in our study, and no dedicated stories about the protests on the CBS shows we examined. In two segments focused on the incoming administration, CBS mentioned protests generically, only in passing, and focusing solely on those in the nation’s capital.
After noting that “today, thousands of people could be seen protesting the president-elect in Washington, DC,” reporter Jericka Duncan (CBS Evening News, 1/18/25) devoted more time to security measures around potential “violent protests”—a concern repeated in a January 20 segment on CBS Mornings (1/20/25).
The newspapers studied all covered the People’s Protests, but the Times and Post downplayed their significance. The Times (1/18/25) published “‘Angry and Frustrated’: Thousands Protest Trump Days Before His Inauguration,” a thousand-word story that captured the mood and nationwide extent of concern expressed by the events, but made a point of noting that the DC march “paled in comparison to the Women’s March.” It was buried on page A25.
The following day, the Times published a longer (1,600-word) piece on how “The Trump Resistance Won’t Be Putting on ‘Pussy Hats’ This Time,” based on interviews with middle-American activists. The article alleged that “the Democrats who mobilized against Donald J. Trump in 2017 feel differently about protesting his return,” by which they meant defeated and ambivalent. It asserted that “there are few signs of the sort of mass public protest that birthed ‘the resistance’ the last time [Trump] took office.”
There was also a 1,600-word Washington Memo (1/19/25) headlined “Defiance Is Out, Deference Is In: Trump Returns to a Different Washington”:
Unlike the last time President-elect Donald J. Trump took the oath of office eight years ago, the bristling tension and angry defiance have given way to accommodation and submission. The Resistance of 2017 has faded into the Resignation of 2025.
The Washington Post had two pieces. The predictive “How Resistance to Trump May Look Different in His Second Administration” (1/17/25) came in at around 1,800 words, while the paper gave coverage of the actual DC event, “People’s March Protests Trump” (1/19/25), only 1,400 words. Both were by Ellie Silverman, its dedicated activism and protest movements reporter.
Like the Times’ articles, the former piece was focused on dispirited activists and how the resistance supposedly ain’t what it used to be. It described a “feeling of resignation in the lead-up to Trump’s second administration [that] is a stark departure from 2017, when more than 1 million people took to the streets.” It added that “some demonstrators are sticking to the sidelines,” and warned that some experts “fear that whatever protests do emerge could be even more disruptive and potentially violent.”
The straightforward latter story was more nuanced, focused on interviews with protesters on the diverse issues that brought them there, who maintained that showing up was more important than rally size. However, it didn’t mention that the protest was part of a larger, nationwide mobilization.
USA Today‘s piece on the People’s March (“Thousands Travel to Washington for People’s March Ahead of Trump Inauguration,” 1/18/25), like those of the other papers, covered only the DC demonstration, and dwelt on its smaller-than-2017 size. But it also portrayed fired-up citizens who made a point of being there to take a stand, rather than trying to tell a story of, as the Times said, “accommodation and submission.”
The 50501 protests
The 50501 protests, short for “50 protests, 50 states, one day,” were the brainchild of grassroots activists on Reddit wanting to take “rapid response” political actions against Trump and Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government Trump and Musk seem to be following. Using mainly social media and the hashtags #BuildTheResistance and #50501, the organizers spurred others to organize and publicize demonstrations in all US state capitals on February 5. According to CCC data, some 159 “50501” or related protests occurred that day (exclusive of counter-protests), from Sacramento, Calif., to Augusta, Maine.
We found no coverage of the 50501 protests in the Washington Post, or on the CBS or ABC shows.
In its sole article, “Thousands Across the US Protest Trump Policies,” the New York Times (2/5/25) devoted only about 600 words to the nationwide rallies. Sara Ruberg’s story accurately portrayed them as “a grassroots effort to kick off a national movement,” quoting a Michigan state representative: “This was organized by people, for people, for the protection of all people…. There will be…more things for regular everyday Americans to plug into.” However, Ruberg depicted the decentralized, quickly organized efforts as something not to take too seriously:
Whether the protests will amount to a sustained anti-Trump movement is yet to be seen.
In the weeks following the election, Democrats were not able to come together under a single message as they did after the 2016 election, when Mr. Trump won the first time. Even the grassroots efforts that once organized large national marches and protests after Mr. Trump’s first inauguration have struggled to unite again.
The piece also said the events only occurred in “a dozen states”; CCC data confirms organizers’ claims that they spanned all 50 states, plus DC. An additional 1:20-minute video of protesters chanting appeared in the online version of this story, featuring passionate slogans like “Stand up, fight back,” “Stop the coup!” and “Impeach Trump” that belie the notion that activists have no uniting message.
At 2,500 words, USA Today‘s feature (2/5/25) on the 50501 demos, “‘People Are Feeling Galvanized’: Anti-Trump Protesters Rally in Cities Across US,” was by far the longest and most thorough of any in the study periods. Its lead set the protests in a broader context:
Groups opposed to actions by the Trump administration in recent weeks converged on cities Wednesday across the US to loudly register their discontent, days after widespread rallies and street marches against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Integrating reporting from DC and 10 other capitals and cities (Austin, Salem, Indianapolis, Harrisburg, Des Moines, Columbus, Denver, Detroit, Palm Springs, Calif., and Greenville, S.C.), reporters John Bacon, Karissa Waddick and Jorge L. Ortiz discussed the major concerns of residents in each place, provided background on 50501 and Project 2025, and quoted marginalized people targeted by Trump, such as a trans woman and a refugee from Azerbaijan, along with supportive politicians and the AFL-CIO. The comments included captured the sense of seriousness and commitment of the rallies. It quoted 70-year-old Stewart Rabitz:
“I think a lot of people are now realizing that walking around with signs, people got to get their hands dirty.”… Asked whether he feared retribution, Rabitz said: “You can’t be afraid. I’m willing to be the first one. I’ll be the Tiananmen tank guy.”
The 50501 movement also spearheaded nationwide events, some dubbed “No Kings Day,” less than two weeks later, on February 17, to protest Trump’s undemocratic actions and monarchical leadership, coinciding with Presidents’ Day. The CCC tracked 207 such actions on February 17 (excluding a few counter-protests).
