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    The Sunday morning talkshows have for decades played an important part in shaping political narratives in the United States. They typically bring on high-profile Washington guests for one-on-one interviews, aiming to set the political agenda for the week ahead. But these shows also have consistently marginalized the voices of women and BIPOC people, and those who might represent the public interest, rather than the interests of a narrow, wealthy elite (Extra!, 9–10/01, 4/12).

    After Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 and 2024 elections, the Sunday shows had an opportunity to hold up both his campaign promises and his cabinet picks to scrutiny. With his campaigns’ racist attacks on immigrants and diversity initiatives, as well as his movement’s assaults on the rights of women and trans people, inviting guests who more accurately reflect the diversity of the country would seem to be a journalistic imperative. Yet a new FAIR study finds that the Sunday shows’ coverage of the Trump transitions were even more heavily white and male than usual.

    We also found that in 2024, when Trump’s rhetoric and cabinet picks became even more extreme, fewer guests voiced criticism of Trump and his cabinet than in 2016. By downplaying critiques of Trump, these shows used their inside-the-Beltway influence to tell insiders that the MAGA presidency should get a more deferential reception the second time around.

    Methodology

    FAIR documented all guests on ABC‘s This Week, CBS‘s Face the Nation, CNN‘s State of the Union, Fox News Sunday and NBC‘s Meet the Press from November 13, 2016, through January 22, 2017, and from November 10, 2024, through January 19, 2025. We used the Nexis news database, Archive.org and news outlet websites to obtain complete transcripts. We included all guests invited to speak on the show with the host, whether individually or in groups. (Most panel discussions—which were typically journalist roundtables—were excluded; the exceptions were those conducted in an interview format.)

    We documented the guests’ occupation, gender and race or ethnicity, as well as whether they voiced critical or supportive opinions of Trump, his campaign and his cabinet picks. For politicians and other political professionals, we recorded partisan affiliation.

    We counted 162 guests in the first Trump transition period, and 186 in the second. (Much of the difference can be accounted for by the fact that Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2016, resulting in only three guests across all shows, rather than the usual 15 to 17.)

    From the first to the second transition period, there were some notable shifts in the shows’ guest demographics and views on the president-elect, particularly from nonpartisan guests and guests from the defeated Democratic Party.

    Focus on Beltway insiders

    Occupations of Sunday Show Guests During Trump Presidential TransitionsThe vast majority of guests in both time periods were current and former government officials, in line with the Sunday shows’ focus on Washington insiders. This habit has the effect of marginalizing other kinds of people with deep knowledge about various policy areas, such as academics, NGO leaders, labor leaders, activists or other public interest voices.

    In 2016, current and former US officials and politicians made up 86% of all guest appearances. In 2024–25, that number stayed nearly the same, at 84%. In 2016, journalists came in a distant second, at 7%. In 2024, that distinction went to former military officials, with 6%.

    Of the partisan sources, Republicans outnumbered Democrats (and independents who caucused with the Democrats) 56% to 40% in 2016–17. Interestingly, Democrats slightly outnumbered Republicans in 2024–25, 49% to 47%. (The remainder were primarily people who had served as appointees under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and one Green Party guest in 2016.)

    Historically, Republicans have been overrepresented on the Sunday shows. It’s noteworthy that that wasn’t the case in the transition to the second Trump administration. But at the same time, the number of invited guests who voiced criticism of Trump or his cabinet picks decreased from 2016 to 2024, from 28% to 22%. This can be largely attributed to the fact that far fewer of the Sunday shows’ Democratic guests and nonpartisan guests took a critical position on Trump in 2024—a phenomenon that will be discussed in more detail below.

    Skewing (more) male

    Gender of Sunday Show Guests during Trump Presidential Transition 2016-17

    The Sunday show guests were highly skewed toward men (81% of guests) in 2016; they were even more skewed (84%) in 2024. This was driven primarily by the shift in GOP guests, whose 3.5:1 male-to-female ratio in 2016 skyrocketed to an astounding 24:1 ratio in 2024. (Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway accounted for 15 of the 17 female GOP appearances in the first time period.)

    Not every Sunday show guest talked about Trump; other interview topics ranged from political issues, like Middle East policy or the opioid epidemic, to largely apolitical interviews about things like sports or books. In 2024–25, there were 19 of these guests, and they were nearly evenly split along gender lines—meaning the gender split among those talking about Trump was even more skewed towards men.

    Fox News was consistently the worst in this category, inviting 89% male guests in 2016 and 90% in 2024, but most of the others weren’t far behind. The high mark in female representation for any show in the study was CNN in 2016, when just 27% of its guests were women. In 2024, CBS bucked the trend as the only show that increased its female representation, moving from 20% to 25%, and also was the only show to invite a trans guest (Rep. Sarah McBride, 11/24/24) during either study period.

    Gender of Sunday Show Guests during Trump Presidential Transition 2024-25In other words, as Trump retook office under the shadow of Project 2025, with its promises to reverse decades of gains on gender equity and reproductive rights, nearly every show moved toward a greater silencing of women’s voices.

    Marginalizing women’s voices is consequential. For instance, State of the Union host Jake Tapper (1/5/25) directed questions about Trump nominee Pete Hegseth to two white male guests, Republican Sen. Jim Banks and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. Asked directly by Tapper about the sexual assault claim against Hegseth, Banks waved it off; the only “concerns” Kelly expressed were about Hegseth’s lack of experience.

    When CBS Face the Nation (11/24/24) asked similar questions of Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth, she responded directly: “It’s frankly an insult and really troubling that Mr. Trump would nominate someone who has admitted that he’s paid off a victim who has claimed rape allegations against him.” Female guests won’t always raise issues of women’s rights, gender equity or misogyny, nor should they be expected to shoulder that responsibility alone—but they are certainly more likely to.

    Overwhelmingly white

    Race/Ethnicity of Sunday Show Guests during Trump Presidential Transition 2016-17The shows also invited overwhelmingly white guests to interview, though that number decreased from 2016 to 2024, from 85% to 78%. While not quite as extreme an overrepresentation as gender, the percentage of white guests still far exceeded their proportion among the general public: In 2024, 58% of the US population identified as non-Hispanic white, down from 62% in 2016.

    From 2016 to 2024, Black representation on the Sunday shows decreased from 10% to 5%, while Asian-American guests increased, from less than 1% to 8%. This increase was in part due to repeat appearances by Democrats Duckworth and Rep. Ro Khanna. GOP guests also increased in diversity, due largely to four appearances by Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation.

    During the 2024–25 time period, neither CBS nor CNN invited any Black guests, and Fox invited no Latine guests, as the Trump team geared up for Day One attacks on anti-racism initiatives and on immigrant communities.

    Race/Ethnicity of Sunday Show Guests during Trump Presidential Transition 2024-25In 2016, then–Rep. Keith Ellison (D–Minn.) said of Trump on ABC (11/13/16):

    We oppose his misogyny. We oppose his picking on people of different ethnic and religious groups. And we want to be making clear that if he tries to deliver on his word, that we will be there to say no.

    Ellison appeared the next week on CBS (11/20/16), similarly decrying Trump’s “racism, misogyny,” and declaring, “It’s hard to normalize that, and we can never do it.” But eight years later, that racism and misogyny were repeatedly normalized by Sunday show guests—mostly of the white male variety.

    Guestlists are not entirely determined by the shows themselves, as administrations choose who to make available as guests, and not every invited guest will agree to appear. Because shows lean so heavily on congressmembers for guest interviews, they also draw from a pool that is demographically skewed (76% non-Hispanic white, 72% male). But the Sunday shows clearly aren’t making any effort to offer voices more representative of the US population, tilting even further white and male than Congress does.

    Democrats’ shift on Trump

    Comments About Trump From Sunday Show Guests, 2016-17When a guest spoke about Trump, his campaign or his cabinet picks, FAIR coded those comments as positive, neutral or critical. We defined those who praised Trump, his cabinet picks or his policy positions (as opposed to general Republican positions) as positive; those who do not take an explicit stance on these as neutral; and those who disparaged these as critical. Statements about Trump’s opponents, like Vice President Kamala Harris or Sen. Hillary Clinton, were not considered unless they also included specific references to Trump. The balance of these comments changed markedly between the first and second Trump transitions—particularly among Democratic and nonpartisan guests.

    Comments About Trump From Sunday Show Guests, 2024-25Overall, guest interviews became more neutral in the second transition. In 2016–17, 94% of guests made comments about Trump, and in 2024–25, 90% did so. But in the first transition, 30% of those guests spoke critically, while in the second, only 24% were critical. Neutral takes rose from 19% of sources to 28%. Nearly half the guests who commented on Trump had positive things to say in both transitions: 51% in the first, 48% in the second. It’s notable that there was a marked shift toward neutrality among guests, even as Trump’s rhetoric and cabinet picks became more extreme.

    This was particularly noteworthy among those Democratic guests (and independents who caucused with Democrats) who made comments about Trump. In 2016–17, the combined Democratic and independent guests’ comments about Trump were critical 62% of the time, and only 4% of such comments were positive. In contrast, in 2024–25, when far more such guests were invited to appear, only 49% spoke critically, while 11% spoke positively. Trump-related commentary from Democrats shifted from 35% to 40% neutral.

    Senators, who make up a large portion of partisan guests, didn’t shift their perspectives much between the years, from 63% to 62% critical. Representatives tilted a little more neutral, but the biggest shift can be seen in which Democrats the Sunday shows invited: more former White House officials in 2016–17 (10, vs. 4 in the second transition), and more officials of the current/outgoing White House in 2024–25 (13, vs. five in the first).

    All the guests representing the outgoing administration were either neutral or voiced support for Trump. Meanwhile, in the first time period, seven of the critical Democratic interviews about Trump (and three of the neutrals) were from former presidential appointees. Only three former appointees were asked about Trump in the second transition—all of whom were critical.

    It’s predictable that former officials, who are not representing the current White House team that is seeking a smooth transition, feel more free to speak critically. For instance, Norm Eisen, a former special counsel on ethics to Barack Obama, spoke to This Week (12/11/16) about Trump’s conflicts of interest, predicting, “He’s going to be tainted by scandal.”

    In contrast, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan offered a more flattering perspective (NBC Meet the Press, 12/1/24):

    First I would just say that we’ve had good consultations with the incoming team. We’ve been transparent with them. We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition. Second, I’m glad to see the incoming team is welcoming the ceasefire.

    Interestingly, Republican guests also trended slightly more toward neutral comments in the second transition period. Five Republicans (6%) spoke about Trump critically in the first time period, while only three (4%) did so in the second. At the same time, the percentage of Republicans making pro-Trump comments dipped from 87% to 84%. GOP guests making neutral comments increased from 6% to 12%.

    A different kind of nonpartisan

    Nonpartisan guests, who accounted for 15% of guests in both time periods, shifted even more markedly: Half of those who made comments about Trump expressed criticism in 2016–17, and none did so in 2024–25. Meanwhile, positive comments increased from 21% to 50%.

    The types of guests dominating this category also changed: In 2016, the largest group consisted of journalists invited for one-on-one interviews (8); these often made critical remarks about Trump, as when the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius told Face the Nation (12/18/16), “I was struck…by his reluctance to do what typically happens in national security matters, which is seek some kind of bipartisan unified consensus.” Or when the New York Times‘ Dean Baquet said to Meet the Press (1/1/17), “I think that there are a lot of question marks about Donald Trump.”

    In 2024, there was only one journalist (radio host Charlamagne tha God—This Week, 11/12/24), while business elites (4) and foreign diplomats (3) dominated.

    As one might expect, diplomats tended to express more enthusiasm for the incoming president. “I know they share our goal of wanting to have security and stability,” British Ambassador Karen Pierce said of the incoming Trump administration (Face the Nation, 11/10/24). Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova told Face the Nation (12/15/24): “Let me thank President Trump. He is the one who made a historic decision…to provide us with lethal aid in the first place.”

    Business leaders likewise tended to praise Trump. “The American consumer today, as well as corporate America, is quite excited about what the Trump administration is talking about,” IBM vice chair Gary Cohn—a Trump advisor—told Face the Nation (12/15/24). OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said to Fox News Sunday (12/1/24): “We need to be able to have the best AI infrastructure in the world….. I believe President-elect Trump will be very good at that.”

    With Trump’s threats of retribution a major factor in the second transition, it’s not necessarily surprising that partisan guests might be more wary of voicing criticism—which is all the more reason for the Sunday shows to look outside their usual suspects. Instead, the few nonpartisan guests they invited came from occupations much more likely to say flattering things of the incoming president in order to curry favor.


    Research assistance: Wilson Korik, Emma Llano

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

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    They tried. Oh, did the media try.

    The declared victory for Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor highlights many things. The power of his campaign, the popularity of his ideas, the importance of grassroots get-out-the-vote mobilization, and the tepid reception for Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as the state’s governor due to a myriad of sexual harassment allegations, all contributed to the surprising—to corporate media, anyway—result.

    Earlier this month, FAIR’s Raina Lipsitz (6/13/25) responded to a New York profile (5/20/25) that attempted to undermine Mamdani’s record. In the home stretch of the primary race in the latter half of June, the pressure against Mamdani increased, featuring thoughtless dismissals of his ideas, selective memory and factual inaccuracy in the service of lowering Mamdani’s electoral chances.

    That Mamdani emerged from this mess victorious exposes the out-of-touchness of establishment media outlets that twisted like pretzels to scare voters away from the 33-year-old phenomenon. (Readers should know that I ranked Mamdani first in the primary and contributed to his campaign. I’m not unbiased when it comes to who I want to see as mayor, but the analysis of the media that follows, I believe, will withstand scrutiny.)

    ‘Uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges’

    New York Times: Our Advice to Voters in a Vexing Race for New York Mayor

    The New York Times‘ attack (6/16/25) on Zohran Mamdani was accompanied by an image centered on the World Trade Center.

    The New York Times editorial board (6/16/25) argued that “Mr. Mamdani is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges.” They explained:

    He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing. He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing.

    At least one poll shows that a rent freeze is overwhelmingly popular (City and State, 4/15/25), and they’re far from unheard of: Rent freezes were a key policy victory under Mayor Bill de Blasio (City Limits, 6/28/16; Politico, 3/15/17; WNBC, 6/17/20), a mayor whose candidacy the board (9/5/17, 11/2/17) had enthusiastically supported.

    The landlord class, which has organized against Mamdani’s campaign (Jacobin, 6/23/25), no doubt agrees with the Times‘ argument that if we don’t let rents go up, housing will be unaffordable—though 12 years of steady increases on regulated rentals under the tenure of Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn’t seem to make it easier to get an apartment here.

    And is the grocery store pitch such a crazy idea? The rising cost of food, despite the Times’ framing, is a very real problem for New Yorkers (Daily News, 5/1/25). The city operates public housing, homeless shelters and  hospitals—and a public education system that delivers daily meals to more than 900,000 students.

    The Times (12/12/24) positively explored the idea of city-owned stores in its news pages, citing how cities like Chicago and Atlanta were exploring similar missions. But when Mamdani proposes it, the editors present it as a sign of kookiness.

    ‘The disorder of the past decade’

    Murders in New York City 1928-2023

    The New York Times (6/16/25) accused Mamdani of showing “little concern about the disorder of the past decade”—a time period when there were fewer killings in New York City than at any time since the 1950s (chart: Wikipedia).

    The paper continued:

    Most worrisome, he shows little concern about the disorder of the past decade, even though its costs have fallen hardest on the city’s working-class and poor residents. Mr. Mamdani, who has called Mr. de Blasio the best New York mayor of his lifetime, offers an agenda that remains alluring among elite progressives but has proved damaging to city life.

    What disorder is the board talking about? We can guess they mean crime, but the homicide rate in New York City for the past ten years is the lowest it’s been since the 1950s. It’s true that Mamdani believes in police reform. The Times editorial board used to champion this cause (7/13/20, 9/13/20), even endorsing a reform-minded democratic socialist defense attorney for Queens district attorney five years ago (6/18/25).

    Alex Vitale, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project, suggested that—”given that crime rates are at or near historic low”—the Times‘ “disorder” is likely “the presence of homeless mentally ill people on the subway and other public spaces.” But, he argues:

    Ironically, Mamdani and to some extent [Comptroller Brad] Lander are the candidates who have actual plans to address the kind of disorder that pearl-clutching Times readers are worried about. They understand that the solution to this decades old problem is not endlessly using police to cycle people through jails and hospitals, but instead to develop actual supportive housing and other essential social services.

    The Times has capitulated to neoliberal austerity, which accepts that cities have no choice but to cut services and turn the real estate market over to billionaires, and then use policing to manage the chaos that ensues.

    As for the idea that Mamdani is somehow just a candidate for “elite progressives” but not the “working-class and poor,” the Times’ own interactive map shows a more nuanced story. While it’s true that Cuomo did well in, for example, the impoverished South Bronx, in Manhattan he won the monied districts like Tribeca and the Upper East and West Side, while Mamdani carried lower-income neighborhoods like Harlem, Washington Heights and the Lower East Side. Mamdani’s funding came mostly from small contributions—he had seven times as many donors as Cuomo (New York Times, 5/6/25)—whereas Cuomo was heavily funded by billionaires and the real-estate industry (City, 6/26/25).

    ‘A quality of magical realism’

    Atlantic: The Magic Realism of Zohran Mamdani

    The Atlantic‘s Michael Powell (6/18/25) said Mamdani’s campaign was “exuberantly disconnected from actual government budgets and organizational charts.”

    The Atlantic published two anti-Mamdani articles, with two of them warning that Mamdani is too inexperienced to earn the people’s vote and that his ambitious proposals can’t be achieved. (A third went after his support for the phrase “globalize the intifada—6/24/25.) Former Times writer Michael Powell (6/18/25), like the Times editorial board, scoffed at the grocery store idea, saying, “How would he pay for his most ambitious plans? Tax the rich and major corporations.” His colleague Annie Lowery (6/12/25) joined in:

    He is a leftist in the Bernie Sanders mold, with a raft of great-sounding policies. Free buses! Free childcare! Cheap groceries! Frozen rents! But a lot of these are impractical at best. Free buses would deprive the MTA of needed revenue. Free childcare would require a mammoth tax hike that Albany would need to approve, which it has shown no interest in doing.

    Similarly, Powell pompously asserts that “Mamdani’s candidacy also has a quality of magic realism, a campaign exuberantly disconnected from actual government budgets and organizational charts.”

    Progressives are often annoyed by the retort “how are you going to pay for it?” because this question only gets deployed against the expansion of healthcare, education and social services, and not jails, policing and subsidies for business. But it also exposes the superficialities of reporters’ knowledge of city affairs.

    Many years ago, when I was a reporter at the Chief-Leader, a fellow reporter asked then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg why his budget proposal rested so much on the outcome of the city’s negotiations with its unions. His answer was simple: That’s what government is—it’s services for people, staffed by people. Any administration, in short, has to grapple with how to pay for its priorities, whether those priorities are left-wing or right-wing, and that often involves cutting bloat, consolidating functions and increasing revenue.

    Mamdani’s spending plan offends the Atlantic, not because it costs money—the magazine (8/8/21, 3/8/23) has argued against efforts to cut police budgets—but because Atlantic writers and editors don’t like his budget priorities, which validate the New Deal concept of government services for the 99 Percent.

    ‘Undeniably young’

    New Yorker: What Zohran Mamdani Got Right About Running for Mayor

    What Zohran Mamdani got right, according to the New Yorker (6/23/25), is understanding that “social media is where many voters decide if a politician…can be counted on.”

    New Yorker coverage has been fairer to Mamdani than the Atlantic was, but Eric Lach’s interview (6/23/25) with the candidate honed in on a swipe favored by the assembly member’s critics, including the New York article FAIR already responded to: his youth. Lach said:

    Mamdani has been stymied for several reasons that were apparent before primary day. For one thing, he is undeniably young, and he never found a way to reassure voters that he was truly up for the job of managing the city’s agencies, its $100 billion budget, and its 300,000-person workforce.

    Democratic socialist upstarts have often been tagged as unruly whippersnappers who need to stop bothering party elders with competitive primaries. But in a moment where one of the biggest problems of the Democratic Party is its gerontocracy (Newsweek, 12/19/24; The Nation, 5/23/25; Atlantic, 6/19/25), perhaps Mamdani’s ineligibility for AARP membership is a strength.

    Lach continued:

    The new program of public spending he has proposed is predicated on increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations, taxes that would have to be approved in Albany. If the big shots in Albany—never a good bet for anything, politically—refuse him, what would become of Mayor Mamdani? No one can say.

    Warning that Mamdani’s agenda might cause friction with Albany suggests it might be Lach, not Mamdani, who is too new to the subject matter. The tension between state and city government is age-old, and consistent with every administration.

    Once again, Mamdani gets extra scrutiny because of the substance of his agenda. Would Cuomo deal better with the state government he was forced to resign from, with a governor who is the deputy who replaced him? That’s a rhetorical question.

    Right-wing rage

    NY Post: New Yorkers: Get out and vote against the menace that is Zohran Mamdani

    Marvel ComicsDaily Bugle used to run headlines like “Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?” The New York Post (6/23/25) is less ambivalent about Mamdani.

    It is not surprising that Rupert Murdoch’s editorial boards savaged Mamdani. The New York Post (6/23/25) called him a  “cheap influencer” and “a babyfaced socialist antisemite who’s never accomplished anything except this so-buzzy campaign.” Likewise, Murdoch’s pro-business Wall Street Journal (6/22/25) claimed that “Manhattanites are warning that Mr. Mamdani’s ruinous utopianism could prompt a flight of talent and capital.”

    But the onslaught from the more centrist outlets is telling: Like the business establishment, they fear progressive economic policies when it comes to housing, education, transit and public safety, despite all overtures to the contrary.

    The good news is that this press assault failed. Perhaps that is because the political advice of the New York Times and Atlantic only still sways opinion in a few enclaves of the upper crust. The rage from the Post, Daily News and Journal probably only reached conservative audiences, who wouldn’t have ranked Mamdani anyway. And perhaps it also is testament to the degree that a grassroots messaging campaign can overcome an onslaught from the corporate media.

    The bad news is that this was only the primary: incumbent Mayor Eric Adams will be running in the general election as an independent, and Andrew Cuomo has left that option open. Monied interests will likely double down, hoping to spread enough fear of a Mamdani-run New York City to help sink his meteoric rise—and elite media are rarely far behind them.


    This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

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    Janine Jackson interviewed the Joint Center’s LaToya Parker about the Trump budget’s racial impacts for the June 20, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

     

    DowJones MarketWatch: Most Americans can’t afford life anymore — and they just don’t matter to the economy like they once did

    MarketWatch (3/7/25)

    Janine Jackson: Most Americans Can’t Afford Life Anymore” is the matter-of-fact headline over a story on Dow Jones MarketWatch. You might think that’s a “stop the presses” story, but apparently, for corporate news, it’s just one item among others these days.

    The lived reality is, of course, not just a nightmare, but a crime, perpetrated by the most powerful and wealthy on the rest of us. As we marshal a response, it’s important to see the ways that we are not all suffering in the same ways, that anti-Black racism in this country’s decision-making is not a bug, but a feature, and not reducible to anything else. What’s more, efforts to reduce or dissolve racial inequities, to set them aside just for the moment, really just wind up erasing them.

    So how do we shape a resistance to this massive transfer of wealth, while acknowledging that it takes intentionality for all of us to truly benefit?

    LaToya Parker is a senior researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and co-author, with Joint Center president Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, of the recent piece “This Federal Budget Will Be a Disaster for Black Workers.” She joins us now by phone from Virginia. Welcome to CounterSpin, LaToya Parker.

    LaToya Parker: Thank you so much for having me.

    JJ: I just heard Tavis Smiley, with the relevant reference to Martin Luther King, saying: “Budgets are moral documents.” Budgets can harm or heal materially, and they also send a message about priorities: what matters, who matters. When you and Dedrick Asante-Muhammad looked at the Trump budget bill that the House passed, you wrote that, “racially, the impact is stark”—for Black people and for Black workers in particular. I know that it’s more than one thing, but tell us what you are looking to lift up for people that they might not see.

    OtherWords: This Federal Budget Will Be a Disaster for Black Workers

    OtherWords (5/28/25)

    LP: Sure. Thank you so much for raising that. This bill is more than numbers. It’s a moral document, like you mentioned, that reveals our nation’s priorities. What stands out is a reverse wealth transfer. The ultra-wealthy get billions in tax breaks, while Black families lose the very programs that have historically provided pathways to the middle class.

    JJ: You just said “historic pathways.” You can’t do economics without history. So wealth, home ownership—just static reporting doesn’t explain, really, that you can’t start people in a hole and then say, “Well, now the Earth is flat. So what’s wrong with you?” What are some of those programs that you’re talking about that would be impacted?

    LP: For instance, nearly one-third of Black Americans rely on Medicaid. These cuts will limit access to vital care, including maternal health, elder care and mental health services.

    Nearly 25% of Black households depend on SNAP, compared to under 8% of white households. SNAP cuts will hit Black families hardest, worsening food insecurities.

    But in terms of federal workforce attacks, Black Americans are overrepresented in the public sector, 18.7% of the federal workforce, and over a third in the South. So massive agency cuts threaten thousands of stable, middle-class jobs, undermining one of the most successful civil rights victories in American history.

    Joint Center's LaToya Parker

    LaToya Parker: “The ultra-wealthy get billions in tax breaks, while Black families lose the very programs that have historically provided pathways to the middle class.”

    So if I was to focus on the reverse wealth transfer, as we clearly lift up in the article, the House-passed reconciliation bill is a massive transfer of wealth from working families to the ultra-wealthy. It eliminates the estate tax, which currently only applies to estates worth more than $13.99 million per person, or nearly $28 million per couple. That’s just 1% of estates. So 99.9% of families, especially Black families, will never benefit from this.

    Black families hold less than 5% of the US wealth, despite being over 13% of households. The median white household has 10 times the wealth of the median Black household. Repealing the estate tax subsidizes dynastic wealth for the majority white top 1%, and does nothing for the vast majority of Black families who are far less likely to inherit significant wealth.

    JJ: I feel like that wealth disconnection, and I’ve spoken with Dedrick Asante-Muhammad about this in the past, there’s a misunderstanding or just an erasure of history in the conversation about wealth, and Why don’t Black families have wealth? Why can’t they just give their kids enough money to go to school? And it sounds like it’s about Black families not valuing savings or something. But of course, we have a history of white-supremacist discrimination in lending and loaning and home ownership, and in all kinds of things that lead us to this situation that we’re in today. And you can’t move forward without recognizing that.

    LP: Absolutely. Absolutely.

    JJ: I remember reading a story years ago that said, “Here’s the best workplaces for women.” And it was kind of like, “Well, if you hate discrimination, these companies are good.” Reporting, I think, can make it seem as though folks are just sitting around thinking, “Well, what job should I get? Where should I get a job?” As though we were just equally situated economic actors.

    But that doesn’t look anything like life. We are not consumers of employment. Media could do a different job of helping people understand the way things work.

    LP: Absolutely. And I think that’s why it’s so important that you’re raising this issue. In fact, we bring it up in our article, in terms of cuts to the federal workforce and benefits. So, for instance, to pay for these tax breaks to the wealthy, the bill slashes benefits for federal employees, and it guts civil service protections, saving just $5 billion a year in the bill that costs trillions, right?

    So just thinking about that, Black employees make up, like I said before, 18.7% of the federal workforce, thanks to decades of civil rights progress and anti-discrimination law. Federal jobs have long provided higher wages, stronger benefits and greater job security for Black workers than much of the private sector.

    And the DMV alone, the DC/Maryland/Virginia region, more than 450,000 federal workers are employed, with Black workers making up over a quarter in DC/Maryland/Virginia. In the South, well over a third of the federal workers in states like Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana are Black. In Georgia, it’s nearly 44%. So federal employment has been a cornerstone for Black middle-class advancement, helping families build generational wealth, send children to college and retire with dignity.

    JJ: And so when we hear calls about, “Let’s thin out the federal government, because these are all bureaucrats who are making more money than they should,” it lands different when you understand that so many Black people found advancement, found opportunity through the federal government when they were being denied it at every other point. And it only came from explicit policies, anti-discriminatory policies, that opened up federal employment, that’s been so meaningful.

    LP: Exactly. Exactly. Federal retirement benefits like the pensions and annuities are a rare source of guaranteed income. Nearly half of Black families have zero retirement savings, making these benefits critical to avoiding poverty in retirement. So these policies amount to a reverse wealth transfer, enriching wealthy heirs while undermining the public servants and systems that have historically offered a path forward for Black workers. Instead of gutting the benefits and eliminating the estate tax, we should invest in systems that have provided pathways to the middle class for Black workers, and expand these opportunities beyond government employment. Ultimately, this isn’t just about policy, it’s about what kind of nation we want to be, right? So that’s what it’s all about.

    JJ: And I’ll just add to that with a final note. Of course, I’m a media critic, but I think lots of folks could understand why I reacted to this line from this MarketWatch piece that said, “Years of elevated prices have strained all but the wealthiest consumers, and low- and middle-income Americans say something needs to change.” Well, for me, I’m hearing that, and I’m like, “So it’s only low- and middle-income people, it’s only the people at the sharp end, who want anything to change.”

    And, first of all, we’re supposed to see that as a fair fight, the vast majority of people against the wealthiest. But also, it makes it seem like such a zero-sum game, as though there isn’t any shared idea among a lot of people who want racial and economic equity in this country. It sells it to people as like, “Oh, well, we could make life livable for poor people or for Black people, but you, reader, are going to have to give something up.” It’s such a small, mean version of what I believe a lot of folks have in their hearts, in terms of a vision going forward in this country. And that’s just my gripe.

    LP: I agree. These aren’t luxury programs. They’re lifelines across the board for all Americans. The working poor—if you like to call it that, some like to call it that—cutting them is just cruel, right? It’s economically destructive, it’s irresponsible. Fiscally, states would lose $1.1 trillion over 10 years, risking over a million jobs in healthcare and food industries alone. So I agree 100%.

    JJ: All right, we’ll end on that note for now. We’ve been speaking with LaToya Parker, senior researcher at the Joint Center. They’re online at JointCenter.org, and you can find her piece, with Joint Center president Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, on the impact of the federal budget on Black workers at OtherWords.org. Thank you so much, LaToya Parker, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    LP: Thank you again for having me.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Column: Lawmakers and Pundits Speed Run Iraq WMDs-Level Lies About Iran

    Column (6/22/25)

    This week on CounterSpin: Prosecutors at the 1946 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared:

    War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

    After the Trump administration dropped bombs on Iran last weekend, without congressional approval, the media debate wasn’t about legality, much less humanity. The Wall Street Journal offered a video series on The Massive Ordnance Penetrator, “The 30,000-Pound US Bomb That Could Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Bunkers.” But it’s not just boys excited by toys; the very important Wall Street Journal is “examining military innovation and tactics emerging around the world, breaking down the tech behind the weaponry and its potential impact.”

    Most big media are consumed right now with whether those bunker busters did their bunker busting or maybe the US needs to buy bigger, better bombs to…do what, exactly? Well, now you’re asking too many questions.

    Things you should not question? Statements like that of Sen. John Fetterman that Iran is the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror.

    US corporate media in war mode are a force to reckon with. We do some reckoning with media analyst Adam Johnson, co-host of the podcast Citations Needed, Substack author at the Column, and co-author, with In These Times contributing editor Sarah Lazare, of some relevant pieces at InTheseTimes.com.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Janine Jackson interviewed CEPR’s Michael Galant about sanctions and immigration for the June 20, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

     

    CBS: Politics Exclusive Immigrants at ICE check-ins detained, held in basement of federal building in Los Angeles, some overnight

    CBS (6/7/25)

    Janine Jackson: Federal agents are abducting people off the streets, rolling up on workplaces and playgrounds to tear men, women and children away from their families. Driving off in vans, telling no one where they’re going. They’re interrupting scheduled immigration status appointments to say, We’ve changed the rules, and now you’re out of status and a criminal. Into the van. Raising a question, observing—well, that counts as interference, also now a crime. Sometimes they’re saying that the abduction was an administrative error, after someone has been left in a basement without food or water for a while.

    There is much to acknowledge and understand in the current nightmare, but if one question is, “Given it all, why would anyone think it makes sense to try to come to the US to live?” then you’ll need to expand your vision to the global stage, and see the role that US actions have in determining conditions in the countries immigrants are coming from. And why “If you don’t like it here, go back where you came from,” lands different when circumstances in the place they come from will still be determined by US policy.

    Michael Galant is senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He joins us now by phone from here in town. Welcome to CounterSpin, Michael Galant.

    Michael Galant: Thanks so much for having me.

    JJ: I will say the issue isn’t only with MAGA replacement theory zealots who think that the immigrants are dragging us into criminal chaos. I suspect a lot of “liberals” think that while it’s mean to call immigrants “invaders”—because, after all, “they” do a lot for “us”—still, they’re coming here to take advantage of our superior quality of life, and maybe we just can’t afford that anymore. The “us and them” line is still operative in many people’s understanding of immigration, and that confuses and obscures something, doesn’t it?

    MG: Yeah, and I think you’re absolutely right that there is this sort of bipartisan consensus that, whatever we might disagree on what the appropriate level of migration is, or with what humanity we should be treating migrants, but they’re still operating on the same terrain, right, the same sort of frame of understanding, of the question of migration. And I think that question itself really needs to be addressed, as you mentioned in the intro, it is often US policies that are themselves determining the conditions that caused migrants to leave in the first place. And it’s oddly rarely questioned in Congress. It’s rarely discussed, why are people leaving in the first place, and, perhaps, why is the US enacting policies that are contributing to those conditions?

    CEPR: Economic Sanctions: A Root Cause of Migration

    CEPR (3/3/25)

    JJ: The US interferes in other countries in multiple ways, but you wrote recently about one that goes under the radar—under under the radar, in this context. So talk to us about this piece that you wrote with Alex Main about economic sanctions. And I want to say, you make clear it’s not about a feeling, it’s not about an anecdotal sense about the reasons people have for moving. It’s research, it’s data.

    MG: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I want to make clear from the start: Migrants should be welcomed into our communities. They should not be scapegoated, they should not be repressed. And, at the same time, we should not be creating the conditions that force them to leave their homes.

    I mean, most migrants are not choosing to leave their community, to leave the only place they’ve ever known, often leave their families, to come to a new country where they risk discrimination, on a whim, right? They’re coming for good reason, and that is typically they’ve seen either violence and insecurity in their homes, or they are facing poverty and lack of economic opportunity.

    That should not be a shocking thing. I think if you talk to anybody on the street, they will tell you that migrants are more likely to be coming from poorer countries to wealthier countries. And there’s US involvement in that, and the whole range of potential issues, of which economic sanctions is only one. But I can go into that, as that was the subject of our piece and of our research.

    JJ: Please.

    CEPR: The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions

    CEPR (9/25/23)

    MG: So, effectively, the argument here is pretty simple. There are mounds of evidence that economic sanctions harm people. Sanctions come in many forms, but in their broadest forms, broad economic sanctions, which is those imposed on Cuba and Venezuela, the goal, the intent, is to harm the macroeconomy of these countries, which in turn, of course, affects civilians. It affects their lives, it affects whether they can feed their children. So because there are mountains of evidence that sanctions are harming individuals, there are also mountains of evidence that people migrate due to economic need. One plus one equals two. It is clear that when we impose sanctions on countries and hurt their people, the effect of that is going to be that people migrate to the United States.

    But there is also recent research to that effect. So in October of last year, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization published what I think is the first and only systematic cross-national analysis of how sanctions impact international migration. And using data flows from 157 countries, I believe, the authors find that Western multilateral sanctions have increased, on average, immigration from targeted countries by 22 to 24%. So that’s a massive increase as a result of sanctions. And the authors also find that when sanctions are lifted, migration decreases again. So there’s a clear empirical analysis there that one plus one equals two, sanctions harm people, harmed people migrate, sanctions cause migration.

    JJ: I think that there is such a miscommunication about economic sanctions in the news media that obscures that very kind of information. They’re often presented as “making Castro squirm,” they’re presented as targeted, and they’re really only going to target leadership in countries. Now there’s a problem with that already, but what you’re saying is, no, there’s no way to simply surgically target an economic sector of a country without having that impact folks, and usually the most vulnerable first.

    Michael Galant

    Michael Galant: “Sanctions are presented as this peaceful alternative to warfare, but often for civilians on the ground, the effects are very similar to war.”

    MG: That’s exactly right. Sanctions are presented as this peaceful alternative to warfare, but often for civilians on the ground, the effects are very similar to war.

    And “sanction” is a broad term. This does include imposing visa restrictions on individual foreign leaders. Of course, that’s not going to have the same effect as, say, the entire embargo of Cuba. But many of our sanctions regimes are broad, and intentionally so. The implicit logic of them is we hurt this country’s economy, that causes distress among the civilian population, and eventually the civilian population will rise up and overthrow their government.

    And so in Cuba, when the embargo was imposed, there was a State Department memo from the time that has since been declassified, where it makes those intentions very plain. It says the goal is to cause hunger in order to overthrow the regime.

    These days, government officials, advocates of sanctions, are often much more careful in their word choices. But the implicit logic of sanctions involves the intentional targeting of civilians.

    JJ: I think it’s important to interrogate that logic. Some would say it’s hypocritical or cross-purposed to say, “Well, we’re going to sanction their country into hardship…but they can’t come here!” It’s complicated, and yet it makes sense if you’re of a certain frame of mind, I guess.

    MG: That’s exactly right. To take one example, and I can also talk through Venezuela, but to take Cuba as an example, because it is one of our oldest, most comprehensive sanctions regimes, sanctions have been in place over six decades now, with the embargo. And there has been some tightening and loosening of sanctions over the years, particularly under the Obama administration. There was a light thawing of relations and the easing of sanctions, and we saw their economy really improved during that time, as hopes improved and the like.

    NYT: Trump Reverses Pieces of Obama-Era Engagement With Cuba

    New York Times (6/16/17)

    But then when Trump came in the first time, he reversed all the Obama measures, and then tightened sanctions even further. Biden, unfortunately, basically maintained the Trump measures. He made only very small tweaks at the margin. And as a result of that, we’ve seen, from 2020 to 2024, 13% of Cuba’s population emigrated in those four years, 13%. It’s really shocking to imagine, if any of your listeners—many are probably based in the US, some are probably based abroad—imagine 13% of your country’s population immigrating over four years, and a good deal of that immigration is a result of the US sanction that has ended in an economic crisis, and made it much harder for ordinary people to live their lives.

    JJ: Media tend to personalize, just to pull us back to media. Here’s a woman who crossed the border, holding her son close, or whatever, and it can be moving and poignant, but I feel that one effect of that is to kind of get people thinking on an individual level: “Well, I would never do that. I wouldn’t make that choice in those circumstances.” In terms of media, the story of migration is of course about people, but if we don’t integrate an understanding of policy and practices, we’re not going to get that story right.

    MG: Absolutely. I think we need both. I understand that my organization has a lot of economists, and we’ll talk in terms of numbers, and sometimes that won’t really pull at people’s heartstrings in the way that they need to. And at the same time, on the other hand, you have the case where you talk only in terms of individuals, and don’t understand the broader structural causes, and how US policy contributes to these conditions. So we need both of them. Absolutely. But, yeah, we should not ignore, we should not remove ourselves from the structural causes, because, ultimately, when you look at the world—no one would disagree with you that migration tends to flow from poorer countries to wealthier countries.

    And so the “solution” to migration—not that migration is itself a problem—but the “solution” is very clear. It is development of the Global South, allowing the Global South to develop, addressing the many ways in which US and other policies of wealthy countries inhibit the stability, economic and otherwise, of the Global South, and to allow greater shared global peace and stability and prosperity.

    JJ: Well, and finally and briefly, that vision is shared. You note in the piece that, while the Biden administration claimed to address root causes, they had an inadequate understanding or representation of those causes, if you will. But there are, finally, other visions out there that acknowledge this.

    MG: That’s right. And we’re seeing, of course, there have always been more grassroots people’s movements that have mobilized in solidarity with the Global South in pursuit of a more equitable world order. But now we’re also seeing in Congress, there was a group of progressives led by Rep. Greg Casar of Texas, and also representatives Ramirez and Kamlager-Dove, who created a new caucus, but it’s specifically about reframing how we understand migration.

    And Representative Casar introduced a migration stability resolution, which is all about the actions that would be needed to address how the US contributes to migration. And it includes, just to name a few, how US weapons trafficking feeds cartel violence in Mexico; fixing trade agreements that are designed to work for multinational corporations based in the US, instead of working-class people here and abroad; fixing the inequities in the global financial architecture that result in debt crises in developing countries; addressing the climate crisis; stopping destabilizing US interventions, from coups to military interventions.

    This whole gamut of actions is to truly address migration at its root, if we’re not just listening to those who are trying to scapegoat migrants. To truly address migration at its core requires an entire reorientation of how the US relates to the Global South, and Latin America in particular.

    JJ: We’ve been speaking with Michael Galant, from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. His piece, with Alex Main, “Economic Sanctions: A Root Cause of Migration,” can be found on their website at CEPR.net. Thank you so much, Michael Galant, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    MG: Thank you.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Janine Jackson interviewed Defending Rights and Dissent’s Chip Gibbons about freeing Mahmoud Khalil for the June 12, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

     

    Zeteo: UN Humanitarian Chief: ‘I’ve Started Therapy’ After Witnessing ‘Death’ and ‘Trauma’ in Gaza

    Zeteo (6/12/25)

    Janine Jackson: As we record on June 12, the official death toll in Gaza is…something that need not be of specific concern, given ample evidence that no number would, in itself, magically change the indifference of powerful bodies to the ongoing crime of murder, starvation, displacement and erasure of Palestinians by Israel, with critical US material and political support. UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said recently, without trying to compare his experience to that of Gazans, that he has started therapy to deal with his experience, just witnessing trauma on this scale.

    But when people speak up about something that bipartisan US politicians and US corporate media support, that criticism becomes suspect, by which is increasingly meant criminal. So here we are with Columbia University graduate—or what Fox News calls “anti-Israel ringleader”—Mahmoud Khalil, charged with no crime, but detained since March.

    Chip Gibbons is policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, and journalist and researcher working on a new history of FBI national security surveillance. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Chip Gibbons.

    Chip Gibbons: It’s always a pleasure to be back on CounterSpin.

    JJ: There’s always a lot I could talk with you about, but, for today, I know that listeners with horrible news coming at them from all sides may have lost the thread on Mahmoud Khalil. What is the latest on his case, and how good is that latest news? What should we think about it?

    CG: As of June 12, when we’re recording this, Mahmoud Khalil is still detained at the LaSalle Immigration Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana. It is a private immigration prison. If you go on their website, they talk about their commitment to family values, but the conditions there—you’ll be shocked to learn this—are not very good. I’m not sure what type of family values they’re talking about.

    CBS: Politics Judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can't be deported or detained for foreign policy reasons cited by Trump administration

    CBS (6/13/25)

    Recently, a judge has ruled on a preliminary injunction that Mahmoud Khalil brought, asking that the immigration provision that [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio relies on, that gives the secretary of state the power to expel someone from the country if they pose a threat to US foreign policy, is unconstitutional as applied to [Khalil], enjoined Rubio from enforcing it against him, voiding the determination that Rubio made, as well as enjoining the Trump administration from enforcing what Khalil’s lawyers alleged, and what I think is not really just an allegation at this point, is a policy of arresting and detaining noncitizens who criticize Israel or support Palestinian rights. The judge has given the Trump administration until Friday to appeal, and has stayed his own order.

    Of all the other similarly situated individuals in immigration proceedings over their pro-Palestine speech, the judges have granted them bail pending a final motion. Khalil submitted a motion for bail. It’s never been ruled on, and now the judge has issued this injunction that could potentially set him free, but has given the government until Friday to file an appeal, and it’s unclear, if the government files the appeal, if that will further stay his time in detention.

    And Khalil is a father. His child was born while he was detained. He was not able to attend the birth of his child, and for an extended period he was denied a contact visit with the newborn child until a judge intervened.

    And the thing we have to remember here, this is very difficult to keep track of, is that Khalil is really in two separate legal proceedings right now. He’s in an immigration removal proceeding, which takes place in immigration court, and immigration court is not part of the “Article Three”—that’s Article Three of the US Constitution—judiciary.

    It is part of the Department of Justice. Immigration Judges work for Pam Bondi, the attorney general. You can appeal an immigration judge’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is appointed by Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and the attorney general can reverse or modify any decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals. So immigration court is basically a kangaroo court.

    At the same time, he’s challenging the constitutionality of this detention, not the removal itself, but the detention as unconstitutional in federal court, with what’s called a federal habeas petition. And the habeas corpus, of course, goes back to before the Magna Carta, but it was enshrined as a basic human right in the Magna Carta, and he’s arguing his detention is unconstitutional.