Once again, CBS and ABC had no reports focused on the protests. CBS gave them one sentence on CBS Mornings (2/18/25), which led with the controversy surrounding DOGE’s access to private information: “Protests called ‘No Kings on Presidents’ Day’ against Musk and President Trump’s actions were held across the country yesterday, including outside the US Capitol.” ABC (GMA, 2/18/25), too, briefly mentioned “protests popping up in cities across the country,” even including short clips of protest footage—but also used the demonstrations as a brief segue to discuss DOGE cuts and access to sensitive data.
New York Times coverage included one story (2/17/25), provocatively titled “Thousands Gather on Presidents’ Day to Call Trump a Tyrant.” It focused on the DC march, but did give a sense of the nationwide sweep of actions, noting that protestors framed themselves as patriots fighting tyranny. The piece acknowledged that while
Democratic leaders and operatives [are] worried about alienating voters in reacting hastily without reflecting first on why they lost in 2024. Many activists…have voiced frustration at the lack of a more aggressive stance.
The piece, however, was buried on page A18.
For its part, the Post devoted only one 500-word AP dispatch (2/17/25) to the events, “‘No Kings on Presidents Day’ Rings Out From Protests Against Trump and Musk.” But the subhead did note, “Protesters against President Donald Trump and his policies organized demonstrations in all 50 states for the second time in two weeks.”
USA Today published a photo gallery (2/17/25) and a 900-word story (2/17/25) about the Presidents’ Day protests, focused more on regional actions that “swept across the nation” than on DC. Providing important context, “‘Critical Moment in History’: Protests Across US Target Trump, Musk” (2/17/25) led with this:
Groups opposed to President Donald Trump’s agenda and his top adviser Elon Musk converged on cities across the nation Monday to express outrage with slogans such as “Not My President’s Day” and “No King’s Day.”
The rallies, led by the 50501 Movement and other organizations, come less than two weeks after the last round of widespread rallies and street marches.
This broader perspective on the resistance demonstrations may be thanks to the middle-of-the-road paper’s less-insular focus: It covers all 50 states, serves a more diverse audience, and utilizes reporting from its partner papers across the country.
Another mass mobilization
On April 5, yet another grassroots, mass mobilization—organized around the taglines “Hands Off” and “People’s Veto”—is planned for the streets of DC and across all 50 states. Will the legacy media be there and give it the broad and contextualized coverage it deserves? Will they more proactively cover the increasingly localized demonstrations and other forms of political participation—or leave that task to the rapidly shrinking pool of local and regional news outlets? For if CCC’s data is accurate (and it may be an undercount), the nascent pro-democracy movement deserves its own dedicated beat.
Major insurance companies have piled investments into the arms industry over recent months, new research reveals.
Boycott Bloody Insurance – and quickly
The research, looking at how insurance companies active in the UK are investing their money, shows that they pumped millions more into firms involved in nuclear weapons, depleted uranium and white phosphorus immediately after Donald Trump was elected.
Earlier this month, the same researchers showed that companies active in the British insurance market actively increased their investments in firms involved in supplying Israel with military equipment over the last year.
Insurance firms are major investors across the economy. The new report from the campaign group Boycott Bloody Insurance, entitled Ensuring Destruction – the Insurance Industry and Controversial Weapons – looks at how much of that money is invested in firms which are involved in or associated with various ‘controversial weapons’ – a category which includes white phosphorous, depleted uranium and nuclear weapons.
They found that major insurance companies channelled $260m more towards companies involved in the production of these weapons in December 2024 than they did in September 2024. Among the group of companies assessed by the researchers – all major providers active in the UK market – investment in manufacturers of controversial weapons grew by 13% over the three month period.
Not just a UK problem
The British company, Aviva, increased their investment into companies which are involved in or associated with controversial weapons to £1.36bn, making it by far the biggest investor in these sorts of firms among the assessed insurers.
However, it’s not just Aviva which bet on growing global violence. Allianz, AXA, and Zurich, also grew their investments in these firms. In many cases, the insurers are investing in these companies in direct contradiction to their own responsible investment policies.
The researchers also looked at which companies were providing Employers’ Liability insurance for firms involved in or associated with controversial weapons, finding that all of the major insurers were doing so.
Andrew Taylor from the campaign said:
Insurance companies are a vital part of the global financial system. Their investments help drive the economy. Without the insurance they provide, other companies can’t operate. And yet these major household brands are providing money and underwriting services to companies whose core business is mass slaughter, mutilation of children, and machines of devastation. Often, these companies claim to have socially responsible investment policies, and yet they are using their customers’ money to prop up some of the least responsible firms on the planet, directly contradicting their own policies.
As global conflict and uncertainty escalate, these titans of the financial services sector are rushing money behind firms who will benefit from more conflict, more war and more chaos. We urgently need de-escalation of global violence, and are calling on businesses and organisations to boycott all insurance companies which invest in, and underwrite, firms involved in or associated with these controversial weapons.
The insurance industry is destroying the planet
This research comes on the back of another report, released earlier this year, which looked at the insurance industry’s involvement in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Entitled Ensuring Genocide – the Insurance Industry and Israel’s War Machine, the report found that major insurance companies active in the UK market have increased their investment in companies involved in Israel’s genocide of Gaza over the last year. Insurers including Allianz, Aviva, AXA, Zurich, and RSA collectively invested over $1.7 billion in companies supplying military equipment used by Israel since 7 October 2023.
The report also showed how these major insurance brands are profiting from the genocide themselves by underwriting the arms manufacturers who are supplying weapons to Israel.
Monika Nielsen the researcher for the campaign added:
Millions of people in the UK have been profoundly shocked by Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And they will be horrified to discover that the firms insuring their local councils, workplaces, places of worship or universities are the same companies funding and underwriting the production of the weapons Israel is using to blow up Palestinians’ homes, hospitals, schools and families. These firms don’t need to insure arms companies. We are calling on people to boycott them until they stop.