    And the reason for these two proceedings is that immigration courts are very limited in what they can do, beyond the sort of kangaroo court nature that I just described, where the attorney general is usually the party seeking the deportation, and the person making the decision works for the attorney general, and if the attorney general doesn’t like their decision, they can modify it. The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled during the Clinton years that once the secretary of state makes a determination that someone’s presence in the US has adverse foreign policy consequences, they can be removed from the country. There’s essentially no defense, and immigration judges cannot hear constitutional challenges or issues.

    On the flip side, federal courts are barred from hearing challenges to the attorney general’s enforcement or commencement of immigration proceedings, but they are allowed to weigh challenges to detention. So Khalil and other similarly situated defendants are using the habeas remedy to challenge the constitutionality of the detention.

    Guardian: Columbia graduate detained by Ice was respected British government employee

    Guardian (3/13/25)

    In Khalil’s case, it gets very complicated even further, because the government has brought two “immigration charges” against him. One is the claim that his presence poses a threat to our foreign policy. The other is that he misled immigration officials on his application by not mentioning he was part of a student group, which it’s unclear why that would affect his Green Card.

    And there’s also allegations about when he did or didn’t work for the British government. He worked at the British Embassy, I think, in Lebanon, and the Trump administration is bringing that up, which I believe was disclosed on his application. And his lawyers have offered information refuting this charge, but the immigration judge has refused to hear it.

    The immigration judge, by the way, not only works for the Department of Justice, she’s a former ICE employee. She’s refused to hear it on the grounds that she doesn’t need to make a decision on this, because she has the Rubio determination. And the preliminary injunction only applies, we think, to the Rubio determination, because the judge ruled in the previous ruling he was unlikely to prevail on a constitutional challenge to the misleading application charge.

    So that’s sort of the convoluted legal situation we’re in. Khalil is in a removal proceeding in immigration court. He’s in a federal challenge to detention in federal court, and a federal judge has issued an injunction to enforcing the Rubio determination against him, but not the second charge, which an immigration judge has refused to rule on. Rubio’s saying it’s a sole removal basis. And that judge has also issued a stay giving the government time to appeal. So he remains detained even though his detention is likely unconstitutional, and a judge has found that he suffers irreparable harm by this detention.

    JJ: I want to lift up a piece that you mentioned that we’re seeing, is that criminality, or the ability to be detained, has to do with something you do having “adverse foreign policy consequences.” I know that folks hear that and are like, “What? What do you mean? If the current administration has certain foreign policy objectives, and I disagree with them, that means if I speak out in opposition, I’m committing a crime?”

    CG: So I think we have to remember, and this gets sort of pedantic, but Khalil is not charged with a crime, and the provision is not a criminal provision. It is a provision about whether or not you can be admitted into the US or removed from the US. So Khalil has not been charged with any criminal offense. They’re invoking a provision that says if your presence has adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States…

    JJ: Your presence, OK.

    Al Jazeera: Detained Columbia activist Khalil’s wife slams claims he is Hamas supporter

    Al Jazeera (3/23/25)

    CG: …signs a piece of paper saying this is true, or it makes determination of it, you can be deported from the US. So this is not a criminal matter.

    What does this provision even cover or does not cover is a really fascinating question. And the judge in the Khalil habeas case has stated that it’s unconstitutional as applied to Khalil, because no reasonable person would have notice that this provision could apply to domestic political speech or domestic speech.

    He noted a number of instances when it was used in the ’90s by the Clinton administration, but they were all against people who were accused of criminal conduct in foreign countries. So you had a Saudi national who was accused of terrorism in Jordan; you had an alleged paramilitary leader from Haiti. You had a Mexican official who was accused of a number of crimes; but it was not someone who was in this country and engaged in political speech about a foreign government’s genocide, and therefore no reasonable person would have any notice that this statute could apply to their domestic speech.

    JJ: I’m going to keep us short for today, although there are much, much and myriad things we could talk about, but you and I both know that once politicians take up an individual case—Julian Assange, Michael Brown, Mahmoud Khalil—we know that then news media bring out the microscopes. Is this really a good guy? How did he treat his mother? I’m seeing some parking tickets here. There might be some particulars to investigate.

    There’s almost a vocational effort to make there be something specific about this person that makes it make sense that they are being targeted. And then the effect of that is to tell everyone listening, As long as you don’t do what this guy did, you’re going to be safe. Why is the Mahmoud Khalil case so important to folks who don’t even know who Mahmoud Khalil is, and don’t understand why it matters?

    Chip Gibbons

    Chip Gibbons: “This is a case about whether or not we have a First Amendment right to criticize Israel for engaging in a genocide in Gaza, or support the human rights of the Palestinian people.”

    CG: This is a case about whether or not we have a First Amendment right to criticize Israel for engaging in a genocide in Gaza, or support the human rights of the Palestinian people. The case is currently about an obscure Cold War immigration provision, and whether or not it can be used to deport a lawful, permanent resident, all of which has profound legal questions for individuals in this country who are immigrants or noncitizens. But at the end of the day, we should not believe this will remain only in the noncitizen realm.

    The Heritage Foundation, who laid out a lot of the playbook about using deportations to target student activists, has made it clear their final goal is to equate all protests for Palestine with material support for terrorism. In the past, when we’ve seen immigration enforcement abuse for political policing, J. Edgar Hoover during the Palmer raids; the Los Angeles Eight, who were supporters of Palestinian rights who the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations sought to deport, both of those cases preconfigure or forbode larger attacks of civil liberties that eventually affect everyone.

    Which is not to say that we shouldn’t care about the rights of noncitizens; we should care about everyone’s free-speech rights.

    But if you believe this is going to stay with Green Card holders or student visa holders, the goal is to take away your right to criticize a foreign apartheid state’s genocide, with the eventual goal of taking away your right to criticize US foreign policy. And this is the vehicle for doing it. It starts today, with the visa holders and the Green Card holders, but they will come for the natural-born citizens eventually, too, if they get away with this.

    JJ: We’ve been speaking with Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights & Dissent. They’re online at RightsAndDissent.org. Chip Gibbons, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    CG: Thank you for having me back.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • After years of dealing with a corruption-ridden Mayor Eric Adams, beleaguered New Yorkers on June 24 selected a mayoral candidate in the Democratic primary—often the city’s de facto general election. While the city’s ranked-choice voting system meant that the official winner won’t be known until July 1, the presumed victor is the top vote-getter in the first round: state assembly member Zorhan Mamdani.

    But for much of this election cycle, it has been easy for a casual consumer of news to believe that only one person was in the running to replace Adams: disgraced former New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

    A FAIR analysis of media coverage of the top six Democratic candidates (based on polling through the end of May) found that Cuomo’s name appeared in headlines seven times more often than Zohran Mamdani, who for months had been in second place in opinion polls, and nine times more often than Brad Lander, who typically came in No. 3 in the polls (as he did in first-round voting). The omissions were sometimes egregious; for example, one May 2025 New York Times article (5/17/25) was headlined “Can Cool Kids Get This Mayoral Candidate Elected?” Mamdani was the candidate in question, but his name was relegated to the subhead.

    NYC Mayoral Candidate Mentions in News Headlines

    By far the most references

    FAIR searched the Nexis Uni news database for US news stories that included each  candidate’s name and the words “mayor” and “election.” (We looked on May 28, 2025, going from September 1, 2024, until the date of search.) We then manually filtered out duplicates and false positives. Cuomo received by far the most references, with 411. Lander had the second-most, with 266; Mamdani had only 203.
    News Mentions of NYC Democratic Mayoral Candidates

    Cuomo’s mentions increased markedly after he announced his candidacy on March 1, but rumors of his candidacy made him the most-mentioned candidate in most of the preceding months.

    FAIR searched Media Cloud‘s New York state and local news database as well, with similar results: Cuomo became the clear leader in mentions in February, with far greater coverage than his competitors in the three months before the election. Cuomo had 141 mentions in New York media in the month of May, versus 84 for Mamdani and 78 for Lander.

    Media Cloud analysis of New York Democratic mayoral primary coverage.

    Media Cloud analysis of New York Democratic mayoral primary coverage.

     

    Familiarity creates affinity

    Maisie Williams as Arya Stark

    Maisie Williams as Arya Stark from Game of Thrones.

    To understand why this matters, consider a different name—Arya.

     

    The first time the name Arya appears on the Social Security Administration’s list of most popular baby names is in 2010, where it crawled onto the list as the 942nd-most popular name for girls. That’s the same year that Game of Thrones debuted with a bang, introducing the country to Arya Stark—a main character and a fan favorite.  By 2019, when the show fizzled its way off the air, the name Arya had become the 92nd-most popular baby name for girls in the country.

    Despite the truism that familiarity breeds contempt, familiarity can in fact create affinity, according to Kentaro Fukumoto, a professor of political science at the University of Tokyo.

    “In psychology, there’s a theory called the mere exposure effect,” Fukumoto told FAIR. “The theory argues that when you’re exposed to something [enough] you start to like it.”

    Mere exposure effect is how one goes from not even knowing the name Arya to deciding to name your child Arya. It’s also how we sometimes go from hating a song on the radio to loving it. And it’s why companies—and politicians—run ads. The hope is that if we hear a name often enough, it will unconsciously motivate us to buy the product or vote for the candidate. And there’s some evidence, at least when it comes to politicians, that they’re right.

    Name-recognition effect

    In 2018, Fukumoto published a study that looked at what happened in Japanese elections when a Japanese national candidate shared a last name with a candidate in a down-ballot race—and thus voters were exposed to that name a lot.  Fukumoto found that in districts where candidates shared a name, the national candidate received a 69% boost, compared to how they performed in districts where they didn’t share a name.  So, for example, if a national candidate had 10% of the vote share, in districts where they shared a name with a down-ballot candidate, their vote share would become 17% —a sizable jump.

    Lawn signs promoting Joe Sesta and Rendell for Governor.

    Campaigns use lawn signs in part to increase the familiarity of their candidates’ names (Creative Commons photo: Eric Behrens).

    Fukumoto cautions that for major candidates, the effect is likely not as large, but the effect is very important for minor candidates—say, a lesser-known candidate challenging an incumbent. In the New York City mayoral race, Mamdani and the other less-covered candidates certainly were much less well-known than Cuomo, who not only served as governor, but whose father also served as governor from 1983–94.

    A 2013 study by researchers at Vanderbilt University also found that name recognition can give candidates a boost. That study took advantage of the fact that a local school had strict routes for parents to drive down, to avoid creating the dreaded overburdened school pick-up line. The researchers placed four lawn signs for a local election with a fictional candidate—Ben Griffin—along one of the routes, and then surveyed all of the parents afterwards. They found that parents who drove along the route with the sign were 10 percentage points more likely than those who didn’t drive along the route to say that they would put Griffin—who, remember, did not exist—in their top three choices for a council seat.  And that’s a handful of lawn signs placed along one road.

    In aggregate, news outlets prioritizing one candidate over others could shift the outcome of the election. When one considers that the 2021 mayoral primary election was decided by just 7,000 votes, it matters that Lander received roughly 35% less attention, Mamdani 50% less attention, and Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the New York City Council (and no relationship to Eric Adams), received 62% less coverage than Cuomo.

     

    Bad publicity still publicity

    New Republic: Andrew Cuomo Sexually Harassed Even More Women Than Initially Reported

    Some of Cuomo’s coverage may have related to his history of scandals (New Republic, 1/26/24)—but a FAIR analysis (4/9/25) found media downplayed that record.

    Some of Cuomo’s mentions were likely tied to the continued fallout of his governorship, including his concealment of nursing home deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic, and lawsuits tied to the New York attorney general’s report on complaints that he had sexually harassed employees. That report affirmed that Cuomo had sexually harassed members of his own staff as well as other state employees, creating a culture “filled with fear and intimidation.”

    But at the same time, many of the candidates in the race were current government officials, who might be expected to generate news coverage in the course of their work. Adrienne Adams has been the speaker of the New York City Council since 2022. Lander is the city’s current comptroller, widely considered the second most powerful citywide office, serving as the chief financial officer and auditor of the city agencies. Mamdani is a New York State Assembly member, and Zellnor Myrie is a New York State senator.

    And negative news coverage doesn’t mean negative election impact for candidates receiving outsize media attention—Donald Trump famously received billions of dollars worth of free media in his 2016 campaign, much of it negative.

    Thumbs on the scale

    Atlantic: New York Is Not a Democracy

    The Atlantic‘s Annie Lowrey (6/12/25) noted that “the political scion with a multimillion-dollar war chest and blanket name recognition could lose to the young Millennial whom few New Yorkers had heard of as of last year”—before going on to argue that “if this is democracy, it’s a funny form of it.”

    Further, while the analysis focused on the frequency of occurrences, not the tone, in recent weeks some news outlets have made their support for Cuomo more explicit. The New York Times editorial board said in 2024 that it would no longer endorse candidates for local races, but still this week published a confusingly written piece (6/16/25) that amounted to an endorsement for the former governor. (In April, a FAIR analysis—4/9/25—found the Times’ coverage of the former governor’s record notably forgiving.)

    Similarly, Annie Lowrey in the Atlantic  (6/12/25) wrote a piece, rife with inaccuracies about voting methods, criticizing the city’s system for primaries as anti-democratic. New York City uses a ranked-choice system, which allows voters to rank mayoral candidates in their order of preference. While mathematicians don’t all agree on which voting systems are the best at accurately capturing voter preferences, there is broad consensus that plurality voting—where the candidate who gets the most votes in a single round wins—is the worst. Like the New York Times editorial, Lowrey’s article ends up as a de facto endorsement for the former governor, but by criticizing the system, it also acts to undermine the election itself. In other words, if Cuomo loses under this system—according to Lowrey—no he didn’t.

    It’s unsettling that news outlets that proclaim to be for democracy are putting their thumbs on the scale, providing Cuomo with extensive coverage even as he mostly avoided actually meeting the people he has said he wants to govern.

    However, while name recognition is important, news coverage is not the only way to get it. In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseated Joe Crowley, a Democrat who had served as the US representative for New York’s 14th District for almost two decades, and received almost no media attention before she did so. She did it, in part, by knocking on doors.

    Mamdani, who entered the race in the low single digits as a relatively unknown assemblymember, and headed into Primary Day neck and neck with Cuomo in polling, pledged to knock on at least 1 million doors before NYC’s June 24 Democratic primary. Two weeks ago, on TikTok, Mamdani said they were on track to reach that goal 10 days early.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    NYT: America Must Not Rush Into a War Against Iran

    The New York Times (6/18/25) made clear that it wouldn’t mind an unprovoked attack on Iran—so long as it wasn’t done hastily.

    In the wake of the US-supported Israeli attack on Iran, and days before the direct US bombing that followed, the New York Times editorial board (6/18/25) argued that “America Must Not Rush Into a War Against Iran.”

    This language was as shifty as it was deliberate. Rather than oppose a policy of unprovoked aggression and mass murder, the Times editorialists suggested such a campaign was happening too hastily, and it should be preceded by more debate.

    The opinion writers at the most important paper in the world were fully in favor of attacking Iran; they only worried that Trump would go about it the wrong way. In fact, the Times’ justification for war was identical to that of the Trump administration’s explanation after the fact.  It laid it out in the first paragraph:

    A nuclear-armed Iran would make the world less safe. It would destabilize the already volatile Middle East. It could imperil Israel’s existence. It would encourage other nations to acquire their own nuclear weapons, with far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

    The New York Times‘ echo of the standard Israeli and US propaganda line offers an opportunity to critically examine this most recent justification for aggressive war.

    ‘Iran is not building a nuclear weapon’

    Responsible Statecraft: Tulsi said Iran not building nukes. One senator after another ignored her.

    The Trump administration’s top intelligence official saying that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” (Responsible Statecraft, 6/8/25) did not prevent the New York Times from asserting that Iran “has made substantial progress toward acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

    The premise here was that Iran is working to build a nuclear weapon, something that forms the backbone of the Israeli propaganda campaign justifying their actions. The only problem is that there is no evidence whatsoever for this position. Not only is there no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, there is no reason to think that if they did, they would be anything other than defensive weapons.

    Nowhere in the Times analysis was there any reference to the fact that neither US intelligence agencies nor international monitoring organizations have found evidence of any Iranian intention to build a nuclear weapon. As recently as March 25, 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, the Trump administration’s director of national intelligence, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the US intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”

    While the International Atomic Energy Agency has been critical of steps Iran has taken to make its nuclear power program less transparent in the context of continual threats from Israel and the US to bomb that program, IAEA director Rafael Grossi emphasized in an interview with CNN (6/17/25; cited in Al Jazeera, 6/18/25), after those threats had become reality, “We did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon.”

    Unilaterally scrapped

    NYT: Trump Abandons Iran Nuclear Deal He Long Scorned

    “The Trump administration might well be able to achieve a stricter deal” than the one Obama negotiated in 2015, the Times advised—without mentioning that Trump’s unilateral repudiated the Obama deal (New York Times, 5/8/18).

    While the Times editorial did make brief mention of the US’s Obama-era anti-nuclear treaty with Iran, it offered no analysis as to why the Trump administration unilaterally scrapped the deal, despite no violation on Iran’s part. Nor did the paper mention the Biden administration refusal to negotiate a return to the deal. There was no mention of the fact that as Israel launched its first strike against Iran, the Iranians had made it clear that they wished to make a deal with the Trump administration on its nuclear energy program, and were actively negotiating toward that end.

    But the fact is that every country in the Middle East, including Iran, has been in favor of a nuclear weapons–free Middle East. Every country, that is, with the exception of Israel, whose illegal, undeclared and often unacknowledged stockpile of nuclear weapons are currently in the hands of a genocidal and messianic regime, hell-bent on attacking its neighbors and thwarting any opportunities for peace.

    Despite all of the fearmongering about Iran’s alleged aggressive intent and destabilizing potential, the Times ignored ample analysis and evidence to the contrary. As eminent political scientist John Mearsheimer (PBS, 7/9/12) has argued, a nuclear armed Iran could make the region more stable, because of the deterrent power of nuclear weapons.

    A 2009 US military–funded study from the RAND corporation (4/14/09) examined Iranian ”press statements, writings in military journals, and other glimpses into Iranian thinking,” and found that it was extremely unlikely that Iran would use nuclear weapons offensively against Israel. Contrary to the Times’ image of Iran as fanatical theocrats bent on Israel’s destruction at all costs, military planners in Iran are well aware of the danger of being wiped off the map by retaliatory US strikes, and plan accordingly. If the Islamic Republic was to get nuclear weapons, predicts RAND, they would be used to deter exactly the kind of unprovoked attack that the US and Israel have launched over the past several days. They would be defensive, not offensive, weapons.

    ‘A malevolent force in the world’ 

    Common Dreams: How the US and Israel Used Rafael Grossi to Hijack the IAEA and Start a War on Iran

    The IAEA statement cited by the New York Times was the product of intense lobbying by the US (Common Dreams, 6/23/25).

    The editorial board explicitly avoided the question of what Congress should do on the question of war with Iran: “The separate question of whether the United States should join the conflict is not one that we are addressing here.” But they had no problem presenting their pros list:

    We know the arguments in favor of doing so—namely, that Iran’s government is a malevolent force in the world, and that it has made substantial progress toward acquiring a nuclear weapon. Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is part of the United Nations, declared that Iran was violating its nonproliferation obligations and apparently hiding evidence of its efforts.

    And their cons list:

    Given how much weaker Iran is today than it was then, thanks partly to Israel’s humbling of Iranian proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, the Trump administration might well be able to achieve a stricter [Iran nuclear deal] today.

    While the Times correctly pointed out that the IAEA found Iran to be in “noncompliance” with the nonproliferation treaty (NPT), the Times failed to point out that this came after an intense lobbying effort from Western officials just hours before Israeli strikes. They also ignore Iran’s detailed criticism of the IAEA finding, including its allegations that the findings were based in part on forged documents—a credible allegation, given Israel’s history of fabricating and forging evidence to justify aggression. Iran also noted that some of the “nonproliferation obligations” it had allegedly violated were not codified in the NPT, but instead were part of the agreement that the US unilaterally withdrew from. Nor did the Times make reference to the IAEA chief’s explicit insistence that the agency did not have proof Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon.

    ‘Let this vital debate begin’ 

    BBC: Trump speculates about regime change in Iran after US strikes

    Shortly after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the bombing of Iran “was not and has not been about regime change” (BBC, 6/23/25), Trump posted, “Why wouldn’t there be a regime change???”

    Instead of explaining this, the Times went straight to name-calling. One does not have to scrape the annals of the New York Times to predict that the phrase “malevolent force” has never been used to describe any of Washington’s ultra-violent allies, even the ones who have actually built and maintained an illegal stockpile of nuclear weapons. Certainly not Israel, the nation that has put an entire population under military apartheid for decades, and has slaughtered tens of thousands as part of what international rights organizations have labeled a genocide.

    The US and Israel have made Iran the target of propaganda campaigns, terrorism, cyber attacks, assassinations, regime change operations and unprovoked attacks on its personnel and home soil. If the Times had included these facts, it would have inhibited the ultimate goal of the editorial: to promote the idea that war with Iran could potentially be desirable—and certainly justifiable. The Times seemed keen to act as a loyal opposition to Trump, while distancing themselves from the manner in which he might enact such a war.

    Including the facts of America’s aggressive and provocative behavior against Iran would force them to conclude that the primary force destabilizing the region is not Iran, but the US and Israel. It isn’t Iran whose top papers are weighing the benefits of whether or not to launch a war of aggression against yet another nation. That honor goes to the New York Times, which said of this national discussion of mass murder policy: “Let this vital debate begin.”

    After the strikes on Iran, the Trump administration and Israel have not announced full scale regime change war just yet, though there is every indication that such plans are in the works. As with Iraq in 2003, we have seen how easily false claims of weapons of mass destruction, and propaganda about a need to act, can morph into a years-long quagmire of senseless killing in the name of rebuilding a nation according to Washington’s designs. If such a war should be launched against Iran, the Times will have been one of its key supporters.


    Research assistance: Emma Llano

    ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com or via Bluesky@NYTimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Janine Jackson interviewed Cal Poly Pomona’s Farrah Hassen about criminalizing homelessness for the June 12, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

     

    Rudy Giuliani

    Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani

    Janine Jackson: In 1999, then–New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared that “streets do not exist in civilized societies for the purpose of people sleeping there. Bedrooms are for sleeping.” He added that the right to sleep on the streets “doesn’t exist anywhere. The Founding Fathers never put that in the Constitution.”