Featured image via Boycott Bloody Insurance/Comrade D
Independent journalist Jordyn Gualdani was pulled roughly by sergeants-at-arms at the state capitol building in Nashville, Tennessee, while documenting a protest on March 26, 2025. Gualdani, a wheelchair user, said the incident was part of a pattern of discriminatory behavior from sergeants-at-arms at the Capitol.
The protest took place at a House Education Committee meeting on a controversial bill that would allow school boards in the state to refuse to enroll children living there without legal permission into K-12 public schools. Recent hearings on the bill, which committee members voted to advance, were met with multiple protests by community members, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Gualdani attended the March 26 hearing to report on the vote and a planned demonstration by community members in the hearing room.
He told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that as the vote began, protesters stood and began singing and chanting, at which point almost all of the journalists in the room went to the front of the room to document them.
Then, Gualdani said, the sergeants-at-arms began to push journalists to get them away from the protesters and toward the back of the room, in an unusual display of force. “This is not how demonstrations are typically handled,” he said.
“I was behind a reporter from a local station lining up a shot of activists being confronted when I was pulled backwards by my shoulder and told I needed to ‘get back,’” Gualdani told the Tracker. “If I had been sitting all the way back in my chair I would have tipped due to how my chair is balanced. Thankfully, I was leaning forward, which put my weight to the front of the chair.”
Gualdani added that his press pass was visible, but also that “most of the officials know I’m a journalist.”
Because he uses a wheelchair, “They typically try to force me to move by telling me I am a ‘fire hazard’ even though I am in the areas I should be and I am not in the way,” he said. “Tripods take up more room and are harder to move than I am.”
Seth Herald, a photojournalist on assignment for Reuters that day, also witnessed the sergeants-at-arms pushing journalists around the room during the hearing. He told the Tracker he was photographing the protesters at the front of the room when a sergeant-at-arms told him to stop and move to the back.
The chief sergeant-at-arms then tried to force Herald into the middle of the room, where he couldn’t find the space to move. When he told the officer that he was being prevented from doing his job as a journalist, the officer responded: “Well, I’m doing my job” and pushed Herald. The photojournalist told the Tracker the shove was out of frustration and that he didn't consider it an assault.
Eventually, Gualdani and Herald said, the sergeants-at-arms stopped pushing the journalists. “They did back off once it was clear we all would continue to do our jobs,” Gualdani said.
Gualdani and Herald told the Tracker that rules around journalists’ placement in hearing rooms at the Capitol have been erratic. “Members of the press are told, ‘Stay behind a specific point on the side walls’ one day and then told that we are limited to the back wall on other days,” Gualdani said.
Herald said that restrictions on journalists’ movements at the Capitol have seemed to increase. “Where a year ago we used to float around the committee room, they restrict us now to the side of the walls and the very back of the room and don’t let us move anywhere,” he said. “It almost feels intentional, like they’re making it uncomfortable. It’s shoulder to shoulder. You can’t do anything.”
Gualdani said he reported the more forceful response from law enforcement to the chief sergeant-at-arms. “He was dismissive, but agreed to talk with the sergeants under him,” Gualdani told the Tracker. “His excuse was that maybe they were trying to guide people and accidentally touched journalists.” But Gualdani and Herald both said the sergeants-at-arms seemed to be targeting the group of journalists to impede their access to the protesters.
Thousands of people are expected to take part in protests at supermarkets as part of a National Day of Action on Saturday 5 April in support of a new boycott campaign launched by Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC): ‘Don’t Buy Apartheid’.
Don’t Buy Apartheid
The Don’t Buy Apartheid campaign asks individual consumers as well as shops, restaurants, and venues, to take two actions in solidarity with Palestinians: boycott Israeli produce, and boycott Coca-Cola.
Israeli fruits and vegetables such as avocados, peppers, herbs and dates are stocked widely in the UK. But Israeli agricultural export companies, like Hadiklaim, Mehadrin and Edom, operate farms and packing houses in illegal settlements built on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.
Operating in these settlements is illegal, and the appropriation of Palestinian resources like water is a war crime according to international law.
Coca-Cola’s franchisee in Israel, the Central Bottling Company, also known as Coca-Cola Israel, owns a regional distribution centre and cooling houses in the illegal Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone in occupied Jerusalem.
The settlement is part of Israel’s strategy to isolate, fragment and force out Palestinians from the city. The Don’t Buy Apartheid campaign targets all of Coca-Cola’s brands including Schweppes, Fanta, Sprite, Innocent and Costa Coffee.
In July 2024 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion which found that Israel’s decades-long military occupation of the Palestinian territory was unlawful, and that its “near-complete separation” of people in the occupied West Bank breached international laws concerning racial segregation and apartheid.
The ICJ affirmed that Israel must make reparations to Palestinians for damages caused by its occupation, adding that the UN Security Council, the General Assembly and all states have an obligation to not recognise Israel’s occupation as legal. Corporations enabling these international crimes must also be held accountable.
Meaningful solidarity is urgently needed
Israel’s genocidal attacks on the Gaza Strip have given rise to a mass movement in solidarity with Palestinians. Millions in Britain have taken to the streets to oppose Israel’s genocide and the UK government’s complicity in it through military, diplomatic and financial support.
In an echo of the South African anti-apartheid campaign, Don’t Buy Apartheid seeks to channel the deep anger felt by so many into a mass campaign to economically isolate Israel’s regime of oppression.
This Saturday is the first day of national Don’t Buy Apartheid actions, with PSC branches across the country picketing supermarkets, holding rallies to draw attention to the campaign, and calling for the targeted goods to be removed from the shelves. As part of the campaign, PSC branches will engage with local shops, restaurants and venues to ask them to take the boycott actions and ensure their shop is an apartheid-free zone.
Lewis Backon, PSC Campaigns Officer, said:
Meaningful solidarity actions could not be more urgent as Palestinians continue to face Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, and its military attacks, land grabs and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
Don’t Buy Apartheid is a way for people to show their commitment to the cause of justice and freedom for Palestine in their everyday lives, by refusing to support Israel’s apartheid economy. Companies profiting from Israel’s colonisation and military occupation of Palestinian land need to realise they’re not welcome in UK shops, restaurants, venues and homes.
Together we can support the Palestinian struggle to bring down Israel’s pernicious system of apartheid, just as people of conscience globally helped end apartheid in South Africa.
Four Just Stop Oil supporters who sprayed water based red paint over the Treasury in 2022 have been given suspended sentences by a judge at Southwark Crown Court today. They took action in 2022 declaring that the UK government had blood on its hands as a result of its plans to encourage new oil and gas projects in the UK and its failure to address fuel poverty.
Just Stop Oil: done AGAIN for painting a building
Just Stop Oil supporters Selma Heimedinger and Edred Whittingham received 18-month suspended sentences, while Alexia Hall and Piers Clifford were given 15-month suspended sentences by Judge Rimmer.
Hall, Heimedinger and Whittingham were found guilty by a jury in January 2025 of causing criminal damage exceeding £5,000 while Clifford had earlier pleaded guilty to the same offence. In the 10 day trial before Judge Rimmer, the Prosecution presented evidence that suggested that the damage to the HM Treasury building on Whitehall cost £107,000 to repair.
In June 2022, the four sprayed water-based red paint over the Treasury building, accusing the government of having “blood on its hands” for approving Shell’s Jackdaw gas field during a worsening cost of living crisis. On 30 January 2025, the day that three of them were found guilty, that approval was ruled unlawful by a Scottish court.
Speaking ahead of the sentencing, Selma Heimedinger, 25, a full-time campaigner and director of a community interest company from Hampshire, said:
I am being punished because I didn’t play by the rules of the system. But how can we play by the rules when those rules are written by lobbyists and billionaires and the whole system is rigged against us? I am at peace with the action I took in 2022 because I acted on my conscience and out of love for all beings alive and yet to be born.
Acting to prevent harm
Alexia Hall, 39, a mother of two and market gardener from Kent said:
My sentence only highlights the corruption of this system and how, in this society, buildings are valued more highly than people. My kids, seven and nine, are being deprived of a liveable future, while their mum is being punished for acting to protect lives.
The irony is that on the same day we were found guilty for taking action against the Jackdaw gas field, the courts declared the government approval of Jackdaw illegal – our action wasn’t violent, this system is.
Edred Whittingham, 27, from Exeter, said:
I acted to prevent harm and save lives — to protect my family and my community, especially the most vulnerable. I refuse to be a bystander to the mass death that is inevitable on our current path. It’s obvious to me that governments refusing to challenge the fossil fuel industry are guilty of the ultimate crime against humanity. That remains true, regardless of how the law judges me and my co-defendants.
Just Stop Oil will continue to stand with those being prosecuted for peaceful resistance to fossil fuel expansion in the face of rapidly accelerating climate collapse.
Janine Jackson interviewed Mondoweiss‘s Michael Arria about Gaza “Power & Pushback” for the March 28, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: Listeners may have heard about the violent attack by Israeli settlers on Hamdan Ballal, who had recently won an Academy Award for the documentary No Other Land. He has since been released from Israeli detention, but that doesn’t erase or obscure the fact that he was assaulted, arrested and spirited away in an overt attack on free expression and truth telling.
As his co-director told AP: “We came back from the Oscars, and every day…there is an attack on us. This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like punishment.”
Listeners may not have heard of all the non-Oscar-winning people who have been swept off the street and disappeared for voicing any concern about the Palestinian people, who are victims of what the majority of the world outside these borders are calling genocide.
Into the current context comes “Power and Pushback,” a new feature at Mondoweiss written by our guest. Michael Arria is Mondoweiss‘s US correspondent, and author of the book Medium Blue:The Politics of MSNBC. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Michael Arria.
JJ: Mondoweiss has been reporting, calling attention to, critiquing the occupation, ethnic cleansing, genocide of Palestinians, and the US role there, and US news media’s distorted narrative for some time now, and yet there are still so many fronts to this fight. There is still so much that calls for resistance that you saw a place for a new intervention, this new focused feature. Tell us what you’re trying to do with “Power and Pushback.”
MA: I think the idea behind “Power and Pushback” is we’re in a situation, as you described, where there’s so much happening, and this can often be a challenge, I think, for any media, let alone independent media, to keep up with. We have a very small staff; obviously we don’t have the capacity that mainstream outlets do. And with so much happening on the domestic front, especially over the last few weeks, but really dating back to the immediate aftermath of October 7, when we saw the student protests begin, I think there was a need to develop another place to catch stuff before it fell through the cracks, so to speak.
So the idea behind “Power and Pushback” is to put a focus on repression that we’ve seen throughout the United States targeting the US Palestine movement, but also to talk about some of these local fights and local battles that not just students, but people in their communities or in their workplaces, are waging on behalf of Palestine.
And the idea is to really center that and focus on that, and just put a spotlight on these fights, and show people that they’re not alone, that people are fighting. There’s victories throughout certain states.
We didn’t want it to be just, like, this is the suppression report, and this is all terrible things that are being done. We wanted it to have both elements, which is the idea behind the title. We want to cover the power centers; we want to cover lawmakers pushing draconian policies, and pro-Israel groups moving to target Palestine protesters. And we wanted to cover, obviously, these terrible unconstitutional moves by the Trump administration. But we also wanted to show the resistance that’s developing domestically against those policies, and the people who are pushing for that.
JJ: It seems so important on many levels. First of all, if folks think there’s just no pushback or resistance happening, that shapes their understanding of what’s going on. But also, one person speaking out is easier to suppress, and they need to be backed and supported by a community, and by other people. So it’s not just, “Here’s a cool story about somebody resisting this.” It seems to me to give meaningful support to the individuals who are putting themselves on the line.
Michael Arria: “It’s not just one person or two people, it’s thousands of people that oppose these policies, and are trying to fight back.”
MA: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And I think something we should keep in mind—one of the objectives of these kind of moves that we’ve seen in recent weeks from the Trump administration is to obviously crack down on dissent. And part of that is to make people fearful about fighting back, for fear that they might be scooped up by ICE if they’re not a citizen, or their student organization might be suspended from the given college or university.