    That absurd out-of-touchness, the failure, not merely of empathy, but of knowledge? Our guest reports that still seems to undergird much of what we are told are policies and laws meant to address homelessness, including at the highest levels.

    Farrah Hassen has been tracking the issue for years. She’s a writer, policy analyst and adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona. She joins us now by phone from Sacramento. Welcome to CounterSpin, Farrah Hassen.

    Farrah Hassen: Hi, Janine. Thanks for having me.

    Other Words: Criminalizing Homelessness Doesn’t Work. Housing People Does.

    Other Words (6/4/25)

    JJ: I want to ask you about Grants Pass v. Johnson, last year’s Supreme Court case that you wrote about recently for OtherWords, but I’d like to start, as you do, with the acknowledgement that ought to anchor every story we see: that a person who works full time and earns a minimum wage cannot afford a safe place to live almost anywhere in the United States. That’s the reality, that’s the understanding that any of our responses ought to take on board, or to be judged by, yes?

    FH: That’s correct. I mean, we have to consider that backdrop if we are going to talk about the growing problem of homelessness, and the related housing crisis. And, unsurprisingly, homelessness has increased as our government has diminished social safety nets. And we have to consider that when we think about how people fall into homelessness.

    JJ: So rather than respond with a commitment to housing and social services, and job and wage growth, what we’ve seen is criminalizing. I couldn’t find it, but I remember Rudy Giuliani saying that he hoped that his crackdown on unhoused people would lead to them just going away, just sort of disappearing. And that seems to be some of the thinking behind, if not the Grants Pass ruling, some of the support for it. So tell listeners a little about what Grants Pass, that decision, did, and then, what didn’t it do?

    FH: A year ago, on June 28, in the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court ruled that local governments can criminalize people for sleeping outside, even if there is no available shelter. The Supreme Court overturned the 2018 Martin v. Boise precedent that had been decided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had said that the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause prohibits cities from penalizing unhoused people for sitting, sleeping or lying outside on public property unless they have access to adequate temporary shelter.

    And so, for some context, in Grants Pass, like other cities across the United States, the number of people living unhoused easily exceeds the number of available shelter on any given night. Debra Blake was among those Grants Pass residents who were forced to live outside—in her case, for eight years—after losing her job and housing. Moreover, her disability disqualified her from staying in the town’s only shelter. And the city had these anti-camping ordinances that prohibited people like Debra Blake from sleeping or camping in the public, and they interpreted “camping” to even include the use of bedding, like a blanket, to stay warm in the cold.

    Anyone who violated these ordinances in the city could be ticketed, could face fines, even subject to criminal prosecution. And the Grants Pass City Council themselves revealed that the underlying goal of these ordinances was to “make it uncomfortable enough for unhoused people in our city so they will want to move down the road.”

    Cal Matters: ‘Look, there’s nowhere else to go’: Inside California’s crackdown on homeless camps

    Cal Matters (2/27/25)

    And so in Debra Blake’s case, after being banished from every park, accruing thousands in fines, she sued the city of Grants Pass as part of this class action suit, for violating unhoused residents’ constitutional rights. And the Oregon District Court agreed in 2020 that the city’s actions constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

    But, sadly, Blake never got to see the results. And the city of Grants Pass ended up appealing this decision all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in the city’s favor.

    And which brings us back to today. And I should also note, going back to the Supreme Court’s decision, that, importantly, it did not say, “Therefore, state and local governments must now criminalize homelessness.” But because the high court found Grants Pass’s anti-camping ordinances constitutional, many jurisdictions, unfortunately, including in California where I live, have used the court’s decision as a green light to crack down on people living unhoused, including by passing these “anti-camping ordinances,” similar to Grants Pass, which broadly criminalized the act of sleeping or pitching tents or other structures on publicly owned property.

    JJ: It’s clear that the issues of homelessness involve many societal factors other than housing. And, at the same time, there’s an Occam’s razor at work here. There’s a reason that “housing first” lands as a call, isn’t there? For people who think, “Well, it’s very complicated. It’s about mental health, it’s about family structure” or whatever, housing first makes a lot of sense, if folks would just think of it that way, yeah?

    University of California, San Francisco: Toward a New Understanding

    Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative (6/23)

    FH: That’s absolutely correct. There is a misconception that homelessness is primarily caused by addiction and mental illness—which is not to say, to be clear, that there are not people suffering from mental illness and addiction among our nation’s unhoused population.

    But there was this landmark study in June 2023 by the University of California San Francisco that focused on California, and it found that poverty and high housing costs are, in fact, the driving forces of homelessness. And that’s just more confirmation that housing unaffordability is the primary cause of homelessness, as other research and experts have long noted.

    And that’s why, therefore, using the findings of this evidence, punitive fines, arrests, sweeps of encampments do not address the root of the problem, which is, again, the absence of permanent, affordable and, I might add, adequate housing. And so there are more things our country can do instead of criminalizing homelessness, which only traps people into these cycles, these endless cycles of poverty and homelessness, not to mention criminal penalties being inhumane to begin with.

    And so housing first, as you mentioned, is one proven, evidence-backed solution here. It prioritizes providing permanent housing as soon as possible to individuals and families experiencing homelessness, without preconditions. It’s in contrast to what some people want, which is treatment first, or treatment only. Housing first also is coupled with voluntary supportive services to help improve housing stability and well-being, especially for those people who may need additional support, additional treatment.

    And housing first has had strong bipartisan support for decades. It’s been supported by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies. And there’s so much evidence that shows that housing first actually works, including in places like Houston, Texas, which notably reduced homelessness by nearly two thirds over a decade. So that’s just yet another example of why, instead of kicking people while they’re down, housing support, combined with other voluntary services, really helped to lift people back up.

    JJ: I’ll just only ask you, finally, Farrah Hassen, if you see a particular role for news media here, either for good or for ill, in terms of consideration of this question, which I want to ground folks in the statement that you have in the piece, “Homelessness is solvable in our lifetime.” It’s not bending laws of nature, it’s just informed effort. And I wonder what role you think news media might play there.

    Farrah Hassen

    Farrah Hassen: “We have to look at this as a government failure, instead of constantly pointing back at people living unhoused, and blaming them for their plight.”

    FH: Oh, thank you. I really do appreciate that question, because underlying that question is, I believe, a larger narrative of how we talk about housing in this country. And you would never know that it’s actually a well-defined and internationally protected fundamental human right that all people—not people who have to be means-tested, or meet certain qualifications—all people are entitled to. Why? Because we all know innately, looking at our own lives, that housing is essential to life, to health, to well-being, but in the United States, it has primarily treated housing as a commodity, and it’s failing to protect this right for large numbers of people.

    Homelessness itself, the sheer fact that over 770,000 people last year experienced homelessness, a record high, directly violates this right to adequate housing. So we have to look at this as a government failure, instead of constantly pointing back at people living unhoused, and blaming them for their plight, as if there are not larger structural factors at play that contribute to housing remaining perpetually unaffordable for more and more people living in this country.

    And so obviously the US doesn’t recognize housing as a human right, but I believe we should talk about it more, like we do about the need for Medicare for All, which is rooted in healthcare for all. We need these economic, social and cultural rights, along with civil and political rights, to really be able to live our lives to the fullest. And, fundamentally, that means transforming our nation’s approach to housing policies, and to remember that people shouldn’t be punished as well, as we look back on homelessness, for living in public spaces. People should not be punished for existing.

    JJ: I’m going to end on that note. We’ve been speaking with writer, policy analyst and adjunct professor at Cal Poly Pomona Farrah Hassen. Thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    FH: Thanks so much, Janine.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Al Jazeera: Deported man Kilmar Abrego Garcia returned to US to face charges

    After citing Trump administration charges that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, Al Jazeera (6/6/25) included a response from his advocates: “His lawyers have denied that he was a gang member and said he had not been convicted of any crime.”

    Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States on June 6, after being wrongly deported to El Salvador almost three months earlier. Abrego Garcia had been detained in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center since March 15, along with more than 250 other immigrants accused of belonging to the Latin American gangs Tren de Aragua and MS-13.

    Abrego Garcia’s case drew particular media attention, due to the admission by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that his deportation and subsequent imprisonment were a result of an “administrative error.” For weeks, however, both the Trump administration and the Salvadoran government insisted they were powerless to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.

    After months of protests from Abrego Garcia’s Maryland community and legal challenges from his lawyers, the father of three was finally returned to the US. But there was a caveat: He would face criminal charges related to an immigrant-smuggling operation that the Department of Justice alleges Abrego Garcia took part in as a member of MS-13.

    Though there are plenty of reasons to cast doubt on the charges made against Abrego Garcia, in the seven articles published in the wake of his return, the New York Times (6/6/25, 6/6/25, 6/6/25, 6/8/25) and Wall Street Journal (6/6/25, 6/7/25, 6/8/25) present them mostly at face value. Given that the publications are the top two largest newspapers in America, their deficient coverage of one of the most important immigration cases of the second Trump administration is noteworthy.

    Unreliable sources

    NYT: U.S. Returns Abrego Garcia From El Salvador to Face Criminal Charges

    The main New York Times story (6/6/25) on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador consists largely of Trump administration officials accusing him of crimes—with no quotes from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers contesting those charges. 

    Only two of the articles (New York Times, 6/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 6/7/25) mentioned that the charges against Abrego Garcia stem from recent information supplied by jailhouse informants.  The articles failed to note that such testimony is notoriously unreliable, as documented by research, and frequently results in wrongful convictions.

    Though there are six unnamed co-conspirators listed in the indictment, it appears as though the majority of the charges rely on the testimony of one or two of these individuals. Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, told CNN’s Erin Burnett (6/6/25), “The very first question I’m going to be asking is, what were those two people offered to make up these really fantastic, hyperbolic allegations against Mr. Abrego Garcia?”

    The DoJ’s stonewalling of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers in his civil case should raise further suspicion about why these jailhouse informants decided to come forward now, despite the DoJ’s allegation that Abrego Garcia has been involved with immigrant smuggling since 2016. None of the articles mention that Abrego Garcia had been attending yearly check-ins with ICE since 2019, and that these allegations had not come up during the six years that ICE had been monitoring him, nor were they mentioned during the trial that resulted in a judge granting him withholding of removal.

    In their New York Times piece (6/6/25), reporters Devlin Barrett, Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush dedicated two paragraphs to a 2022 traffic stop involving Abrego Garcia that the indictment cites as evidence of a smuggling operation, while curiously omitting the fact that he was not charged with a crime at the time of the incident.

    None of the articles mentioned that Abrego Garcia had been in ICE detention for seven months in 2019, at the same time that the DoJ alleges he was leading an immigrant smuggling operation. Also missing in the Times and Journal’s coverage was the fact that the police officer who authored the 2019 report was later terminated for sharing “sensitive and confidential information about an ongoing police investigation with a commercial sex worker” (USA Today, 4/17/25).

     Sidelining advocates

    WSJ: U.S. Brings Abrego Garcia Back From El Salvador to Face Criminal Charges

    The Wall Street Journal (6/6/25) published several paragraphs alleging crimes by Abrego Garcia with no rebuttal.

    Two articles omitted comments from Abrego Garcia’s legal team altogether (New York Times 6/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 6/7/25). While the other articles do quote Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, they cited them only about his initial deportation and his return, but not about the criminal charges. Three articles (New York Times, 6/6/25, 6/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 6/6/25) include the same sole quote from Andrew Rossman, another one of Abrego Garcia’s lawyers:

    Today’s action proves what we’ve known all along—that the administration had the ability to bring him back and just refused to do so…. It’s now up to our judicial system to see that Mr. Abrego Garcia receives the due process that the Constitution guarantees to all persons.

    When given the chance to comment on the criminal allegations, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have been clear that these charges are “preposterous.” Sandoval-Moshenberg told CBS affiliate WUSA9 (6/6/25), “What happened today is the exact opposite of due process, because due process means the opportunity to defend yourself before you’re punished, not afterwards.”

    Another one of his lawyers, Chris Newman, who is also the legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told WUSA9 (6/6/25) in the same conference:

    This administration has shown amazing disregard for the Constitution, for due process and for basic decency. It is engaged in an unprecedented campaign of disinformation, defamation and cruelty directed at Kilmar’s family.

    Another member of Abrego Garcia’s legal team, Brian Murray, told MSNBC’s Alex Witt (6/7/25), “Anyone who’s been looking at this case and has been watching this play out would agree this is a political and vindictive prosecution.”

    In the days since Abrego Garcia’s release, his legal team has frequently made themselves available to media to speak about the criminal charges and ongoing constitutional issues surrounding his case. At a time when immigrants’ rights to free speech are under attack, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal chose to sideline the voices of their advocates.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).

     

    CEPR: Economic Sanctions: A Root Cause of Migration

    CEPR (3/3/25)

    This week on CounterSpin: We’ve always heard that racists hate quotas, yet Stephen Miller’s “3000 a day however which way” mandate is terrorizing immigrant communities—brown immigrant communities—around the country. The response from people of conscience can look many ways: linking arms around people in danger, absolutely; vigorously disputing misinformation about immigrants, whether hateful or patronizing, also. But another piece is gaining a deeper, broader understanding of migration. News media could help answer one implied question—“Why is anyone trying to come to the US anyway?”—by grappling with the role of conditions the US has largely created in the places people are driven from. We’ll talk about that largely missing piece from elite media’s immigration coverage with Michael Galant, senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

     

    Inequality: This Federal Budget Will Be a Disaster for Black Workers

    Inequality.org (5/29/25)

    Also on the show: Anyone who pays attention and cares can see that the Trump budget bill is a brazen transfer of resources from those that are trying to meet basic needs to those that can’t remember how many houses they own. But corporate reporting rarely breaks out economic policy in terms of how it affects different people—especially how it affects communities for whom they show no consistent concern. Economic policy is itself racialized, gendered, regionalized, targeted. Humanistic journalism would help us see that.

    LaToya Parker is a senior researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and co-author, with Joint Center president Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, of the recent piece “This Federal Budget Will Be a Disaster for Black Workers.”

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    AP: NYC mayoral candidate Brad Lander arrested at immigration court

    New York comptroller Brad Lander being arrested by DHS secret police for asking to see their warrant (AP, 6/17/25).

    US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained New York City’s comptroller, Brad Lander, as he and other activists escorted immigrants in the halls of Manhattan’s federal immigration court house (AP, 6/17/25; New York Times, 6/17/25; Democracy Now!, 6/18/25).

    Lander is a progressive Democrat running for mayor, although he is trailing in the polls. He is only the latest of many Democrats who have been detained by federal agents in a widespread campaign of intimidation of President Donald Trump’s critics, such as California Sen. Alex Padilla and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver was also indicted  on “charges alleging she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center” (AP, 6/10/25), the same case Baraka was involved in.

    Feds also briefly detained an aide to New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler. The arrest and hospitalization of California Service Employees International Union leader David Huerta helped kick off the uprising against ICE in Los Angeles (Guardian, 6/9/25). Two House committees are investigating Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell to “determine if the mayor obstructed immigration operations” (WZTV, 6/18/25).

    The witch hunt has focused on judges, too. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan faces a possible prison sentence on allegations she helped an immigrant evade authorities in her courtroom. Attorney General Pam Bondi took to Fox News (4/25/25) to warn other judges who run afoul with the executive branch: “We are prosecuting you.”

    During an emergency rally outside the federal building, elected officials and activists charged that Lander’s high-profile arrest was meant as the Trump administration’s warning against any citizen who advocates for immigrant families. The outrage was palpable. Said Justin Brannan, a city council member running for Lander’s job this year: “I’m from Brooklyn. You know what we call this? Complete and total bullshit.”

    ‘It isn’t his job’

    NY Post: Brad Lander’s pathetic ‘arrest me’ drama only proves he’s desperate for attention

    The New York Post (6/17/25) calls lawmakers standing up for immigrants as “pretty pathetic, and pointless,” because “even many Democrats support Trump’s deportations of criminal illegal immigrants.” (“Many” here means 9%, according to Pew—6/17/25.)

    The Murdoch press, however, is celebrating the latest use weaponization of government power.

    The Wall Street Journal editorial board (6/17/25):

    “Do you have a judicial warrant?” Mr. Lander asks, as he’s pulled along in a scrum toward an elevator. “Do you have a judicial warrant? Can I see the judicial warrant? Can I see the warrant? I will let go when you show me the judicial warrant. Where is it? Where is the warrant?” It isn’t his job to demand a warrant or for agents to produce one to him.

    First of all, Lander is the comptroller, the city’s second-highest elected officer and its chief fiduciary. Comptrollers commonly advocate for clean government, transparency and criminal justice reform. Further, he was acting mostly in his capacity as an activist doing “court watch” to protect families against deportations and family separations. Is it his job as comptroller to ensure cops aren’t abusing their power? Arguably. Is it his duty as a citizen in a democratic society? Absolutely.

    The New York Post editorial board (6/17/25):

    Lander repeatedly demanded to see a warrant for a guy ICE was detaining outside federal immigration court, holding his hand on the arrestee’s shoulder in an obvious bid to obstruct the agents enough to provoke an arrest.

    Unsurprisingly, the charges got dropped after a few hours; Homeland Security has far more important things to do than play the heavy in Dems’ various morality plays.

    Clearly, the editorial was written so hastily the writers didn’t notice a glaring contradiction: Given how many federal agents came after Lander and how long they detained him, the feds clearly did prioritize his detention. Some activists outside the courthouse even speculated that the rally calling for his release only encouraged federal agents to keep holding him.

    ‘Playbook for lefty politicians’

    Fox:New York Dem accused of ‘staged’ arrest after being released by federal authorities within hours

    Fox News (6/17/25) suggested that Lander’s arrest was “staged” because he was released “after being held for only a few hours.”  (The Fox video blurred out the faces of the DHS officers who weren’t masked.)

    Joe Concha of the Washington Examiner told Fox & Friends First (6/18/25) Lander’s arrest was “cheesy performance art.” His paper (Washington Examiner, 6/18/25) recalled that Concha “predicted these efforts will only increase.” And Fox News (6/17/25) interviewed Joe Borelli, a Republican city council member:

    “Election day is a week from today, and early voting has begun. Make no mistake, the purpose was to get the headlines that he’s getting,” said Borelli. “It’s instant name recognition and establishing even stronger liberal bona fides.”

    Speaking with Fox News Digital, Borelli likened Lander’s arrest to the recent arrest of Newark Democrat Mayor Ras Baraka and the detaining of Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., who were both detained for allegedly disrupting different federal events.

    “This is the playbook for lefty politicians who want to make a get-a-headline. They try to get arrested, they get arrested and then fake outrage over getting arrested,” he said.

    This is a common smear that right-wing media use against progressive activists: that they are engaging in publicity stunts (New York Post, 7/20/22; Jerusalem Post, 6/8/25). Put aside the fact DHS is led by Kristi Noem, famous for her cosplay photo ops: None of these people asked, or tried, to be arrested. Lander and other activists have been doing this type of work in order to publicize the injustice of these mass immigrant round-ups and the eradication of due process.

    If anything, the federal agents making these arrests are the ones giving these actions more play in the news, and creating more outrage in general. In other words, right-wing media are mad that these arrests are helping to unify the outrage against mass deportations.

    In fact, a headline at the right-wing Washington Times (6/17/25) warned: “Democrats’ Defiance of ICE Grows After New York Mayoral Candidate Arrested.”

    It isn’t terribly unusual that these right-wing outlets are pooh-poohing Democrats and immigrants. The issue here isn’t their devotion to right-wing policies, but to a Mafia-like government that is using an unaccountable police force to arrest politicians of a rival political party. The Murdoch press isn’t just running propaganda for the White House, these outlets are fanning the flames of authoritarianism.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Popular Mechanics: The Dogs of Chernobyl Are Experiencing Rapid Evolution, Study Suggests

    “Have the canines acquired strange mutations living near the power plant?” Popular Mechanics (6/8/25) asks. Spoiler alert: No.

    I like to read science stories, even (maybe especially) when they’re not politically earthshaking. But sometimes what’s on the label is not what’s in the tin.

    Take a Popular Mechanics story, “The Dogs of Chernobyl Are Experiencing Rapid Evolution, Study Suggests” (6/8/25). The subhead asks the question, “Have the canines acquired strange mutations living near the power plant?”

    To answer that, PM reports on a paper from 2023: “The study uncovered that the feral dogs living near the Chernobyl Power Plant showed distinct genetic differences from dogs living only some 10 miles away in nearby Chernobyl City.” That is literally all we learn about the findings of the study that the headline is based on.

    It does go on to say that a newer study finds that the answer to the subhead’s question is “no”:

    A study published nearly two years later confidently asserts that we can cross radiation off the list of explanations for the current state of the Chernobyl canine population…. This new genetic analysis looked at the chromosomal level, the genome level and even the nucleotides of the Chernobyl dogs, and found no abnormalities indicative of radiation-induced mutation.

    Oh. Never mind!

    I guess an accurate headline—”Study Finds No Sign Chernobyl’s Dogs Are Radioactive Mutants”—wouldn’t have gotten as many clicks.

    Concept art of a badger-like mammal (Repenomamus) biting a small horned dinosaur (Psittacossaurus).

    “Dinosaurs didn’t rule the Earth,” Big Think (6/10/26) argues, because someone found a fossil of “a badger-like mammal…biting a small horned dinosaur.”

    Another piece appeared in Big Think (6/10/26) under the headline “A Mesozoic Myth: Dinosaurs Didn’t Rule the Earth Like We Think.” Intriguing! Tell us more?

    It turns that the argument is basically that even though none of them were “larger than the size of a house cat,” during the age of dinosaurs “there were ancient mammal equivalents of squirrels, shrews, otters, aardvarks, flying squirrels and more.” I put it to you, though, that none of these are the kind of creatures that we think of today as “ruling the Earth.”

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Imagine for a moment that Country A launched an illegal and unprovoked attack on Country B. In any sort of objective world, you might expect media coverage of the episode to go something along the lines of: “Country A Launches Illegal and Unprovoked Attack on Country B.”

    Not so in the case of Israel, whose special relationship with the United States means it gets special coverage in the US corporate media. When Israel attacked Iran early last Friday, killing numerous civilians along with military officials and scientists, the press was standing by to present the assault as fundamentally justified—no surprise coming from the outlets that have for more than 20 months refused to describe Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as genocide.

    ‘Preemptive strike’

    AP: Israel strikes Iran’s nuclear sites and kills top generals. Iran retaliates with missile barrages

    AP‘s headline (6/18/25) highlights that Israel struck “Iran’s nuclear sites and kills top generals”; the article doesn’t note that Iran says the “overwhelming majority” of the 78 people killed at that point by Israel were civilians (Times of Israel, 6/14/25).