Really, throughout American history, whenever we’ve seen these kinds of campaigns, they purposely have this chilling effect on the population, and that’s kind of the idea. So as you say, we’re kind of also developing the newsletter with this in mind to show people that it’s not just one person or two people, it’s thousands of people that oppose these policies, and are trying to fight back in the face of this, despite these attempts by lawmakers and pro-Israel groups to really chill the environment, and make people skeptical about standing up and voicing support for Gaza.
JJ: Particularly at a time when, it used to be, “Well, write your congressperson, if you’re upset about something.” And we see the frustration with that avenue. And lots of folks will say, “Well, go out in the street; protest.” And so then you have to ask, OK, what’s the follow-up to that when people do protest and they are harmed for that? You can’t simply say, “We all ought to be out in the street,” and then not care about what happens to people who go out in the street, is my feeling.
MA: Absolutely true, and to your point, I think this time around with Trump, we have seen a slightly different approach from the liberal establishment. I think they’ve been much more willing to go along with his plans, and much more complicit. We see the anger towards politicians like Chuck Schumer for approving the Trump budget.
But I think that focusing on the liberal establishment and their reaction tends to get people maybe to look at the situation the wrong way. I think there actually has been a lot of protest. The numbers indicate there’s been consistent protest.
And there’s also been a lot of attempts to challenge the Trump administration legally. So Just Security runs the tracker. This is just in my head, I just wrote a piece where I referenced it, but I think there’s 146 current lawsuits or legal challenges attempting to stop the Trump administration, when it comes to many issues across the country. But more than a few of those lawsuits are connected to our issue, the issue of Israel/Palestine and student protest.
So like you say, people want to do something that they feel goes beyond just sending a letter, just calling and leaving a message for their congressperson. Especially because, it’s worth pointing out, what we’ve seen for the last three weeks has really been a culmination of a push that we’ve seen for years, in terms of stifling pro-Palestine sentiment, and in terms of stiflingcriticism of Israel. And that’s really been a bipartisan project. Even though Trump is amplifying it now and increasing it and has taken it to these draconian levels, we’ve really seen both sides of the aisle embrace some of these policies that he is currently amplifying.
I was, along with many, struck by the statement of Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb to students, after they’d been told to scrub their social media, to essentially thought-cleanse evidence of concern for Palestinians, or protest against US actions. And this is in the context of the ICE arrest and whisking away of Mahmoud Khalil. And Cobb said, “Nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times.” He’s speaking to future journalists. What is the lesson there? What else might he have said?
MA: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. He said that in response to another professor making a comment, basically telling students not to post about the Middle East conflict on their social media page. I think we’re really at an interesting and scary time when we look at universities and colleges in this country, just the overall state of higher education. I think that, just like I was talking about before, how the stifling of pro-Palestine sentiment is not a new issue. It’s really been a culmination of something that’s been happening for years.
We can say the same things about our university system, right? Over the last 40 years, 50 years maybe even, we’ve seen this real push to neoliberal policies across higher education, to move to a donor model, as opposed to a model where these schools are set up and live up to the grandiose words of their mission statements, this idea that they’re these places that kids can go and learn about freedom of speech and have the freedom of inquiry, and learn about how society works and how the world works.
After October 7, we saw some big-time pro-Israel donors threaten to take away money to schools, or actually do it. I think the schools are really between a rock and a hard place, because they don’t want to see their endowments threatened. And in recent decades, we’ve seen that that is the important thing. An institution like Columbia, as a private university, they’re not really beholden to the First Amendment, technically, in the way that other places throughout the country are.
And, first of all, we should say the Trump administration first canceled about $400 million worth of contracts and grants to the school, for what it said was their inability to crack down on antisemitism. I mean, we know that they’re referring to the fact that there were pro-Palestine protests on campus. It had very little to do with antisemitism. We know that they’re being targeted because they were the first school to erect a Gaza encampment last spring, which kicked off a wave of protests throughout the United States, obviously across college campuses. We know why they’re being targeted.
But I think the very scary thing here is they withheld that money, and then they sent Columbia a letter detailing things that Columbia could do in order for them to revisit that issue, essentially implying that maybe you could get the $400 million if you did the following things. And those things include instituting a mask ban, suspending a number of students who were connected to an occupation of Hamilton Hall on campus last spring. They wanted new protocol in terms of disciplinary actions. They wanted someone to oversee the Middle East Studies Department, among other things.
And almost immediately, Columbia complied to all these demands. They’ve said publicly that they were actually thinking about doing some of this stuff before Trump had asked them. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.
But that’s a huge part of this story. We’ve seen the universities in this country really cower and just respond to the Trump administration, and do pretty much everything they’ve asked for in this regard. And shortly before Mahmoud Khalil was detained on March 8 by plainclothes ICE agents, despite the fact he’s a permanent resident with a Green Card, Columbia had actually changed their protocol when it came to its status as a sanctuary campus.
Sanctuary campus is essentially the same as a sanctuary state. They had previously said that they wouldn’t comply or assist ICE if they were on campus. And days before Khalil was detained by ICE agents, they sent an email out to faculty and students and staff saying, “We’ve modified these policies. There are some situations where we’re going to let ICE on campus without a warrant in certain circumstances.”
So that’s a huge part of the story here. I just think that the university’s going along and being complicit in this entire ordeal. And we’ve seen a lot of resistance from faculty and Columbia students, and students across the country, who are really protesting not just these policies that we’ve seen from Trump and lawmakers, but also the complicity of their schools.
JJ: Gosh, there’s so much to say and to respond to. But along with, in particular, the Columbia protest, you see the erasure of Jewish people, of antisemitism being used as a cover to punish and penalize a community that is composed, in large part, by Jewish people who are protesting the actions of the state of Israel. And Trump, of course, being Trump, just says, “If Chuck Schumer opposes my policy, he’s a Palestinian.” He’s in his own world, but we are seeing other institutions essentially say, “Jewish people, you’re not Jewish if you are critical of Israel.” That seems like another shadow horror that is happening, and that media are playing a role in.
MA: It’s a very dark irony. I mean, not only have there been vast protests by Jewish activists and Jewish students; we saw Trump Tower occupied in the wake of Khalil’s arrest. The fact that the Trump administration is citing antisemitism as their reason for detaining these people, essentially…
I think when Khalil was first detained, there was maybe a belief that the Trump administration was going to rely on some War on Terror policy, or maybe something from Bill Clinton’s anti-terrorism law from 1995. But what we saw is that they’re actually relying on an immigration bill from 1952, which was introduced at the height of the Red Scare.
And that bill was introduced and wielded as a way to target, actually, survivors of the Holocaust, Jewish refugees in the United States, who conservative lawmakers had targeted because they accused them of being Soviet agents. So the irony here is that we see this law that was used to target Jewish people in the United States now used allegedly to protect them.
And it is another dark irony, I think, that it’s coming from this administration of all administrations. As you said, Trump casually will criticize Chuck Schumer by claiming he’s not Jewish, calling him a “Palestinian.” Trump has repeatedly criticized Jewish people more broadly for not voting for him, questioning whether Jewish voters are even Jewish, because he did all this stuff for Israel. Inherent there is the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, which in itself I think is antisemitic.
But it goes without saying that you don’t have to travel very far down Trumpland to start seeing examples of people that have been accused of antisemitism in his administration. We’re dealing with multiple people, either directly in his administration or in that broader world, who have literally given Nazi salutes in recent weeks.
So there is a real, like I said, irony to this whole situation that’s very disturbing, where you have this administration, which has a clearly anti-immigrant, bigoted, history of antisemitism in many areas, and they are detaining people for defending Gaza, for fighting against genocide; and claiming that they’re doing it because they’re antisemitic, and that antisemitism somehow threatens American foreign policy interests. So we’re really in a dark, upside-down time, I think, and it’s very terrifying.
JJ: Looking at what we know about media, we know that years from now, they will tell us, “Remember when we were all out in the streets protesting Israeli genocide in Gaza.” We know that they will say that “Martin Luther King would’ve said….” The powers that be, including in corporate news media, will co-opt the actions of today. Columbia University will have a photo montage about the protesters, and how they allowed protests to happen.
I mean, we know how history can be rewritten in real time by news media. It’s so frustrating to look at it today, and know the way that these folks are going to try to claim ownership of protest later.
That’s not a question, it’s just a rant. We can see it. We can see the way that they will talk about, “Oh, the Civil Rights Movement. That was good protest. This is bad protest,” when in real time, they hated the Civil Rights Movement.
MA: It’s very true. And these images and videos people probably have seen yesterday, a tremendously disturbing video coming out of Somerville, Massachusetts. Rumeysa Ozturk, who’s a 30-year-old Turkish national and doctoral student at Tufts, was detained, much like Khalil, snatched up on the street by undercover ICE agents wearing masks, where the police took her phone away from her. And it’s not hyperbole to say these people are being disappeared in broad daylight.
And to your point, I think people love to look back on history and convince themselves they would’ve been on the right side. They like to watch movies about historical time periods, and think that they would’ve been siding with the right side. But I think the way that people are reacting to this now, if they are supporting it or ignoring it, I think it’s pretty clear what side of history they would’ve been on if they had lived through something like the Holocaust, or like the Civil Rights Movement.
And also to your point, there is no kind of accountability for the media whatsoever, where—this is just an aside—but in the last couple of days we’ve seen this big controversy over the Signal chat, obviously, where the bombing of Yemen was revealed to a reporter.
That reporter is Jeffrey Goldberg, a former IDF soldier who has contacts throughout prominent politicians in the United States. But he’s also somebody who helped push a fabricated story about Iraq’s alleged connection to Al Qaeda, which, over 20 years ago, helped pave the way for the Iraq War. And the media is just filled with reporters like that, who have faced no accountability, or have actually moved up in their careers, and have more power now than they did 20, 23 years ago.
So it just speaks to your point, what will things look like a couple of decades from now? I think all the people who are maybe ignoring this or cheering it on, or not responding to it in any serious way, will probably not have to face any type of consequences. And to your point, they’ll also be controlling the narrative in terms of how this period gets remembered.
JJ: You can always fail upward in news media.
I’ll just ask you, finally, for any thoughts about “Power & Pushback,” what you hope folks will take from it, what you hope to uplift, any final thoughts on this intervention that you’re spearheading?
MA: I would encourage people, if they’re interested in this subject, to go on our site where they can subscribe to “Power & Pushback.” We’re really hoping, beyond this being a way to highlight the fights that I’m talking about, that it also opens up a dialogue, that people feel if they’re working in their community in terms of something, or they see something where free speech is being stifled, that they can reach out to us, and we can potentially shine a light on it and cover it.
Sometimes this stuff doesn’t happen where it’s a lot of news cameras. Sometimes it’s not a thousand people. Sometimes it’s just as simple as somebody being told they can’t wear a certain pin to work, or their website faces some sort of crackdown, or their student group at a small college is suddenly suspended. So we really are focused on covering this big-picture Trump stuff, and this big-picture higher education stuff. But we really hope that it also becomes a forum for these smaller-scale battles, because I think these are really going to add up.
And polling shows us that things have really shifted, Israel’s brand has really diminished over the past decade, particularly among progressives and Democratic voters, even if party leaders and Democratic lawmakers haven’t caught up to that. So I think, in some capacity, the momentum is on the side of the people who are protesting on behalf of Palestine, even though when you look at the media, it seems to be the opposite.
I think that a lot of these draconian measures are obviously a response to those successes. We’ve seen this crackdown on the BDS movement. We’ve seen this push to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which equates some criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
So I really think, insofar as Trump represents a backlash politics, and he does in many capacities, it’s also a backlash to the advances the Palestine movement in the United States has made over the last few years.
So like I said, in addition to covering the repression and suppression, we really want it to be a place that takes a close look at that progress, and looks at this in a wider way, where people can turn and you can talk to us about that.