    From the get-go, the corporate media narrative was that Israel had targeted Iranian military and nuclear facilities in a “preemptive strike” (ABC, 6/13/25), with civilian casualties presented either as an afterthought or not at all (e.g., AP, 6/18/25). (As the Israeli attack on Iran has continued unabated for the past week in tandem with retaliatory Iranian strikes on Israel, the Iranian civilian death toll has become harder to ignore—as, for example, in the Washington Post’s recent profile of 23-year-old poet Parnia Abbasi, killed along with her family as they slept in their Tehran apartment building.)

    On Monday, June 16, the fourth day of the assault, the Associated Press reported that Israeli strikes had “killed at least 224 people since Friday.” This figure appeared in the eighth paragraph of the 34-paragraph article; the first reference to Iranian civilians appeared in paragraph 33, which informed readers that “rights groups” had suggested that the number was a “significant undercount,” and that 197 civilians were thus far among the upwards of 400 dead.

    Back in paragraph 8, meanwhile, came the typical implicit validation of Israeli actions:

    Israel says its sweeping assault on Iran’s top military leaders, uranium enrichment sites and nuclear scientists, is necessary to prevent its longtime adversary from getting any closer to building an atomic weapon.

    That Israel’s “preventive” efforts happened to occur smack in the middle of a US push for a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue has not proved to be a detail that is overly of interest to the US media; nor have corporate outlets found it necessary to dwell too deeply on the matter of the personal convenience of war on Iran for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—both as a distraction from the genocide in Gaza, and from his domestic embroilment in assorted corruption charges.

    In its own coverage, NBC News (6/14/25) highlighted that Netanyahu had “said the operation targeted Iran’s nuclear program and ‘will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.’” Somehow, it is never deemed worth mentioning in such reports that it is not in fact up to Israel—the only state in the region with an (undeclared) nuclear arsenal, and a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—to be policing any perceived nuclear “threat.” Instead, Israeli officials are given ample space, time and again, to present their supposed cause as entirely legitimate, while getting away with murder—not to mention genocide.

    ‘Potential salvation’

    WaPo: Iranian officials project strength but their people decry silence on safety

    A Washington Post article (6/16/25) manages to blame the Iranian officials for not keeping their people safe from Israeli missiles.

    Its profile of the young poet Abbasi notwithstanding, the Washington Post has been particularly aggressive in toeing the Israeli line. Following Netanyahu’s English-language appeal to Iranians to “stand up” against the “common enemy: the murderous regime that both oppresses you and impoverishes you”—a pretty rich accusation, coming from the man currently presiding over mass murder and all manner of other oppressionPost reporter Yeganeh Torbati (6/14/25) undertook to detail how some Iranians “see potential salvation in Israel’s attack despite risk of a wider war.”

    In her dispatch, Torbati explained that in spite of reports of civilian deaths, “ordinary Iranians” had “expressed satisfaction” at Israel’s attacks on Iran’s “oppressive government.” As usual, there was no room for any potentially relevant historical details regarding “oppressive” governance in Iran—like, say, the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup d’état against the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh, which paved the way for the extended rule-by-terror of the torture-happy Iranian shah, whose oppression was aided by manic acquisition of US weaponry.

    On Monday, Torbati was back with another report on how, amid Israel’s attacks on Iran, the Iranian population had “lamented the lack of adequate safety instructions and evacuation orders” from its government, “turning to social media for answers.” The article quotes a Tehran resident named Alireza as complaining that “we have nothing, not even a government that would bother giving safety suggestions to people”—although it’s anyone’s guess as to what sort of suggestions the government is supposed to offer given the circumstances. Try not to be sleeping in your apartment when Israel decides to bomb it?

    We thus end up with an entire article in a top US newspaper suggesting that the issue at hand is not that Israel is conducting illegal and unprovoked attacks on Iran, but rather that the Iranian government has not publicized proper safety recommendations for dealing with said attacks. At one point, Torbati concedes that “the government did provide some broad safety instructions,” and that “a government spokeswoman, Fatemeh Mohajerani, recommended that Iranians take shelter in metros, mosques and schools.”

    Refusing to leave it at that, Torbati goes on to object that “it was unclear why mosques and schools would be safer than other buildings, given that Israel had already targeted residential and other civilian structures”—which again magically transforms the issue into a critique of the Iranian government for lack of clarity, as opposed to a critique of Israel for, you know, committing war crimes.

    ‘It’s all targeted’

    NYT: Israel’s Attack in Iran Echoes Its Strategy Against Hezbollah

    To the New York Times (6/15/25), mass assassination of Iranian leaders is a “playbook” and “following the script.”

    Which brings us to the New York Times, never one to miss a chance to cheerlead on behalf of Israeli atrocities—like that time in 2009 that the paper’s resident foreign affairs columnist literally advocated for targeting civilians in Gaza (FAIR.org, 1/30/25), invoking Israel’s targeting of civilians in Lebanon in 2006 as a positive precedent. Now, a Times article (6/15/25) headlined “Israel’s Attack in Iran Echoes Its Strategy Against Hezbollah” wonders if another Lebanese precedent might prove successful: “Israel decimated the group’s leadership last fall and degraded its military capabilities. Can the same strategy work against a far more powerful foe?”

    After reminiscing about “repeated Israeli attacks on apartment buildings, bunkers and speeding vehicles” in Lebanon in 2024—which produced “more than 15 senior Hezbollah military commanders eliminated in total”—the piece speculates that Israel’s ongoing attacks on Iran and assassinations of top Iranian officers seem “to be following the script from last fall” in Lebanon. Swift confirmation comes from Randa Slim at the Middle East Institute in Washington: “It’s all targeted, the assassination of their senior officials in their homes.”

    Never mind that Israel’s activity in Lebanon last fall amounted to straight-up terrorism—or that somehow these “targeted assassinations” managed to kill some 4,000 people in Lebanon between October 2023 and November 2024 alone. In unceasingly providing a platform to justify Israeli aggression and mass civilian slaughter throughout the region, the US corporate media at least appears to be following its own script to a T.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Pro-Israel zealots commonly attempt to discredit criticism of the Israeli government by equating such criticism with antisemitism, because Israel is the world’s only state with a Jewish majority.

    One way of lifting up this accusation is to say that pro-Palestine leftists hold Israel to a different standard by focusing on Israel and ignoring human rights concerns in other countries. The World Jewish Congress (5/4/22) gives supposed examples of this, such as “accusing Israel of human right violations while refusing to criticize regimes with far worse human right abuses, such as Iran, North Korea, Iraq and Pakistan,” or “rebuking Israel for allegedly violating women’s rights, while ignoring significantly worse abuses carried out by governments and terrorist organizations.”

    Demonization and double standards’

    NYT: Antisemitism Is an Urgent Problem. Too Many People Are Making Excuses.

    To the New York Times (6/14/25), saying that people are opposed to Israel and not to Jews is “making excuses.”

    The New York Times (6/14/25) recently invoked this in an editorial headlined “Antisemitism Is an Urgent Problem. Too Many People Are Making Excuses.” To the board’s credit, the editorial talks about how antisemitism plays a big role in the Trump administration’s racist and demagogic rule—although it could have gone further into analyzing how antisemitism is at the center of fascism’s other conspiratorial bigotries: that Jewish masterminds are behind mass immigration (FAIR.org, 10/30/18) and Black Lives Matter (Fox Business, 12/15/17).

    But the editorialists aim at least as much criticism at the left for its vocal opposition against the ongoing genocide and starvation in Gaza. Yes, the editors admit that “criticism of the Israeli government is not the same thing as antisemitism,” and insist that they themselves “have abhorred the mass killing of civilians and the destruction of Gaza.” They also said that pro-Israel activists “hurt their own cause when they equate all such arguments with antisemitism.”

    There’s a “but” coming. “But some Americans have gone too far in the other direction,” the board said, pointing to the “3D test” of “delegitimization, demonization and double standards” that it says is a key test for determining “when criticism of Israel crosses into antisemitism.” “Progressive rhetoric has regularly failed that test in recent years,” they write:

    Consider the double standard that leads to a fixation on Israel’s human rights record and little campus activism about the records of China, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela or almost any other country. Consider how often left-leaning groups suggest that the world’s one Jewish state should not exist and express admiration for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis—Iran-backed terrorist groups that brag about murdering Jews. Consider how often people use “Zionist” as a slur—an echo of Soviet propaganda from the Cold War—and call for the exclusion of Zionists from public spaces. The definition of a Zionist is somebody who supports the existence of Israel.

    Let’s take these one at a time. It is depressingly telling that the first line echoes a year-old editorial in the right-wing City Journal (4/14/24) that condemned students for not aiming their protests at Syria, Russia or China. The most obvious answer to these “gotcha” scenarios is that the US and US universities are not funding human rights violations or wars initiated by any of these countries. The protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza are growing in the US precisely because of US support for Israel. Students often want to see their universities divest from Israeli entities as a way to put pressure on Israel, the same way activists mobilized against South African apartheid.

    The US and its allies have imposed sanctions on Russia (Reuters, 2/27/22; Politico, 2/28/22; Al Jazeera, 4/24/24), and the US is currently in a trade war with China (CNN, 6/11/25); the State Department has declared it will “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students (Reuters, 5/29/25). The Trump administration’s new travel restrictions ban people from Sudan and highly restrict entry for Venezuelans (NPR, 6/9/25). The Council on Foreign Relations (3/11/25) estimates that the US has given Ukraine $128 billion to defend against the Russian invasion, and the House of Representatives has an entire committee devoted to investigating China’s ruling Communist Party.

    The Times next asks us to “consider how often left-leaning groups suggest that the world’s one Jewish state should not exist.” Left-leaning groups generally oppose ethnostates, and tend not to make an exception for Israel, whose ethnic policies have been condemned as “apartheid” by the world’s leading human rights groups. As for expressing admiration for Hamas et al.: You’ll rarely hear US progressives praising Hamas, but you will hear them blaming Hamas’s violence on the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel prior to October 7, 2023.

    Antisemitism as pretext

    The Times goes on to complain that the word “Zionist,” which it defines as “somebody who supports the existence of Israel,” is used as a slur. But Zionism hasn’t become a thorny word because of antisemitism. Zionists are defending a political system where rights and freedom depend on one’s religion and ethnicity, a concept the small-d democrats of a liberal paper like the Times would otherwise abhor. The word “Dixiecrat” is remembered today only as a bad word, not because these people were from the American Southeast, but because they advocated for segregation.

    The Times, as usual, wrongly equates Zionism with Jewishness. There are many Jewish non-Zionists and anti-Zionists, including sects that view Zionism as a sort of false messianism. There are also many Christian Zionists—who far outnumber Jewish Zionists—who see Israel as a necessary means to the biblically foretold End Times.

    The editorial admits that the Trump administration “has also used [antisemitism] as a pretext for his broader campaign against the independence of higher education.” The paper notes: “The combination risks turning antisemitism into yet another partisan issue, encouraging opponents to dismiss it as one of his invented realities.”

    The Times is absolutely right that the Trump administration’s vociferous attacks on antisemitism are ineffective, precisely because they are patently just a stick with which to beat his enemies in academia. But that is the exact same problem that the Times editorial has: If you use charges of antisemitism as a pretense to smear critics of a genocidal government, you are doing nothing to protect Jews.


    ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com or via Bluesky: @NYTimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Trigger warning: discussion of suicide and its depictions.

    NYT Magazine cover showing an empty bed with the words, "I cannot get through a day."

    The New York Times Magazine (6/1/25) ignored ethical guidelines designed to keep reporting from encouraging suicide.

    The New York Times Magazine recently published a cover story (6/1/25) that gave in-depth representation to the challenges faced by a chronically sick, disabled woman named Paula Ritchie, age 52. Ritchie dealt with underdiagnosed illnesses and pain, as well as challenges in supporting herself and managing her mental health.

    The Times then told the story of Ritchie ending her own life out of despair over her situation. The journalist, Katie Engelhart, observed and documented her suicide, up until the last breath left her body. “I was with Ritchie until the very end,” she posted on X (6/1/25). Engelhart gave lengthy justifications for Ritchie’s choice to end her life, and described several people who supported her in that decision.

    Articles like this aren’t common in the media. Suicide prevention is typically regarded as both a social good and an ethical responsibility. In the US and Canada (where the article takes place), suicidal people are involuntarily detained to prevent their deaths. It has long been illegal in Canada (and many US states) to assist or even “counsel” a person to commit suicide.

    There are also ethical standards that guide media outlets in reporting on suicide, in order to minimize the risk of glamorizing or idealizing it. These guidelines are based on research showing that the media has an outsized influence when it comes to suicide. Graphic, detailed and sensationalized coverage has been shown to increase the “risk of contagion,” according to one guide. AP News specifically tries to avoid detailing the “methods used” in stories that reference suicide, based on this research.

    The Times violated almost all of the published guidelines by personalizing, detailing, dramatizing, justifying and sentimentalizing Ritchie’s suicide, as well as by making it a cover story. The story featured close-up images of the method of Ritchie’s death and what appears to be her post-mortem body.

    The World Health Organization: Preventing Suicide: Information for journalists and others writing about suicide

    The World Health Organization urges journalists covering suicide not to “explicitly describe the method used” or “use photographs, video footage or social media links that relate to the circumstances of the suicide,” among other guidelines.

    So why wasn’t there generalized outrage or pushback from other media? The only significant outcry came from thousands of disabled people on social media.

    The simplest answer is that Ritchie’s suicide was administered by a doctor, and legal in Canada. Media tend to be more accepting of the unacceptable when it is government-sanctioned. In 2021, the country expanded its Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) law to permit physician-assisted suicide for disabled people who aren’t suffering terminal illnesses. The law and its implementation have been extremely controversial, as the article noted. Similar laws have been passed or introduced across Europe.

    The Times article reinforced a popular belief that disability is a fate worse than death. The disabled author Imani Barbarin sums it up in the title of her forthcoming book: If I Were You, I’d Kill Myself. It’s a refrain disabled people are accustomed to hearing, the frightful implication of which is that accommodations aren’t worth the bother, and death is for their own good.

    The media has a tendency to reinforce this idea in stories about disability. As I previously wrote about for FAIR (1/20/21), the New York Times (4/10/20, 12/24/20) published stories early in the Covid-19 pandemic suggesting that disability should be considered in determining who had a right to Covid ventilators, based on unproven myths of “quality of life.” The articles cited literal eugenicists as experts, and didn’t invite disabled people to the conversation.

    Both sides, and propaganda

    In Engelhart’s Times article, she appeared to offer a sensitive and balanced view on the debates around MAiD expansion. Yet the article was laden with ableist rhetoric, medical misinformation and subtle propaganda from the well-funded “right to die” movement. It also left out prominent critical facts about MAiD.

    Engelhart omitted that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (3/11/25) issued a report in March that condemned Canada’s MAiD, and recommended that the country “repeal” the expanded law and halt plans for future expansion. The report outlined how benefits and healthcare for disabled people are inadequate in Canada, resulting in coercion around MAiD, especially for women and marginalized groups. People have been sharing stories of coercive MAiD practices since it was expanded (e.g., Independent, 6/23/23; New York Post, 11/8/22; X, 6/4/25).

    It’s significant that the most powerful international body issued such a strong condemnation of MAiD; it’s something that anyone following the issue should know about, and Engelhart has published a book on MAiD and speaks about it constantly, yet she left it out of her article.

    Dying With Dignity Canada logo: "It's your life, it's your choice."

    Dying With Dignity Canada’s goals include, according to the Walrus (1/12/24) “making MAiD available to people whose sole condition is a mental disorder” and “expanding MAID to ‘mature minors’ age twelve and older.”

    Engelhart did discuss some of the issues exposed by the UN, but she cited “disability rights advocates,” “critics” and “opponents,” not the UN. She also didn’t name or quote these opponents, aside from a few uneasy doctors. None of the many disability rights, human rights and religious organizations that have condemned MAiD expansion were named, and only some of their arguments were discussed. Missing, for instance, was the fact that a promised expansion of disability benefits was tabled just after MAiD expansion was approved, suggesting the government saw the suicide program as another solution, of sorts, to the disability problem.

    Also missing from the article was the role of a powerful lobbying group known as Dying with Dignity Canada (DwD), which has raised millions of dollars from corporate and wealthy donors (Walrus, 1/12/24). DwD has had an enormous influence on the Canadian government and media conversations on MAiD. The organization isn’t named in the Times Magazine piece, but its propaganda is subtly woven throughout.

    Engelhart has been more explicit about her pro-MAiD leanings in other writings and statements (e.g., Neiman Storyboard, 3/3/21; NPR, 3/9/21), as well as in online responses to comments on her Times Magazine piece.

    In search of euphemism

    As evidence of her bias, look at the way Engelhart introduced the terminology in the Times article: “Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program—what critics call physician-assisted suicide.” It’s a curious attribution. Is there a more direct, factual way to describe what happened to Ritchie than suicide? It’s a subtle nod to DwD, which seeks to remove the “suicide” from assisted suicide. From the organization’s website:

    We do not use the terms assisted suicide or euthanasia because they stigmatize people who are suffering intolerably and want to access their right to a peaceful death. Suicide is a desperate act of self-harm, while medical assistance in dying is a legal, federally regulated end-of-life choice, driven by hope and autonomy.

    The Merriam-Webster definition of suicide is “the act or an instance of ending one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally.” DwD seems to be attempting to redefine the word to soften what happens with MAiD.

    On Twitter, Engelhart has argued that “assisted death” is a less “politically loaded” term than “assisted suicide.” She has also taken issue with the AP for referring to MAiD recipients as “killed.” It’s not propaganda to state that when someone dies, they are “killed” by the cause of death. People are killed by cancer, accidents and self-inflicted wounds as much as by murder.

    Engelhart’s efforts to soften the language of assisted suicide calls to mind crime reporters using “police-involved shooting” to say that police have shot someone. The common norms for speaking about suicide and shootings can apply without harm or distortion of the facts.

    The Times Magazine article reflected some of the contradictions inherent to DwD ideology that appear throughout Engelhart’s work. For instance, she often compares assisted suicide rights to abortion rights, a DwD talking point. But she also compares it to the merciful “euthanizing” of “beloved pets.” Unlike people who elect abortions, animals do not get to choose their fates, or even express their wishes. Humans project our assumptions onto pets, including that their suffering must be a fate worse than death.

    Despite Engelhart’s seeming alignment with the “dying with dignity” movement, to her credit, she did expose that there wasn’t absolute “dignity” in Ritchie’s death. The article ends with a gruesome description of Ritchie’s last moments, including her expression of “horrible” discomfort.

    A ‘difficult case’

    Dr. Matt Wonnacott

    Dr. Matt Wonnacott, the doctor who approved euthanasia for Paula Ritchie: “If you tell me that you’re suffering, who am I to question that?” he told Engelhart.

    Engelhart provided a lot of detail about Ritchie’s medical conditions, but relied on outdated, vaguely sourced and ableist ways of describing chronic illness. Here and elsewhere, her work is mostly sourced to doctors, especially MAiD providers, and patients who want to die, but not the many people who live with and manage complex chronic disease.

    As a disabled journalist, I see Ritchie’s story through a different lens than Engelhart. I have many of her conditions, deal with ongoing suffering, sometimes severe, and was suicidal at one point.

    Engelhart described Ritchie as if she were too difficult to diagnose sufficiently beyond a collection of symptoms, including head injury, migraine, fatigue, dizziness, long-standing depression and PTSD from childhood trauma. Yet I know that it can take ten or more years for a person to get properly diagnosed with most chronic illnesses, if they are lucky. I also know that chronic illness patients deal with doctors who gaslight, misdiagnose and psychologize symptoms.

    The doctor who authorized Ritchie’s suicide, Matt Wonnacott, appears to be one of those. He was a primary source in the story. Engelhart did leave it open for readers to feel uncomfortable with Wonnacott’s approach. Although he acknowledged that Ritchie still had treatment options, he admitted to making decisions to approve assisted suicide based on “gestalt” and “patient choice” more than medicine. On the other hand, Engelhart seemed to take the doctor’s medical assessments at face value, not interrogating his knowledge or biases.

    At one point, Engelhart referred to a category of MAiD patients with “functional disorders…that are poorly understood within medicine, and disputed within medicine, and that some clinicians believe have a significant psychological component.” Who are these clinicians? She did not say, but then listed a series of conditions that are not considered, by official diagnostic criteria, to be psychological: “fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, irritable-bowel syndrome, some kinds of chronic headaches.”  “Functional” has a history, like “hysteria” before it, of being used as a catch-all for misunderstood women’s illnesses.

    As for “chronic fatigue,” it is more properly known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or ME. There is an epidemic of it lately, as it is commonly caused by Covid-19. As such, there are countless recent studies proving its physiological causes. At one point, Engelhart discussed how Ritchie’s muscles work one minute, then “suddenly buckle” the next, writing: “This suggested that the buckling was due to psychological causes or a lack of effort.” Yet Ritchie seemed to be demonstrating a hallmark symptom of ME known as “post-exertional malaise.”

    Engelhart included a lot of detail about Ritchie’s care and medications, with the effect of seeming like every option was exhausted. Yet I am surprised by what is missing. There is no mention of dysautonomia or its treatments, even though Ritchie has difficulty bathing herself and getting out of the bath, both common in that illness. There is no mention of cutting-edge treatments for ME, like antivirals for reactivated viruses, or naltrexone. And there is no mention of the new class of CGRP migraine drugs, which have rescued millions of people from horrible constant pain.

    In place of medical investigation, Engelhart uses rhetoric and sentiment to portray Ritchie as a lost cause. She supports this portrait with classist and ableist imagery, like mentioning Ritchie’s “old TV and a window that looked out on a row of garbage bins,” her “stained” floors, her trouble bathing and long history of depression. She quotes people in Ritchie’s life who liked her, but also found her difficult, “vicious,” and “loud and excessive.”

    I have a different perspective on Ritchie. She comes across to me as resourceful in pursuing help, a strong person who has survived tremendous suffering, and compassionate to others. She is surrounded by friends when she dies. She has common illnesses that have been under-researched due to medical misogyny. And she has been denied cutting-edge treatments due to the profound gulf between research and practice, as well as long-established bigotry in medical care. In my perception, if she had been properly diagnosed and treated, she may or may not have felt differently about ending her life.

    Fly on the wall

    Economist: It's Time

    The Economist‘s cover story (11/21/24) seemed to encourage not just legalizing suicide, but suicide itself.