So that’s what we’re hoping. I encourage people to check out our site where they can read about this stuff pretty consistently, but also sign up for our newsletter so they can get that information.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Michael Arria. He is US correspondent at Mondoweiss—that’s Mondoweiss.net—and author of their new feature “Power and Pushback.” Michael Arria, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
A silent Quaker Meeting was held outside New Scotland Yard on Thursday 3 April, to bear witness to the police raid on Westminster Meeting House last week in which six Youth Demand activists were arrested. Since the raid, Youth Demand have also remained resilient, holding an open-air meeting which was disrupted by the far right.
Quakers: we shall not be moved
Hundreds of Quakers, politicians, and others stood in silence for forty minutes as traffic rattled past on busy Victoria Embankment, with 25 other silent meetings held nationwide and online:
The raid, carried out by Metropolitan Police officers, involved breaking into a place of worship to arrest six people discussing climate action and peace in Gaza. As the Canary reported at the time, at around 7:30pm on Thursday 27 March, over 30 Met Police officers crashed into the Youth Demand Welcome Talk at the Quaker Meeting House in Westminster and arrested six people, including one attending their first ever welcome talk and a journalist.
The move sparked widespread criticism, with constituents expressing concerns about heavy-handed policing to their MPs.
On Monday, MP Luke Taylor raised the issue during urgent questions in the House of Commons, while Home Secretary Yvette Cooper addressed it on BBC television the previous day. Both responses framed the raid as an operational matter for the Met Police.
However, along with many others Quakers have been calling for the repeal of the Public Order Act 2023 and parts of the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act 2022 since they were passed. Under these new laws the right to protest has been severely restricted. Vague and sweeping definitions mean that even discussing peaceful protest can be criminalised.
This has not stopped Youth Demand, though.
Youth Demand: pushing back against cops and the far right
On Tuesday 1 April, the Canary attended the group’s open-air rally outside Senate House Library in London. Around 200 people gathered to hear from speakers and to join a rallying cry for Palestine:
Specifically, Youth Demand were defiant in the face of both the Met Police – who displayed yet another example of over-the-top policing, with around 40-plus officers present – as well as the far-right:
The Canary witnessed what appeared to be an organised, albeit tiny, protested by the far right as opposed to Zionists – given the tactics, dress, and organisation of the group. Of course, the far right and Zionists are intrinsically linked now, anyway – so it could well be the case that they were both.
Yet as a Youth Demand speaker summed up, the struggles of the right to protest in the UK and for freedom for the Palestinians are interconnected:
Quakers and Youth Demand: united against repression
Concerns over the police’s approach have spanned the political spectrum from Labour Cities of London and Westminster MP Rachel Blake, Labour, to former Conservative Party MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Blake has formally requested information from the Met on their policy regarding entering places of worship. And Rees-Mogg told the Church Times on Monday:
There has long been a tradition in this country of taking a view that religious spaces should not be invaded by the forces of law and order unless absolutely necessary.
Green Party MPs Carla Denyer, Ellie Chowns and Sian Berry, along with Baroness Jenny Jones and London Assembly members Zack Polanski and Zoe Garbett attended the open-air meeting.
Siobhán Haire, deputy recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said:
We’ve been warning since these laws were proposed that this is about the kind of country, the kind of world, we want to live in. Quakers believe that all people are equal, and for that to be a lived reality, we need laws that enable participation rather than suppress it.
Featured image and additional images via Michael Preston for Quakers in Britain, videos via the Canary
As the UK considers how to retaliate to these tariffs, campaigners encouraged the UK to ‘Unchain from Trump’ by stopping importing US fossil fuels at current rates. In 2023, US oil and gas made up 23.5% of all UK imports for fuels. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the UK has become increasingly reliant on US liquified natural gas; making up a total of 26% of our imports for energy use.
This growing reliance on the US leaves UK energy supplies exposed to Trump’s trade and tariff policies. Responding to the energy crisis of 2023, the International Energy Agency stressed “the transition to a more electrified, efficient, renewables-rich energy system will reduce overall exposure to fossil fuel price volatility”. Oil prices are at a five-week high in response to Trump’s ‘trade wars’.
Campaigners assembled around a large placard depicting a British bulldog at the feet of a caricatured Trump and other placards read ‘Just Stop (importing Trump’s) Oil!’ and ‘Invest in homegrown renewables, Defund Trump’s oil machine’:
A Trump impersonator held up a storm trooper, in a nod to Trump’s use of federal forces to support his agenda during his last presidency:
Protestors chanted ‘Tangerine in a toupee! We won’t buy Trump’s oil, no way!’
Tariffs away!
Robin Wells, director of Fossil Free London who was there at the protest, commented:
Claims we have a special relationship with the USA are pure gaslighting right now. We’re being bullied by the USA and, as ever, our leaders are lapping it up.
The only way we can shield ourselves from price shocks is by funding and growing our local renewable sources and that needs to start today. It’s a long term vision for what needs to happen but we need to Just Stop Trump’s Oil!
That starts with building our storage and renewable capacity so that the UK can break free from this tangerine tyrant throwing his toys out of the pram, and from all the others who will be just like him in the future. The UK must unchain ourselves from the bully boy tactics of states gone rogue, and invest in a stable energy supply for our future.
Featured image and additional images/video via Fossil Free London
Following its founding by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003, Tesla became the world’s leading electric vehicle brand in less than a decade. In the company’s early years, including after investor Elon Musk became CEO in 2008, it put out a few hundred or a few thousand cars a year. But by 2015, Tesla made the best-selling electric car model worldwide — a title Tesla has now held for seven ofthe last10 years. In 2023, the company delivered 1.8 million cars and controlled about 20 percent of the world’s EV market.
But Tesla’s status as the Kleenex of EVs is now in question. After Musk’s full-throated endorsement of President Donald Trump, his Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration, and his efforts to dismantle the United States government under the auspices of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Tesla is facing an organized protest movement, fading sales around the world, and a tumbling stock market valuation. As the company’s image suffers, EV market experts are watching closely to see whether the fallout from Musk’s far-right activities will affect the broader e-mobility transition.