    Engelhart did a skillful job of portraying her own role in Ritchie’s suicide as if she were a passive observer. In a separate interview she gave with the Times about writing the piece, she said she “was trying to be as small a presence as possible in the room.” Yet she also admitted that Ritchie reached for her hand just before she died, so she couldn’t have been that small. Engelhart didn’t reflect, in the interview, on the role she may have played in Ritchie’s fate, or the ethics of her project.

    The article emphasized that Ritchie knew she was being interviewed by a writer for the New York Times Magazine. She knew that her story would be amplified worldwide, but especially if she continued to end her life. Engelhart’s body of work on MAiD is mostly about people who elect and complete the act of suicide. That validation, alone, could have been a form of encouragement, especially for someone who felt isolated and unheard.

    Best practices in suicide prevention are based on studies showing that suicidal people are uniquely and extremely vulnerable to suggestion, and that suicidality is usually temporary. According to a journalism guide from the Trevor Project, which aims to prevent suicide in LGBTQ youth, “More than 50 research studies worldwide have found that certain types of news coverage can increase the likelihood of suicide in vulnerable individuals.”

    With the Times’ story, the worst-case scenario almost happened. One reader, a patient with Long Covid, responded on social media that the article caused him to consider that maybe assisted suicide would be a good option for him. After reading the responses of disabled people, he had more context and changed his mind. (I am protecting his identity.)

    There is growing support for the expansion of assisted suicide across the world and in the media (e.g., Economist, 11/13/21, 11/21/24). The pandemic has eased people’s discomfort with preventable death, especially of elderly and disabled people. Engelhart’s book got a lot of attention around the height of Covid-19’s Omicron wave. Meanwhile, the current US administration is suggesting that worthiness for healthcare should be tied to social value.

    It’s a key time for news organizations to recall their ethical obligations around reporting on suicide. At the very least, the news shouldn’t stop calling it “suicide” just because those who die have been approved for MAiD due to disability.

    Stories of chronically sick people who resist MAiD and/or survive suicide attempts are rarely given as much in-depth treatment or column inches in the media. But those stories might give readers more context in considering how to feel about these policies. The New York Times even gave a flattering interview (11/16/24) to a doctor who has elsewhere been condemned for her unethical and too-eager MAiD practices and has been restricted from practicing everywhere (London Times, 7/19/24; Globe and Mail, 3/9/16).

    News outlets should also consider hiring disabled journalists and editors to work on stories like this, or at least journalists who are curious enough to investigate medicine critically. Mainstream writing about health and disability has long ignored the insights of chronic illness patients, unless to use individual cases to speak over collective concerns. We need stories about disability and illness that don’t rely mostly on the medical establishment for expertise, especially given its long history of aligning with eugenics.

     

     

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

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    Al Jazeera: ICE launches ‘military-style’ raids in Los Angeles: What we know

    The protests emerged as resistance to militarized law enforcement (Al Jazeera, 6/7/25), a dynamic that was often obscured by coverage that focused on the “clash” between protesters and government. 

    In the early morning of Friday, June 6, several federal agencies carried out militarized immigration raids across Los Angeles (Al Jazeera, 6/7/25). Armed and masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, along with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI and DEA, tore through these neighborhoods in unmarked vehicles, carrying out a new method of targeted raids in workplaces like Home Depot, Ambiance Apparel and car washes (Washington Post, 6/8/25, 6/12/25, LA Times, 6/10/25).

    Later that morning, demonstrations formed in front of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building and Metropolitan Detention Center, where detainees were believed to be held (Al Jazeera, 6/11/25). Protests grew exponentially over the weekend, spreading not only across California, but also to major cities around the country (Time, 6/9/25).

    In response, without state authorization, President Donald Trump federalized and deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops to LA to “solve the problem” (CNN, 6/9/25). California Gov. Gavin Newsom, LA Mayor Karen Bass and other government officials have called this an unprecedented show of force and an abuse of executive power, intended to intimidate and terrorize local communities (Atlantic, 6/10/25; CNN, 6/9/25).

    ‘Violence’ and ‘anarchists’

    While major media sources described these protests as “mostly peaceful,” they nevertheless tended to dwell on what was depicted as rioting and protester violence. In its morning newsletter, the New York Times (6/9/25) set the scene:

    Hundreds of National Guard troops arrived in the city, and crowds of people demonstrated against President Trump’s immigration raids. They clashed with federal agents, leaving burned cars, broken barricades and graffiti scrawled across government buildings downtown.

    LA Times: Protesters or agitators: Who is driving chaos at L.A. immigration protests?

    Is it possible that Trump administration efforts to expel nearly a million Los Angeles residents are “driving chaos at LA immigration protests” (LA Times, 6/10/25)?

    The LA Times (6/10/25), citing LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, blamed “‘anarchists’ who, he said, were bent on exploiting the state of unrest to vandalize property and attack police.” (Law enforcement agencies reported only a handful of minor injuries to officers—KCRA, 6/12/25.) These critiques were interwoven with descriptions of “scenes of lawlessness [that] disgusted” McDonnell, such as setting “Waymo taxis on fire,” “defacing city buildings with anti-police graffiti” and looting businesses. And, an ironic, laughable account of the underlying power dynamics at play:

    Several young men crept through the crowd, hunched over and hiding something in their hands. They reached the front line and hurled eggs at the officers, who fired into the fleeing crowd with riot guns.

    The article ran under the headline “Protesters or Agitators: Who Is Driving Chaos at LA Immigration Protests?”—never offering readers the possibility that the answer is, in fact, law enforcement. The framing came directly from McDonnell’s attempt, cited in the article, to draw a “distinction” between protesters and anarchists. Yet further down, the piece described what can only be understood as federal troops instigating chaos and violence:

    A phalanx of National Guard troops charged into the crowd, yelling “push” as they rammed people with riot shields. The troops and federal officers used pepper balls, tear gas canisters as well as flash-bang and smoke grenades to break up the crowd.

    No one in the crowd had been violent toward the federal deployment up to that point. The purpose of the surge appeared to be to clear space for a convoy of approaching federal vehicles.

    ‘Non-lethal’ weapons?

    CNN: A look at the ‘less lethal’ weapons authorities used to crack down on Los Angeles protests

    CNN (6/10/25) framed police munitions as the way cops “responded with force” after protests “devolved into violence.” 

    One CNN article (6/10/25) offered “A Look at the ‘Less Lethal’ Weapons Authorities Used to Crack Down on Los Angeles Protests.” Reporter Dakin Andone wrote:

    Police have used a standard variety of tools to disperse crowds and quell protests that had devolved into violence, with protesters lighting self-driving cars on fire and two motorcyclists driving into a skirmish line of officers, injuring two. A Molotov cocktail was also thrown at officers, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell alleged, condemning the “disgusting” violence.

    Authorities have responded with force. So far, CNN has documented the deployment of flash-bangs, tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets and bean bag rounds, as well as more traditional gear such as batons.

    To CNN, protesters devolve into “violence,” while heavily armed agents of the state respond with “force.”

    The article noted that these weapons are not “harmless,” as they have been found to “disable, disfigure and even kill.” Projectiles are meant to cause “‘blunt-force trauma to the skin,’” chemical irritants cause “difficulty swallowing, chest tightness, coughing, shortness of breath and a feeling of choking,” and flash-bangs “obscure a target’s vision and hearing.”

    Yet the article’s description of the effects of those weapons used in LA remained almost entirely theoretical. The only example it gave of a civilian targeted by one of these “less lethal” weapons was that of Australian 9News correspondent Lauren Tomasi, shot at close range by a rubber bullet while reporting on live TV. (Video footage shows that there was no one close to the line of officers, nor were any protesters closing in.) “The bullet left her sore, but she was otherwise unharmed,” CNN blithely noted.

    Guardian: ‘Unacceptable’: outcry over police attacks on journalists covering LA protests

    While it’s good to see media standing up for those who were injured while exercising the freedom of the press (Guardian, 6/11/25), they might have shown similar concern for those hurt while engaging in freedom of assembly.

    Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (6/11/25) has documented an astounding 35 violent attacks on journalists, almost entirely by law enforcement, including numerous reporters hit by police projectiles. The Guardian (6/11/25) reported that British photographer Nick Stern needed surgery when police shot him in the leg with a “less-lethal projectile”; Toby Canham, a photographer working for the New York Post,  was “hit in the head by a less-lethal round” by a California highway patrol officer and “treated for whiplash and neck pain,” the Guardian said. (Protesters were injured by police munitions as well, as repeatedly attested by social media, but reporters showed less interest in those injuries.)

    The headlines that reported the assault on Tomasi frequently left out the perpetrator: “Australian Reporter Covering Los Angeles Immigration Protests Hit by Rubber Bullet on Live TV,” was how CBS (6/10/25) put it; CNN (6/8/25) had “Australian Reporter Covering LA Protests Hit by Rubber Bullet.” The Sydney Morning Herald (6/9/25) described Tomasi as “caught in the crossfire as the LAPD fired rubber bullets at protesters”—which doesn’t sound like a “crossfire” at all.

    Many reports denied the potential for these weapons to cause death by labeling them “non-lethal” (Guardian, 6/8/25, 6/11/25; AP, 6/9/25; LA Times, 6/10/25; USA Today, 6/10/25; Newsweek, 6/10/25) or “less-than-lethal” (New York Times, 6/6/25; NBC, 6/8/25). These descriptors are entirely inaccurate, as studies and reports have documented dozens of deaths caused by “less-lethal” projectiles, as well as hundreds of permanent injuries (BMJ Open, 12/5/17; Amnesty International, 3/14/23; Arizona Republic, 5/13/25).

    Reuters (6/11/25) reported on attacks by such weapons under the headline “Journalists Among the Injured in LA as ICE Protests Grow Violent”—a framing that treated the protests as the source of the violence being inflicted on journalists by police.

    NBC: Some far-left groups have encouraged peaceful protests to turn violent, experts say

    As an example of leftists who “encouraged peaceful protests to turn violent,” NBC News (6/12/25) included those who condemned police violence “using expletives and slights.” (Note that the skateboard-wielding protester is the same individual the LA Times6/10/25—used to suggest “agitators” were “driving chaos.”)

    A remarkable NBC News article (6/12/25) blamed protesters for fomenting violence by pointing out police violence. “Some Far-Left Groups Have Encouraged Peaceful Protests to Turn Violent, Experts Say,” was the headline; one of the few examples, under the heading “Assassination culture,” was:

    One anti-police group, the People’s City Council Los Angeles, has taken to calling out the actions of officers at the protests, using expletives and slights.

    Just before 1 a.m. Tuesday, it posted on X the name and picture of a police officer it said was firing rubber bullets at protesters.

    He is “fucking unhinged and unloading on protesters at point blank range,” the post read. “FUCK THIS PIG!!”

    Perhaps it was the cop firing rubber bullets at protesters at point blank range who “encouraged peaceful protests to turn violent”—and not the “expletives and slights” of the witnesses?

    ‘Diverted public attention’

    Atlantic: The Headlines That Are Covering Up Police Violence

    Sarah J. Jackson (Atlantic, 6/3/20): “When news stories employ sensational images of property damage, using terms such as riot and the even more sensational mayhem and chaos, researchers have noted a rise in public support for law-and-order crackdowns on protest.”

    The New York Times editorial board (6/8/25), while critical of Trump’s National Guard deployment, opined that “protesters will do nothing to further their cause if they resort to violence.” The LA Times (6/10/25) expressed that “violence and widespread property damage at protests…have diverted public attention away from the focus of the demonstrations.” What has historically turned the tide against protests, however, is inflammatory reporting that blames protesters for their response to government’s aggressive efforts to suppress freedom of assembly (Penn State University, 6/1/01; Real Change, 3/18/09; Atlantic, 6/3/20).

    By framing the problem as unruly demonstrators, the media lend legitimacy to the Trump administration’s attempt to set a precedent for military suppression of dissent. (“If there’s any protester that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force,” Trump said of the military parade he arranged to run through DC on June 14, his 79th birthday. “This is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.”) Journalists should be focusing not on the broken windows, but on Trump’s very real efforts to break our democracy.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

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    New York magazine: The Long Shot

    Sure, you may like the idea of a “socialist New York,” but New York magazine (5/20/25) is here with a bunch of anonymous sources to tell you it’s “more complicated.”

    There’s an art to writing a profile of a political candidate that sows doubt about their fitness for office without attacking them directly. Done smoothly, it can be more damaging than an overt hit piece.

    “Zohran Mamdani Crashes the Party,” a recent New York magazine profile (5/20/25) of the New York State Assembly member and New York City mayoral candidate, is a prime example. The headline and subhead (“He’s selling the dream of a socialist New York. The picture inside the Democratic party is more complicated.”) manage to convey knowing sympathy (party-crashing is cool!) and parental concern (a socialist New York is but a “dream,” and party insiders know the reality is “more complicated”).

    The story’s author, E. Alex Jung, is not a Free Press columnist but a National Magazine Award–nominated features writer who comes across as sympathetic to but skeptical of Mamdani. Mamdani, he writes,

    has given hope to people who are in despair about the state of the country…showing up at protests for trans rights and shouting at Tom Homan while State Police officers hold him back—and then posting it all on Instagram.

    Jung added that Mamdani

    became the first to max out the city’s campaign matching funds and had more individual donors than the rest of the field combined…. His campaign has built the largest field program ever for a mayoral race: Around 22,000 volunteers have knocked on 450,000 doors and made 140,000 phone calls…. The rally at Brooklyn Steel was a demonstration to the city’s progressive power brokers that the time to consolidate behind their candidate was yesterday—that he was the only one who could slay the big bad, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Though the odds of that happening are not good.

    Part of subtly and effectively undermining someone is appearing to give them their due. As ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo said of his rival Mamdani during a recent NYC mayoral debate:

    Mr. Mamdani is very good on Twitter and with videos, but he actually produces nothing…. He has no experience with Washington, no experience with New York City.

    Like Cuomo, New York acknowledges upfront that Mamdani is an exceptionally strong communicator. It then puts forth a string of criticisms, most from unnamed colleagues and critics of Mamdani, with their own agendas and reasons to resent his rise. An “anti-Cuomo Democratic strategist” dismisses Mamdani supporters as “online kids.” Critics claim he is “drawn to attention-grabbing stunts rather than the grind of whipping votes.” Because Jung allows anonymous sources to criticize Mamdani at length—he quotes or paraphrases “those with knowledge of the conversations,” “some New York Democratic Party members,” “a Democratic political operative,” “another operative,” “critics,” “detractors” and so on—the reader has no way of independently assessing their motives.

    ‘Language of the internet’

    New York Editorial Board: Zohran Mamdani Interview Transcript

    The New York Editorial Board (2/2/25), “a group of veteran journalists interviewing candidates for Mayor of New York City,” got specifics on the questions New York said were “unclear.”

    The profile opens with a shower of trivializing compliments. Mamdani and his “congregation of true believers” are “jubilant and young.” Supporters like Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter Ella Emhoff and semi-canceled chef Alison Roman represent “power and cool and changing winds.” Mamdani is “a Democratic Socialists of America–backed candidate” (as a DSA member, I can confirm) with a “short work history and a long history of pro-Palestinian advocacy”—qualities, Jung writes, that were “seen as nonstarters within the small electorate that ultimately decides the race.”

    Yet in the last six months, he has “transformed the race with memorable policy proposals and a winning social-media presence. If you’re online, he seems to be the only candidate with Wi-Fi.” His campaign videos are “in the language of the internet.”

    So far, a reader will have learned that Mamdani is young, cool and online. His campaign pitch—Freeze the rent! Make buses fast and free! Universal childcare!—is catchy, as is his plan to tax the rich and big corporations, provide free buses and municipal grocery stores, and establish a department of community safety. But how New Yorkers feel about these proposals and “how he would actually do all of this” is “unclear”—whether because Jung neglected to ask, or was unsatisfied with the answer, we’ll never know.

    Profiles like this are popular because they are more about personality and style than sober, eat-your-vegetables political analysis. Thus, we learn that Mamdani is “energetic, enthusiastic, quick with a joke, and good-looking in a ‘Who’s your brother’s friend?’ kind of way.” It’s a vivid description, and it’s reminiscent of ex-Sen. Claire McCaskill’s blistering dismissal of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: She was, McCaskill said, a “bright, shiny new object” whose rhetoric was “cheap” (Business Insider, 12/26/18).

    ‘Smothering effect on discourse’

    NYT: New York Set Aside $2.1 Billion for Undocumented Workers. It Isn’t Enough.

    New York scorned the “ideological purity” that made Mamdani insist that marginalized workers ought to have gotten the support they needed (New York Times, 10/19/21).

    Jung contends without evidence that Mamdani supporters have had “a smothering effect on discourse, making any public criticism or dissent verboten within parts of the left.” He goes on to quote state Sen. Jabari Brisport, who was elected alongside Mamdani in 2020. Unlike most of Jung’s sources, Brisport is a Mamdani supporter and willing to speak on the record. “People were looking for drastic changes in society,” Brisport says of the period in which they were elected.

    But according to Jung, the “reality of the chamber was different.” Recounting a fight between moderate and progressive Democrats over whether to tax the rich and expand a fund for undocumented workers who had been denied federal pandemic relief, he implies that Mamdani was outmaneuvered. Legislators eventually agreed to set aside $2.1 billion for the excluded-workers fund—far short of the $3.5 billion that progressives wanted and, it’s important to note, excluded workers needed.

    Mamdani and some colleagues indicated to New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie that they would protest the shortfall by voting against the budget, which would have passed regardless. Heastie “warned that the fund would get watered down even more if they didn’t fall in line.” (Heastie denies this.) Mamdani, Jung writes, was “in a panic, unsure of what to do. Accept less than what you believe or risk losing even more?”

    Unwilling to risk it, Mamdani ended up voting for a budget he had initially opposed as insufficient. Yet somehow the villain of this story is not Heastie, who apparently threatened to withhold even more money from people in need, but Mamdani, who is implied to have shown poor judgment and “earned a reputation for ideological purity.”

    The evidence? He pushed hard for single-payer healthcare, fought side-by-side with city taxi drivers to win hundreds of millions of dollars in debt relief from the city, joined a protest encampment by cab drivers outside City Hall, and convinced Chuck Schumer to film a video calling attention to the cabbies’ plight via the story of one whose brother, a fellow driver, killed himself under enormous financial pressure. Where outlets like New York see an obsession with “ideological purity,” others see a willingness to fight.

    ‘A show pony, not a workhorse’

    Politico: Zohran’s free bus push was relegated to parking lot

    Politico (4/30/25) blamed Mamdani for the end of a free bus pilot program because he didn’t understand that “you’re either a team player or you’re not.”

    Mamdani also got Senate Deputy Leader Mike Gianaris to co-sponsor an eight-bill legislative package known as Fix the MTA, which would have frozen fares, instituted six-minute service on subways, and phased in free buses over four years. He spent $22,000 of his own campaign money to promote it.

    It didn’t have the unqualified backing of Gov. Hochul or the MTA, so Mamdani texted Mayor Eric Adams, who had mentioned that he found the dictator Idi Amin fascinating, and arranged a dinner with the mayor and Mamdani’s father, whom Amin had expelled from Uganda. Mamdani then convinced Adams to take a photo with a poster touting free buses, and film a quick video to support the program—all of which led to earned media, and resulted in a fare-free-bus pilot being included in the 2023 budget. “It was a success,” Jung writes.

    Some might conclude that Mamdani is resourceful and effective. But Jung cautions us to curb our enthusiasm. “For Mamdani,” Jung writes, “this was an example of his ability to work with someone…whom he was critical of and yet recognized as a potential ally.” But wait: Unnamed legislators told Jung that Mamdani could have extended the bus program during the 2024 budget negotiations, but he “took issue” with a part of the budget that would make it easier for landlords to claim they were doing needed repairs while raising rents on rent-stabilized units—a major loophole in New York’s tenant protections.

    According to Politico (4/30/25), when Mamdani told Heastie he planned to vote against the budget because of this, Heastie threatened to kill the expansion of the free-bus pilot. Mamdani refused to back down this time, so Heastie pulled the plug on free buses. (Heastie and Mamdani say this didn’t happen.) “That is literally a material good being delivered to the working class…. And [Mamdani] threw it away for a performance,” an unnamed legislator told Jung.

    Despite the allegation that Heastie killed free buses because Mamdani wouldn’t support a budget he believed would harm his constituents, Jung again portrays Mamdani as incompetent: “He appeared to realize he’d made a mistake,” and tried and failed during this year’s budget negotiations “to get free buses back on the agenda, this time by attempting to leverage his district’s capital funds.” (The campaign, again, denies this.)

    “That to me demonstrates how he operates—you can talk about doing things, but that alone is not going to achieve those things,” yet another unnamed colleague of Mamdani’s tells Jung. What “some New York Democratic Party members”—again, unnamed—see as Mamdani’s legislative missteps “have given them pause about his ability to govern…. They see him as a show pony, not a workhorse,” Jung writes.

    It’s a trope often invoked to discredit social media-savvy progressives. As Caroline Fredrickson, president emerita of the American Constitution Society, said of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez in 2019 (Guardian, 12/24/19): “A lot of people expected a show pony. But it turns out she’s a workhorse.”

    ‘Aura of privilege’

    NY1: Topic: Job Experience

    “Mamdani’s moral clarity has the aura of privilege,” New York snarked, implicitly contrasting him with—Andrew Cuomo (NY1, 6/12/25)?

    In addition to casting doubt on Mamdani’s ability to govern, Jung implies that the everyday New Yorkers who admire him are shallow and naive. “Literally this morning I posted you on my Instagram story!” one young woman tells Mamdani, adding, “I’m so emotional seeing you. Like, you’re real.” As a number of public forums and events have made clear, many Mamdani supporters know and care a great deal about policy, while also using Instagram. But you wouldn’t know that from this profile.

    Perhaps the most insidious aspect of profiles like these is the suggestion that it’s hypocritical to fight for poor and working-class people when you are not poor or working-class. (Mamdani’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a Columbia professor, and his mother, Mira Nair, is a prominent filmmaker.)

    The candidate’s “moral clarity,” which many appreciate, has “the aura of privilege,” Jung writes. He asks about “the combination of the relative privilege in [Mamdani’s] own life and the working-class people at the center of his politics.” But to admirers of, say, Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, there is nothing suspect or contradictory about rich and upper-middle-class people standing in solidarity with their poor and working-class counterparts.

    Jung acknowledges that Mamdani has “given hope to people who are in despair…and looking for someone with real fight.” Yet, ultimately, he sees the “appeal of [Mamdani’s] message” as its “simplicity and memeability”—not specific policies or his willingness to battle for them. The final quote is the most telling: “The thing about being a legislator and making compromises is that poor people make compromises every single day,” an unnamed colleague of Mamdani’s tells Jung. “Poor people know what is important, and sometimes they have to choose between two important things.”

    It could be that poor people are born knowing how to prioritize and negotiate. Or it could be that politicians force them to choose between, for example, reliable transit and affordable housing. This profile creates the impression that Mamdani is unwilling to compromise and unfit to govern. But it’s just as plausible that his rejection of such false dichotomies has made some colleagues eager to keep him out of the mayor’s office.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

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    Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).

     

    Protest for Mahmoud Khalil at ICE headquarters: "Protect Free Speech: Free Mahmoud Khalil" "Free Gaza, Free DC, Free Mahmoud" (photo: Diane Krauthamer)

    (Creative Commons photo: Diane Krauthamer)

    This week on CounterSpin: Media are focused on public protests in LA, but seem less interested in what’s making people angry. That’s in part about the federal government’s stated bid to capture and eject anyone they determine “opposes US foreign policy.” Protesters and witnesses and journalists in LA aren’t being shot at and thrown around and sent to the hospital because they disagree with US policy, we’re told, but because they’re interfering with the federal agents carrying out that policy. See how that works? If you don’t, and it worries you, you’re far from alone.

    We hear from Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights and Dissent, about the critical case of Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil, held without warrant in a detention facility in Louisiana since March, for voicing support for Palestinian lives. There’s an important legal development, but how meaningfully Khalil’s case ultimately translates—just like with ICE sweeps around the country—will have to do with us.

    Other Words: Criminalizing Homelessness Doesn’t Work. Housing People Does.

    Other Words (6/4/25)

    Also on the show: If the problem were to “get rid of” unhoused people, the answer would be to house them. It’s cheaper than jailing people for being homeless, so if it’s those “taxpayer dollars” you care about, this would be plan A. Why isn’t it? We hear from Farrah Hassen, policy analyst, writer and adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

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    Janine Jackson interviewed independent journalist Katya Schwenk about Boeing’s non-prosecution deal for the June 6, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

     

    AP: Justice Department reaches deal to allow Boeing to avoid prosecution over 737 Max crashes

    AP (5/23/25)

    Janine Jackson: There’s no need for me to rewrite the AP story on how Boeing and the Justice Department got together and decided no crime was committed when Boeing’s 737 Max planes crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. So I’ll just cite it:

    Boeing did not tell airlines and pilots about a new software system, called MCAS, that could turn the plane’s nose down without input from pilots if a sensor detected that the plane might go into an aerodynamic stall.

    The Max planes crashed after a faulty reading from the sensor pushed the nose down and pilots were unable to regain control. After the second crash, Max jets were grounded worldwide until the company redesigned MCAS to make it less powerful and to use signals from two sensors, not just one.

    The Justice Department charged Boeing in 2021 with deceiving FAA regulators about the software, which did not exist in older 737s, and about how much training pilots would need to fly the plane safely. The department agreed not to prosecute Boeing at the time, however, if the company paid a $2.5 billion settlement, including the $243.6 million fine, and took steps to comply with anti-fraud laws for three years.

    Federal prosecutors, however, last year said Boeing violated the terms of the 2021 agreement by failing to make promised changes to detect and prevent violations of federal anti-fraud laws. Boeing agreed last July to plead guilty to the felony fraud charge instead of enduring a potentially lengthy public trial.

    But now that we’re up to speed, here’s a reporter whose work, unlike that of AP, is not headlined with a little ticker telling you how Boeing stock is doing. Katya Schwenk is a journalist whose work appears at the Lever, the Intercept and the Baffler, among other outlets. Welcome to CounterSpin, Katya Schwenk.

    Lever: How Boeing Bought Washington

    Lever (1/10/24)

    Katya Schwenk: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

    JJ: I used that long quote for information, but I do hope that listeners know that those Indonesia and Ethiopia 737 crashes weren’t the start of all of this. And I know that listeners will have clocked the bit about Boeing agreeing to plead guilty if it would spare them a “lengthy public trial.” So if I kill a few hundred people, I don’t think I can say, “Well, yeah, I did it, and I knew I was doing it, but here’s some change from my bottomless bucket of money, because otherwise I might have to lose my whole summer in court.”

    I can’t help but be startled at the reception to this agreement, as though it actually, as a DoJ spokesperson said, “provides finality and compensation for the families and makes an impact for the safety of future air travelers.” Is there any indication of that happening?

    KS: Yeah, I think the answer to that is a pretty resounding “no.” I mean, the families do not support this agreement. They had wanted to see Boeing face a trial, face some kind of criminal penalty, face real accountability after the crashes. The families of these people who died in the planes, they had been fighting for years and years to get some small measure of accountability in court.

    Jacobin: The Law May Be Coming for Boeing's

    Jacobin (5/18/24)

    And it looked like they might actually see that, when the Justice Department had given Boeing a sweetheart deal under the first Trump administration. It was walked back last year; it seemed like Boeing might actually plead guilty. And then this has basically completely undone all of that.

    The fine, in terms of, if you think about how much money Boeing has, it’s somewhat negligible. It includes credit for what they’ve already paid in this case. So I think it’s pretty disappointing for everyone who wanted to see Boeing face real public accountability.

    JJ: What is a “non-prosecution agreement,” which is coming up a lot in this? What does it do? What does it not do?

    KS: Basically, the Justice Department has agreed to drop all criminal charges against Boeing, and has said that so long as Boeing pays this fine, invests more in its “compliance programs,” it will not be moving forward with any criminal charges. It’s dropping the case, basically.

    And this is different from what had been the previous sweetheart deal; it’s even better than the first sweetheart deal, which was a deferred prosecution agreement, which basically meant, we’ll wait and see if we’re going to prosecute you. We’ll see if you comply–if you invest more in your anti-fraud programs, in this case. And the deal that was just released today, this is like, they’re not even going to continue monitoring Boeing. It’s just like, total blank slate, charges are gone.

    JJ: The idea that if you just throw enough money at it, it’s not a crime, I just know how weird that lands with everybody who is understanding that that just means if you’re rich, you can do what you want. Or if you’re a corporation and you have enough money, you can commit a crime, and we won’t call it a crime because you can pay. It just sounds wrong.

    KS: Yeah. This is like the Trump administration approach to white-collar crime and holding corporations accountable, which is part of a longer-term trend in the US government for decades. But corporations, even when, in this case, many, many people died, right, often are given deals that allow them to just pay a big fine, say they’ve implemented reforms, and get away scot free.

    And there was a moment where it felt like Boeing might not. There was so much public scrutiny, there was so much pressure on the DoJ to actually hold them accountable, and instead we’re seeing that.

    JJ: I just talked with Jeff Hauser, from the aptly named Revolving Door Project, and it seems like cronyism, and “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it,” has been a part of your focus as you’ve reported this story out for some time now.

    Katya Schwenk

    Katya Schwenk: “You can really see how close the relationship is between Boeing and people at the highest positions of power in our country.”

    KS: Yeah, absolutely. Boeing spends quite a lot of money lobbying Washington. There are people that go into roles at the DoJ or the FAA that have previously worked for Boeing. It’s very much the revolving door at work, and they do quite a lot of business with the federal government.

    And so we’ve seen, under the Trump administration, they have granted various giveaways to Boeing. They facilitated a massive deal; the government of Qatar gave Boeing a huge contract to work on fighter jets. You can really see how close the relationship is between Boeing and people at the highest positions of power in our country.

    And I think that, definitely, that’s explaining a lot of what’s going on. And I think the more people that we can have paying attention, not only to Boeing, but again to these sort of mechanisms, levers of power, challenging either–I mean, you mentioned the stock price of Boeing is often the focus of a lot of media attention. I think there are many people who would say it’s not good that you have a company responsible for all this air travel that’s totally ruled by Wall Street. And so I think that really needs to be the focus of reporting moving forward, how it’s going, buying influence, who are they answering to? Is it their engineers, is it the flying public? Is it travelers, or is it their shareholders?

    JJ: And just finally, if folks do pick up a paper today and look for a story on Boeing, they will likely see a story about how China is scrambling to make something as good as a Boeing plane. That seems to be the way Boeing is showing up in the media right now.

    It’s almost as if the story, it’s done. That was yesterday, and now we’re moving on to this corporation that has these deep contracts, military contracts, government contracts. If an individual killed hundreds of people, the story wouldn’t just die because we thought, “Oh, they’re going to go on and do something good, maybe.” It’s a malfeasance on journalism’s part, I feel.

    KS: Absolutely. It sends a message, right? It sends a message that you can do something like that, and we’ll move on and we won’t pay attention. So, yeah, I totally agree.

    JJ: We’ve been speaking with journalist Katya Schwenk. Her work on Boeing can be found at the Lever and at Jacobin, and no doubt elsewhere. Thank you, Katya Schwenk, very much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    KS: I appreciate it. Thanks.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

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    Janine Jackson interviewed the Revolving Door Project’s Jeff Hauser about DOGE “after” Elon Musk for the June 6, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

     

    USA Today: Elon Musk leaves the Trump administration, capping his run as federal government slasher

    USA Today (5/28/25)

    Janine Jackson: “A Bruised Musk Leaves Washington,” the New York Times told readers. USA Today said, “Musk Leaves Trump Administration, Capping His Run as Federal Government Slasher.” The Washington Post said “his departure marks the end of a turbulent chapter.”

    While most outlets acknowledge that the impacts of Musk’s time as “special government employee” are still in effect, and even that many of the minions he placed are still hard at work, the focus was still very much on the great man—What drives him? What will he do next?—rather than on the structures and systems whose flaws are highlighted by the maneuvers of Musk and the so-called Department Of Government Efficiency.

    Our guest says now is not the time to take our eye off the ball. Jeff Hauser is the executive director of the Revolving Door Project. He joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Jeff Hauser.

    Jeff Hauser: Hi, great to be here.

    JJ: I feel as though we spoke recently because we spoke recently, but for the press corps, there’s a new story. To imagine, as some headlines suggest, that Elon Musk has packed up his toys and left town, so some kind of chapter has concluded—that’s not just inaccurate, but rather worrisomely so, don’t you think?

    JH: Absolutely. Elon Musk brought dozens of people with him to Washington, DC, to government. They were very homogeneous, in the sense that none of them were qualified to work at senior levels of government, and they all were motivated by a hatred for public service and a hatred for government protecting ordinary people from the whims of corporate America.

    Politico: Inside Elon Musk and Russ Vought’s quiet alliance

    Politico (3/24/25)

    And they remain in government right now. They’re implementing Musk’s agenda, which happens to be pretty similar to Russell Vought’s agenda, which happens to be very similar to Project 2025’s agenda, which was an agenda that Donald Trump disavowed, but is obviously governing with.

    JJ: Talk about Russell Vought a little bit. I know he’s head of the Office of Management and Budget, but what else do we need to know about him, in this context?

    JH: Russell Vought is sort of like Elon Musk, if Elon Musk had been paying attention to politics for a couple of decades, and minus the allegations of ketamine usage. Russell Vought brings a unique combination of hard-right social views and hard libertarian views on economic policy. He is the personal marriage of all the sort of worst tendencies within the Republican coalition, and he knows what he’s doing.

    He had a senior role in the Trump administration go-around one. He thinks that they underperformed, that they could have attacked government more, they could have made the country even “freer” and more supportive of the richest, most rapacious corporations; and he’s determined that they succeed at doing so again. And he spent the four-year interregnum planning, in exquisite detail, how to bring about the devastation of American government–of the professionalization of the American government that has been the project for more than 140 years, since the Pendleton Act and the rise of the civil service in the early 1880s.

    Pro Publica: The October Story That Outlined Exactly What the Trump Administration Would Do to the Federal Bureaucracy

    ProPublica (3/20/25)

    JJ: ProPublica revealed some speeches Vought gave a little while back, and touching on Project 2025, which he’s an architect of, goes right to what you’re just saying. Part of myriad things they want to do is revive Schedule F, which would make it easier to fire large groups of government workers who right now have civil service protections. But what struck me was the quote; this is Vought:

    We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry, because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

    I have a feeling if that quote were put in front of people, it might provide some light on the project here.

    JH: Absolutely. It was hiding in plain sight. They told us what they were going to do, but Donald Trump disavowed it. Donald Trump said, I’m not going to run on Project 2025. This stuff is so extreme. It’s crazy. Obviously I’m not going to do it. But they’re doing it, note for note.

    And I can tell you, as somebody who not only does politics but lives in Washington, DC, when you’re in the community, there are a lot of traumatized public servants who really, deeply believe in the mission of their agencies, people who could have made a lot more money and had easier, more comfortable lives outside of government service, but are in government for the right reasons. And they are genuinely traumatized right now, and they have a lot of capacity to do good in the world that was underappreciated. Now they are being radically disempowered, and it’s going to take a very long time; it’s going to take a lot of great energy, to ever rebuild this government that Russell Vought, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are destroying.

    JJ: I think it’s so interesting how you say that, even though this Trump administration is acting out the points of Project 2025, the story is still, “Oh, he disavowed it.” And it really highlights the way media have difficulty focusing on what’s happening when they’re so busy listening to what folks are saying, and what other folks are saying about what those folks are saying. But what we really need them to do is to track actual actions.

    JH: Absolutely. It’d be great if the media were more focused on letting people understand what it is that the government can be doing, ordinarily does, is doing and should be doing.

    I don’t think people have a good understanding of government. Even political junkies who can tell you a lot about Nebraska’s Second District, and the chances of Democrats taking back that house seat, and how that one electoral vote might influence the Electoral College in the presidential cycle—people who know that level of minutia can’t really tell you what the Office of Management and Budget does.

    PBS: Elon Musk lost popularity as he gained power in Washington, AP-NORC poll finds

    AP (via PBS, 4/27/25)

    They almost certainly can’t tell you what OIRA, which is a subset of the Office of Management and Budget that focuses on regulatory issues, does. They wouldn’t have been able to tell you about what the civil service does, or the role of the EPA as law enforcement against corporate criminality. They don’t know these things. The media do not convey these things.

    And so if there is an abstract threat about government bureaucrats, even political junkies don’t understand, definitely, what that will mean for their real lives. And I think it’s going to become, unfortunately, painfully clear in the coming years what that means. But the process is not immediate, and it’s incumbent upon the media to, as things go wrong, show the causality, show how these bad things were made much more likely to occur by Trump’s actions, by Musk’s actions, by Vought’s actions, by their disdain for public service, and their embrace of corporate titans being able to do whatever they want to do.

    JJ: I want to just ask you, finally, what Revolving Door is up to, but I just saw this quote from AP, which said Musk “succeeded in providing a dose of shock therapy to the federal government, but he has fallen short of other goals.” And we’re supposed to take away that providing “shock therapy” to the federal government is somehow benign or necessary or a good thing; it’s remarkable.

    But let me ask you, finally, what Revolving Door is up to, and how you hope journalists and others can use the tools and the information that you’re providing?

    Jeff Hauser

    Jeff Hauser: “Taking seriously the notion that Musk was some sort of deficit hawk is part of the inanity of American political coverage.”

    JH: Yeah, I think the quote really actually gets at a lot of what the Revolving Door Project is up to, because we do two types of work. One is pushing back on Trump, on creeping authoritarianism, and rapacious oligarchs destroying the government so they can pillage society.

    So we do that work, but we also fight back against neoliberals within the Democratic Party. We’re a nonpartisan organization, and we attack neoliberalism in all of its many forms. And the idea that government required shock therapy, that there were too many people working in government, even though the number of people working in government is the same as it was two or three generations ago, when America’s population was half of what it currently is.

    But the notion of this is a nonpartisan idea, that government required shock therapy: That is the marriage of Democratic neoliberals and Republican neoliberals, and that is what allowed Musk and DOGE and Trump to happen. It’s that belief that things really were broken, that there was some legitimacy to the concept of DOGE from the jump. No one should have ever validated the idea of DOGE, or talked about, “Here’s my vision for what government efficiency pursuits would happen.”

    Because Musk’s goals were not to cut government spending. In fact, Silicon Valley wants way more financial support for their artificial intelligence data centers and the like. They want subsidies for all sorts of tech projects, and they want a bigger military industrial complex that is more heavily dependent on Silicon Valley. So they want lots of spending, they just want it on their priorities. They want to attack government workers, because those government workers enforce the rules that limit and constrain corporate oligarchs.

    So that’s what they wanted. They did not want to reduce the deficit, and taking seriously the notion that Musk was some sort of deficit hawk is part of the inanity of American political coverage. And I’d like the media to be less credulous about people who have obvious economic stakes in public policy, and pretending that the rhetoric that they deploy, especially when they’re known liars, is something that we should take seriously.

    Rolling Stone: The Big List of Elon Musk’s Hyperbole, Evasions, and Outright Lies

    Rolling Stone (8/19/23)

    JJ: And so the work you’re doing is tracking the ins and outs of what these predations have meant, and what they could mean, and how to stay on top of them?

    JH: Yes. We are cataloging under our DOGE Watch feature the ways in which Trump and Musk are attacking the ability of government to protect ordinary people. And we’re also monitoring, separately—we have a website, Hackwatch.us—how ostensible Democratic-aligned, center-left neoliberal pundits, people like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias and Derek Thompson, are making things easier for corporate oligarchs, are carrying water for Silicon Valley and are pursuing neoliberalism, because we’re against neoliberalism in all forms.

    JJ: All right, we’ll end on that note—for now. We’ve been speaking with Jeff Hauser from the Revolving Door Project. Jeff Hauser, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    JH: It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

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    Israeli tanks opened fire last Sunday on a crowd of thousands of starving Palestinians at an aid distribution center in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The victims had gathered in hopes of finding food for themselves and their families, following a nearly three-month total Israeli blockade of the territory. At least 31 people were killed; one Palestinian was also killed by Israeli fire the same day at another distribution site in central Gaza.

    On Monday, June 2, three more Palestinians lost their lives to Israeli projectiles while trying to procure food, and on Tuesday there were 27 fatalities at the aid hub in Rafah. This brought the total number of Palestinian deaths at the newly implemented hubs to more than 100 in just a week.

    ‘Not possible to implement’

    Al Jazeera: Israeli gunfire kills at least 27 aid seekers in Gaza: Health Ministry

    Al Jazeera‘s Hind Khoudary (6/3/25): ““The Israeli forces just opened fire randomly, shooting Palestinians…using quadcopters and live ammunition.”

    Mass killing in the guise of food distribution is occurring under the supervision of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a sketchy-as-hell organization registered in Switzerland and Delaware. It boasts the participation of former US military and intelligence officers, as well as solid Israeli endorsement and armed US security contractors escorting food deliveries.

    Jake Wood—the ex-US Marine sniper who had taken up the post of GHF executive director—recently resigned after reasoning that “it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.”

    Indeed, the GHF, which has temporarily suspended operations to conduct damage control, has managed to align its activities entirely with the genocidal vision of the state of Israel, whose military has killed more than 54,600 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. In May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu determined that “minimal” aid should be let into Gaza, lest mass starvation force the US to scale back its support for genocide (which is somehow less problematic than enforced famine).

    By entrusting the delivery of this “minimal” aid to the brand-new GHF, rather than the United Nations and other groups that have decades of experience doing such things, the Israelis have in fact been able to call the shots in terms of strategic placement of the aid hubs. Only four are currently in place for a starving population of 2 million, requiring many Palestinians to walk long distances—those that are able to walk, that is—across Israeli military lines.

    The hubs are mainly in southern Gaza, which is conveniently where Israel has schemed to concentrate the surviving Palestinian population, in order to then expel them in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s dream of a brand-new Palestinian-free “Riviera of the Middle East” in the Gaza Strip. Even as he authorized the resumption of aid, Netanyahu reiterated his vow to “take control” of all of Gaza. As UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has observed, “Aid distribution has become a death trap.”

    Leading with denials

    WaPo: Israel says it fired ‘warning shots’ near aid site; health officials say 27 dead

    The Washington Post headline (6/2/25) puts Israel’s rebuttal ahead of the charge it’s responding to.

    And yet despite all of this, Western corporate media have somehow found it difficult to report in straightforward fashion that the food-distribution massacres have left Palestinians with a rather bleak choice: either die of starvation or die trying to obtain food aid.

    So it is that we end up with, for example, the Washington Post’s Tuesday dispatch (6/2/25) from Jerusalem, headlined “Israel Says It Fired ‘Warning Shots’ Near Aid Site; Health Officials Say 27 Dead,” which charitably gave Israel the privilege of refuting what the health officials have said before they even say it. The article quoted the Israeli army as claiming that its soldiers had fired at suspects “who advanced toward the troops in such a way that posed a threat.” It also quoted the following statement from the GHF:

    While the aid distribution was conducted safely and without incident at our site today, we understand that [Israeli army] is investigating whether a number of civilians were injured after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone.

    Anyway, that’s what happens when you put your aid distribution site in the middle of an Israeli military zone.

    Then there was the BBC report (5/31/25) on Sunday’s massacre, headlined “Israel Denies Firing at Civilians After Hamas-Run Ministry Says 31 Killed in Gaza Aid Center Attack,” which went on to underscore that the ministry in question was the “Hamas-run health ministry.” Given Hamas’s role as the governing authority in the Gaza Strip, this is sort of like specifying that the US Department of Health & Human Services is “run by the US government”—except that, in Gaza’s case, the “Hamas-run” qualifier is meant to cast doubt on the ministry’s claims. Never mind that said ministry’s death counts have over time consistently “held up to UN scrutiny, independent investigations and even Israel’s tallies,” as the Associated Press (11/6/23) has previously acknowledged.

    BBC: Israel denies firing at civilians after Hamas-run ministry says 31 killed in Gaza aid centre attack

    The BBC headline (5/31/25) likewise presents Israel’s defense before revealing the charge made by the “Hamas-run ministry.”

    On Tuesday, though, the AP (6/3/25) chimed in with its own headline, “Gaza Officials Say Israeli Forces Killed 27 Heading to Aid Site. Israel Says It Fired Near Suspects.” The text of the article details how Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is “led by medical professionals but reports to the Hamas-run government,” has calculated that the majority of the more than 54,000 Palestinian fatalities in Israel’s current war on Gaza are women and children, but hasn’t said “how many of the dead were civilians or combatants.”