In Europe, public ire has focused on Musk’s Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration and his backing of far-right political parties. Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images
Transportation is the second-largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, behind power generation, and is responsible for about 15 percent of the world’s emissions. The U.S. contributes the biggest share of transportation emissions by far, and “light-duty vehicles” (including personal cars and trucks) are responsible for around 57 percent of transportation emissions in the U.S. Most of these emissions come from burning gasoline, and electric vehicles, which can run on renewable energy, have the potential to significantly reduce the sector’s carbon footprint. A recent independent analysis suggests that Tesla’s cars prevented between 10.2 million and 14.4 million metric tons of carbon in 2023 — about the same impact as 3,000 to 4,000 wind turbines running for a year.
In mid-February, the “Tesla Takedown” protest movement began organizing demonstrations at Tesla showrooms across the U.S. and Europe. A decentralized campaign originally launched by actor Alex Winter and sociologist Joan Donovan, Tesla Takedown has organized protests around the world — including hundreds in a single Saturday for its recent “Global Day of Action.” The movement’s advocates suggest that tanking Tesla’s stock price (and therefore also Musk’s net worth) is a viable means of reducing the political power of the man who is currently running a chainsaw through American institutions.
The Tesla Takedown movement has organized protests around the world — including hundreds in a single Saturday for its recent “Global Day of Action.”
Lab Ky Mo / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Most of the organized opposition to Tesla has been peaceful, but vandals torched Tesla cars and chargers in France, Germany, Massachusetts, Nevada, Missouri, and other states last month. The Trump administration has called attacks on Tesla products “domestic terrorism.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department will seek a 20 year prison sentence for one man accused of vandalizing a Tesla dealership.
As protests have gained steam, Tesla’s global sales have plummeted. Tesla announced on Wednesday that its worldwide sales in the first quarter of 2025 were down 13 percent from the same period in 2024. The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association reported that Tesla sales across the continent dropped in January and February by 43 percent compared to a year prior. Australia’s Electric Vehicle Council found that Tesla sales in the country were down 35 percent in the four months following Trump’s election victory compared with the year before. The country that has seen the biggest recent drop in Tesla sales is Germany, where sales fell by 76 percent year-over-year in February, according to the country’s road traffic agency.
Stateside, Tesla’s sales losses compared to a year ago haven’t been quite as dramatic — in part because sales had already begun to drop last year. But backlash against Musk appears to be having an effect — registrations of new Teslas were down 11 percent across the U.S. in January compared to a year before. And in California the number of Tesla owners trading in their cars jumped nearly 250 percent in March, compared to the same month last year.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s stock price has also taken a hit. On March 10, Tesla stock dropped 15 percent, marking the brand’s biggest single-day loss in five years. As of the end of March, the company’s stock price was down 32 percent from the beginning of the year and 44 percent since mid-December. Even insiders like Tesla chair Robyn Denholm and board member James Murdoch have recently dumped millions of dollars worth of stock. This week, 27 lawmakers in New York penned a letter to the state comptroller requesting that Tesla stock be removed from the state’s biggest public pension fund. Unfortunately for Tesla workers, the backlash aimed at Musk may take its toll on them, as many have long accepted salaries below industry norms in exchange for stock options.
Tesla has been steeped in controversy since before Musk’s interventions in the American government — and even before he bought and rapidly transformed Twitter in 2022.
While EVs may be better for the planet than their gas-burning counterparts, they also fuel lithium extraction and require tremendous energy to manufacture. And Tesla has faced criticism for years for its apparent disregard for the well-being of its labor force — from miners in the Global South facing human rights abuses to factory workers in the U.S. and Europe who’ve documented hazardous conditions and hostile, racist work environments. Musk is also starkly anti-union: Tesla is the only major auto brand whose workers are not represented by any union in the U.S., and its refusal to negotiate with workers in Sweden resulted in a mechanics strike that has been dragging on since October 2023.
The Trump administration has called attacks on Tesla products “domestic terrorism.”
Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images
If Musk’s participation in the Trump administration continues to hurt Tesla’s brand, what will the impact be on the broader EV market? Industry analysts at S&P Global Mobility predict global EV sales will grow by nearly 30 percent this year despite uncertain market conditions. And even as European Tesla sales dropped 43 percent in the first two months of this year, overall EV sales increased 31 percent during the same period.
Still, not all experts are optimistic. Murtuza Ali, a senior analyst at the market research firm Counterpoint Research, told Grist that “some consumers may be unwilling to switch” from Tesla to other brands, especially given “Tesla’s key attraction — an expansive charging network, which other automakers cannot replicate overnight.”
But others in the industry suggest that the EV market is now robust enough that Tesla’s continued decline won’t dampen growing EV adoption. “The EV market has gotten so much stronger in the past year that buyers can find a good alternative should they decide not to buy a Tesla,” said Will Roberts, automotive research lead at the EV market analysis firm Rho Motion.
Steffen Schaefer, head of future cities and mobility at AFRY Management Consulting, who has worked with automakers, utility companies, and charge point operators on EV charging projects, agreed. “If Tesla would go down, it would not be the end of the e-mobility movement,” he said. “The industry is now solid enough that it’s going to continue.”
Meanwhile, Tesla’s competitors are not missing their chance to profit from its demise. In February, the Norway division of the South Korean automaker Kia posted an ad on one of its social media pages showing a Kia EV with a bumper sticker on it reading “I bought this after Elon went crazy” — a play on stickers adopted by Tesla owners protesting that they bought their cars “before Elon went crazy.” (Kia headquarters quickly clarified that it hadn’t approved the ad.)
Swedish EV maker Polestar went a step further and offered a $5,000 “conquest bonus” toward a lease of the Polestar 3 to current Tesla owners in the U.S. who are willing to make the switch. Polestar initially offered the deal for one week in February — but after its head of U.S. sales reported above-average orders during that period, the brand extended the promotion through the end of March.
UNPRECEDENTED REPRESSION CONTINUES