    Meanwhile, Reuters (6/1/25) reported that an Israeli attack near a GHF-run aid distribution point had “killed at least 30 people in Rafah, Palestinian news agency WAFA and Hamas-affiliated media said on Sunday.” In a separate article on Sunday’s massacre, the news wire (6/1/25) wrote that

    the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry said 31 people were killed with a single gunshot wound to the head or chest from Israeli fire as they were gathered in the Al-Alam district aid distribution area in Rafah.

    The latter dispatch was headlined “Gaza Ministry Says Israel Kills More Than 30 Aid Seekers, Israel Denies.”

    ‘No shortage’

    Le Monde: Israel says no aid 'shortage' in Gaza after UN chief's criticism

    Israel’s most absurd denials can turn into headlines (Le Monde, 4/8/25).

    There is pretty much no end to the crafty sidelining by Western corporate media of truthful assertions by “Hamas-run” entities—and the simultaneous provision of ample space to the Israeli military to continue its established tradition of propagating outright lies. Recall that time not so long ago that Israeli officials insisted that there was “no shortage” of aid in the Gaza Strip, despite a full-blown blockade, and the glee directly expressed by various Israeli ministers about not letting an iota of food, or anything else necessary for survival, into the besieged enclave (FAIR.org, 4/25/25).

    It is furthermore perplexing why there is even a perceived need to cast doubt on massacres of 31 or 27 or three individuals, in the context of a genocide that has killed more than 54,600 people in 20 months—a war in which Israel has exhibited no qualms in slaughtering starving people, as in the February 2024 incident when at least 112 Palestinians were massacred while queuing for flour southwest of Gaza City (FAIR.org, 3/22/24). Against a backdrop of such wanton slaughter, what are 100 more Palestinian deaths to Israel? Indiscriminate mass killing is, after all, the objective here.

    Just as GHF is now engaged in micro-level damage control operations vis-à-vis their militarized distribution of food in Gaza, Israel, too, appears to be in a similar mode, since it’s a whole lot simpler—and helpfully distracting—to bicker over dozens of casualties rather than, you know, a whole genocide.

    And the Western establishment media are, as ever, standing by to lend a helping hand. Perhaps we should start calling them the “Israel-affiliated media.” 

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).

     

    White House photo of Elon Musk's farewell press conference with Donald Trump.

    White House photo (5/30/25) of Elon Musk’s farewell press conference with President Donald Trump.

    This week on CounterSpin: An email we got this week tells us: “The radical left is up in arms about DOGE. Just think about it—DOGE has exposed BILLIONS in wasteful spending, and is rooting out fraud and corruption at every turn. They’re making the government work for the people of this great nation once again, as the founders intended, and that is why the left simply can’t stand DOGE.” The ask is that we fill out a survey that represents “our once-in-a-lifetime chance to slash the bloated, woke and wasteful policies in the federal government. Thank you, and God Bless, Speaker Mike Johnson. (Paid for by the NRCC and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.)”

    Reports are that Elon Musk is leaving government, going back to make Tesla great again or something. But if that’s true, why did we get this weird, sad email? We’ll talk about how to miss Musk when he won’t go away with Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project.

     

    Lever: Could These Fraud Allegations Land Boeing In A Criminal Trial?

    Lever (5/17/24)

    Also on the show: The New York Times has its stories on the Boeing “non-prosecution agreement” in the “Business” section, suggesting that whether planes drop out of the sky is mostly a concern for investors. A huge corporation paying money to dodge criminal charges is evidently not a general interest story. And the families and friends of the hundreds of people dead because of Boeing’s admittedly knowing malfeasance? They’re just another county heard from. If you want reporting that calls crimes “crimes,” even if they’re committed by corporations, you need to look outside of corporate media. We’ll hear about Boeing from independent journalist Katya Schwenk.

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of trans youth in sports and gender-affirming care.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  •  

    NYT: Darren Aronofsky: Greta Thunberg Is the Icon the Planet Desperately Needs

    The New York Times (12/2/19) apparently doesn’t think Greta Thunberg is an icon Gaza desperately needs.

    When Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was fighting for climate justice in her home country and the world stage, the New York Times gave her top billing. She co-authored an op-ed (8/19/21), and was the subject of a long interview (10/30/20).

    Acclaimed film director Darren Aronofsky wrote a piece for the Times (12/2/19) headlined “Greta Thunberg Is the Icon the Planet Desperately Needs.” Seeing a photo of her at 15, staging her first environmental protest, he said: “Here was the image—one of hope, commitment and action—I needed to see. An image that could spark a movement.” Her work was highlighted constantly in the Paper of Record (e.g., New York Times, 2/18/19, 8/29/19, 9/18/19, 1/21/20, 4/9/21, 11/4/21, 6/30/23).

    Now Thunberg is sailing to Gaza with a group of 11 other activists in what AP (6/2/25)  called an “effort to bring in some aid and raise ‘international awareness’ over the ongoing humanitarian crisis.” The Israeli blockade of Gaza and the ongoing military strikes on the devastated territory is leading to a massive starvation crisis (UN News, 6/1/25; FAIR.org, 4/25/25).

    No fawning coverage of Thunberg’s activism from the Times this time. No Hollywood big shot saying that he hoped her trip would “spark a movement.”

    ‘Professional tantrum-thrower’

    Fox News' Greg Gutfeld on "promiscuity of activism."

    Fox News‘ Greg Gutfeld (6/3/25) decried Thunberg’s “promiscuity of activism.”

    The right-wing press is upset about Thunberg’s voyage and Palestine advocacy, of course. The Israeli military “says it is ‘prepared’ to raid the ship, as it has done with previous freedom flotilla efforts,” reported the Daily Mail (6/4/25), adding IDF spokesperson Gen. Effie Defrin’s remark: “We have gained experience in recent years, and we will act accordingly.” Israeli security sources have reportedly vowed to stop the vessel before it gets to Gaza (Jerusalem Post, 6/4/25, 6/5/25).

    The British Spectator‘s Julie Burchill (6/4/25) said:

    When we consider child stars through the ages, the girls generally age better than the boys; Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Billie Piper all made the seamless switch from winsome cuties to gifted entertainers. The same cannot be said of Greta Thunberg, though she’s certainly remained consistently irritating. Neither a singer nor a thespian, she is a professional tantrum-thrower, more comparable to the fictional horrors Violet Elizabeth Bott and Veruca Salt than the trio of troupers listed above.

    “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (X, 6/1/25), a ghoulish statement suggesting that an attack on the ship was imminent. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (6/2/25) called the message a “grotesque social media post suggesting a possible Israeli state terrorism attack on peaceful international activists aboard a humanitarian aid ship bound for Gaza.”

    The pro-Israel media criticism website HonestReporting (6/4/25) called Thunberg’s participation in the aid mission an “anti-Israel publicity stunt.” “Greta Thunberg’s beliefs are as shallow as her need for attention,” said Fox News host Greg Gutfeld (6/3/25). Rita Panahi of Australia’s Sky News (6/4/25) called Thunberg a “doom goblin.”

    These comments aren’t just mean-spirited but ominous, considering that the group’s previous mission was aborted when their ship suffered a drone attack (Reuters, 5/6/25), and an aid flotilla to Gaza 15 years ago ended up with Israeli special forces killing ten activists (Al Jazeera, 5/30/20).

    From star to nonentity

    AP: Climate activist Greta Thunberg joins aid ship sailing to Gaza aimed at breaking Israel’s blockade

    Greta Thunberg (AP, 6/2/25): “No matter how dangerous this mission is, it’s not even near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the live-streamed genocide.”

    And yet while the New York Times (5/2/25) covered the aborted mission and Thunberg’s involvement, it has not yet reported on the current mission and Thunberg’s role. As noted earlier, AP (6/2/25) covered the launch of the current mission, with Thunberg aboard, which was re-run in the Washington Post (6/2/25). She has done interviews with other media from the boat (Democracy Now!, 6/4/25).

    How could she have gone from a star in the Times‘ pages to such a nonentity? Given how much attention she received in the Times for leading a movement for climate justice, one might think that her dedication to the strife in Gaza might warrant some attention, too.

    For activists and journalists who have covered the press response to the crisis in Gaza, this is all part of the Palestine exception, where liberal groups and outlets might show concern for humanitarian crises around the world, but lower their outrage or stay completely silent on the subject of Palestine.

    FAIR (5/22/25) recently noted another example of this phenomenon at the Times. An op-ed by its publisher, ​​A.G. Sulzberger (5/13/25), decried attacks on the freedom of the press around the world, but omitted that the biggest killer of journalists in the world today is the Israeli government.

    ‘Money from Hamas’

    NYT: Why Tot Celebrity Ms. Rachel Waded Into the Gaza Debate

    The New York Times (5/14/25) treated the idea that Hamas might be bankrolling an American children’s entertainer as a plausible allegation.

    The New York Times (5/14/25) recently covered the backlash children’s entertainer Rachel Griffin Accurso, aka Ms. Rachel, has received from pro-Israel activists for using her platform to speak out for Palestinian children. The most eyebrow-raising bit from the piece:

    Last month, the advocacy group StopAntisemitism labeled Accurso the “Antisemite of the Week” and, the New York Post reported, sent a letter urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether Accurso is receiving funding to further Hamas’s agenda.

    Accurso “posted nearly 50 times about the children of Gaza, most of which is filled with misinformation from Hamas, and only five times about Israeli children,” the group, which monitors statements about Israel on social media accounts of prominent figures, said on its website. “In the case of the Israeli children, she only posted due to widespread public backlash, never condemning Hamas and the Palestinians.”

    Accurso, 42, in an emailed response denied having received money from Hamas. “This accusation is not only absurd, it’s patently false,” she said.

    It’s impossible to imagine that if Accurso had been speaking about Ukrainian children suffering under Russia’s invasion, the Times or any other US establishment outlet would entertain the notion that she was working on behalf of the Azov Battalion or another extremist Ukrainian faction. Alas, this is how the Palestine exception works in US media like the Times.

    Accurso and Thunberg’s advocacy for Palestinian civilians is dangerous to those cheerleading the slaughter in Gaza, because their status as clear-eyed and big-hearted people give public legitimacy to the Palestinian cause. The Times invoking the Palestinian exception against them is a part of a larger effort to keep public opinion from turning against Israeli militarism.


    ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com or via Bluesky: @NYTimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    New York Times promo for an upcoming podcast: :Introducing ‘The Protocol’Coming June 5: A six-part podcast exploring the origins of medical treatment for transgender young people, and how the care got pulled into a political fight that could end it in the United States.

    New York Times promo for an upcoming podcast on how “medical treatment for transgender young people, and how the care got pulled into a political fight.”

    As Pride month kicks off, the New York Times is releasing a new six-part podcast about medical care for trans youth—a subject on which Times coverage has been shameful.

    Reporting on the issue is of critical importance at the moment, given the breathtaking assault on trans rights by the Trump administration, which has issued at least six anti-trans executive orders in its first months. Across the country, 920 bills aimed at trans people have been introduced in the first half of 2025, and the Supreme Court is poised to issue a decision in the Skrmetti case that may legitimize restrictions on gender-affirming care.

    But in light of the Times‘ documented anti-trans bias—and the fact that reporter Azeen Ghorayshi, responsible for much of their previous problematic coverage (FAIR.org, 8/30/237/19/24), is centrally involved in the podcast—trans activists are girding for the worst. Ghorayshi has been criticized for misreporting the experiences of trans minors and their families, misrepresenting study findings, and promoting unsubstantiated claims that contributed in part to the closure of a St. Louis youth gender clinic.

    FAIR: NYT Publishes ‘Greatest Hits’ of Bad Trans Healthcare Coverage

    FAIR described an article by the New York Times‘ Azeen Ghorayshi  (8/23/23)  as “a greatest-hits album of all of the Times’ problematic coverage on adolescent gender-affirming care, filled with familiar tropes and tactics the paper of record has used to distort the issue.”

    The podcast teaser offers a glimpse of what’s to come: back-and-forth quotes from trans people and those seeking to take away trans kids’ health care, plus some troubling quotes like this one:

    If the treatment is barred, some kids will suffer because they can’t access the treatment. If the treatment is allowed, some kids will suffer who get the treatment and later wish they hadn’t. And then the question becomes, how does the court choose which group?

    It’s not clear who the speaker is, but the sense the listener gets is that these are equal harms.  The reality is that regret over gender-affirming care is extremely low (Medium, 3/24/23), and such care has been shown to greatly reduce the alarmingly high suicide rates among trans youth (HCPLive, 3/8/22).

    It’s worth noting that standards for gender-affirming care for youth do not even recommend surgery for children under the age of 18 except in extreme cases. Instead, treatment typically begins—after screenings from both mental health and medical professionals—with entirely reversible puberty blockers.

    A voice later in the teaser remarks:

    Conservative states want to just, you know, be done with trans people altogether. And when reports come out that show this, you know, two-sided thing and the skepticism and the fact there’s no evidence, this just adds fuel to their fire.

    Gray Lady Lies, Trans People Die: Protest sign at the New York Times (photo: Tyler Albertario)

    Sign at the Transexual Menace protest at the New York Times (photo: Tyler Albertario).

    The claim that “there’s no evidence” to support the value of gender-affirming care is not a fact, but a myth (Psychology Today, 1/24/22)—one promoted by credulous reporting of the British government’s Cass Review by the Times‘ Ghorayshi (FAIR.org, 7/19/24).

    The teaser frames the story as one in which “the medicine and the politics have become impossibly entangled.” As media critic Parker Molloy (Present Age, 6/4/25) observes:

    Transgender healthcare didn’t get “pulled into” a political fight—it became the target of a coordinated campaign by anti-trans activists and Republican politicians. But the Times‘ language suggests this is some kind of natural, inevitable conflict rather than a deliberate assault on medical care.

    The Transexual Menace, a group of trans rights activists, is picketing New York Times offices today. “For years now, the New York Times‘ reporting on trans healthcare has given undue credence to anecdotes offered by bigots,” spokesperson Anabel Ruggiero said in a statement. The group is demanding “an end to the Times’ deliberate anti-transgender bias.”


    Research Assistance: Wilson Korik

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Janine Jackson interviewed guitarist Tom Morello about music as protest for the May 30, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

     

    Rolling Stone: Why Trump Is Threatening to Investigate Bruce Springsteen

    Rolling Stone (5/20/25)

    Janine Jackson: We know the roll by now: Trump blurts out his latest hateful fever dream, and then anyone seeking favor scrambles to, if not make it make sense, make it happen. Among the latest is a demand that the Federal Election Commission launch a “major investigation” of Bruce Springsteen, who described the Trump White House as “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” in a UK concert, even after Trump tweeted that Springsteen “ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT,” and “we’ll all see how it goes for him.”

    If there’s a “musicians to threaten” list going around, our guest is for sure on it. I suspect he’d be curious if he weren’t. Guitarist Tom Morello has been a member of bands Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave, along with myriad other projects, including supergroup Prophets of Rage with Chuck D, and his solo work as the Nightwatchman. He’s also, I understand, co-directing a documentary, and who knows what else. He joins us now by phone from LA. Welcome to CounterSpin, Tom Morello.

    Tom Morello: Thank you very much for having me, Janine. Nice to hear your voice.

    JJ: This is all as ham-fisted as everything Trump does, and yet that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.

    TM: Sure.

    JJ: Intimidation doesn’t have to hit its ostensible target to have effects. So maybe no one thinks Taylor Swift, for example, is shaking in her boots, but less-powerful and less-protected artists might feel some kind of way. So how would you speak to artists trying to make their way, about how you see the potential role of, in particular, musicians in Trumpian times?

    Tom Morello

    Tom Morello: “I’ve always had the firm belief…that history is not something that happens, it’s something that we make.” (Creative Commons photo: Ralph_PH)

    TM: Yeah. I mean, I’ve always believed that dangerous times demand dangerous music, and especially in these troubled times, music, joy and even laughter have suddenly become acts of resistance. There may come a time in the not-so-distant future, we may be at it right now, where the ideas expressed in our songs, and the people who write them and play them, and maybe even those who sit in the audience, may find themselves censored, smothered, evicted and erased. But not today.

    I’ve always had the firm belief, and expressed over 22 albums in my career, that history is not something that happens, it’s something that we make, and so I try to encourage both myself and my audience to head out into that world and confront injustice wherever it rears its ugly head, whether it’s in your school, in your place of work, or in your country at large: the threats of the Trump administration is to not just artists, but it’s a McCarthyite fervor that seems to be on the rise. And there’s two ways to respond to it. One is to duck and cover. And the other is to meet the moment.

    I’ve been very encouraged; the way that Bruce Springsteen has continued—his response to Trump’s diatribe was to release an album of the show that infuriated Trump. I played a couple of days ago at my alma mater, Harvard University, with a set that not only supported Bruce, but supported the university stance of not bending the knee and kissing the ring and allowing private education facilities to be under the governance of a proto-fascist regime.

    So people have to make up their minds who they are and what they’re going to be. My take has always been, if you do have convictions, you need to weave them into your vocation, and let the chips fall where they may. If you don’t have convictions, then by all means, don’t pretend to have them for Tom Morello.

    Boston: ‘F*** that guy’: Tom Morello’s Boston Calling set was one big middle finger to Donald Trump

    Boston.com (5/26/25)

    JJ: Boston Media described the atmosphere at your recent set at Boston Calling as “cathartic defiance.” I suspect you’re happy with that.

    TM: I felt that, and I think that it’s cathartic because we live in a world where people don’t know if anyone’s feeling the same way that they do, if anyone’s willing to speak out when the right-wing choir is so loud, it’s like, will anyone stand against it? And when you play a set of my own music, Rage Against The Machine songs, some Bruce Springsteen songs, and rile them up with a good Fred Hampton–like fervor in between songs, people recognize that, “Oh, we are not alone,” and that music is a force that can really steel the backbone of people in times of turmoil and struggle.

    JJ: I was bemused by one headline I saw that called that set “expletive-laden,” and that was the headline, and I thought, “Wow, we’ve got ‘grab them by the pussy’ in office, but it’s still worth noting when people don’t show decorum.”

    AlterNet: 'Cathartic defiance': Singer rages against Trump in expletive-laden festival performance

    AlterNet (5/26/25)

    TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is funny. The fact that that’s news, with the rollback of democracy and the mass murder of children and whatnot, if someone uses a cuss word, that that’s going to make the headline, feels absolutely ridiculous.

    JJ: It’s ridiculous. Well, all right. Mother’s Day, which just passed, has become about buying flowers for underappreciated women, but some will know that it began as Mother’s Day for Peace, when activists were calling for husbands and sons not to be killed in war. Its founders hated that it became a Hallmark holiday.

    Part of what I see you doing is waking present-day listeners to the history of protest music, and music as protest. Using Woody Guthrie‘s “This Land Is Your Land” is a great example of censored, semi-understood, sanitized history. Why does that song mean so much to you?

    TM: Sure, sure, sure. Well, I learned “This Land is Your Land,” like most of us did, in the third grade, where they censored out the verses that explained what the song was really about. “This Land is Your Land” is a radical anthem about economic leveling. It was written by Woody Guthrie, and Woody Guthrie knew that music could be a binding force. It could be an elevating power, an uplifting, unifying and transcendent thing, that music can be both a defensive shield and a weapon for change. Authoritarians and billionaires think that this country belongs to them. Woody Guthrie’s song insists that this land is your land.

    Woody Guthrie with guitar labeled 'This Machine Kills Fascists.'

    Woody Guthrie

    JJ: And yet the very verses—it’s remarkable, in the sense that we learned to sing it and celebrate it and say, “Yeah, we all believe in this, but not this part that we’re not going to talk about.” It seems emblematic in some ways.

    TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah:

    As I was walking, I saw a sign there

    And that sign said “private property.”

    On the other side, it didn’t say nothing.

    That side was made for you and me.

     

    In the squares of the city, in the  shadow of the steeple,

    Near the relief office, I see my people.

    And some are grumbling and all are wondering

    If this land is still made for you and me.

    And then he sings the chorus, “This land was made for you and me,” answering his own question in a very powerful way.

    Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine playing "Killing in the Name Of."

    YouTube (8/17/15)

    JJ: I’m pretty sure that anyone singing that today would be told to shut up and sing.

    I want to take you, just for a second—I’ve been to Rage shows, and I have seen oceans of young white men scream full-voice, “Some of those who work forces! Are the same who burn crosses!” since before George Floyd, before Michael Brown, before “I can’t breathe.” It’s…interesting, I will say. And it must mean that you’ve seen, for many, many years, a kind of energy, in a kind of place that I suspect many folks didn’t think existed.

    TM: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of different buckets the people who enjoy Rage Against The Machine exist in. Some are people who come to the music because they pre-diagnosed to agree with the politics of it.

    Some simply enjoy it for the raw power and the aggression and the screaming guitar solos and whatnot, and have no idea what’s going on in the lyrics, that sort of shout along. They’re more than welcome.

    Loudwire: People Discover Rage Against The Machine Sing About Politics and are Angry

    Loudwire (7/11/22)

    Then there are those that are drawn to the songs because of the heaviness of the music, or the aggression of the music, and they come away with a different set of ideas, because that band has a different set of ideas than the other bands that play similar music. Sometimes you see that Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment, where their eyes are opened.

    And then there’s the unique bucket of those that believe the songs are right-wing anthems, and are shocked to find that the members of Rage Against The Machine have politics very, very different from their own.

    JJ: It’s got to be strange. It’s got to be strange. You know, if I put up a Facebook post and it gets more than 20 views, I get nervous: I’m not trying to be a spokesperson, I’m just trying to speak. You cannot answer every objection to what you’re doing. You cannot come along with every record and interpret it for people. So you have to relax and let it speak, right?

    TM: Yeah. The Rage Against The Machine music, and the music in my 22-album career, it’s not a Noam Chomsky lecture. The idea is to make art that is compelling, and makes people jump up and down, or shake their butts or whatever, and then there is a message that’s contained in it. And you can check all the boxes, or one of the boxes, and it’s totally all right.

    JJ: Right. Right. Well, you’re a musician because you love music, and you are political because you’re political, and these things come together. So, I mean, unless it’s an article about what strings you prefer, there’s really hardly a way for a music critic to talk about your career, and your various projects, without talking about social and racial justice, or what many insist on calling “politics,” as though that were somehow a separate, denatured category of interest. So I just said, “Shut up and sing.” That’s never made sense as a complaint with you, but it’s really dumb, whoever it’s aimed at?

    TM: Well, I mean, “shut up and sing” is exclusively reserved for artists whom you disagree with. It’s not “shut up and sing” if you’re politically aligned. It’s when the cognitive dissonance occurs—like, “I really like this music, but I can’t stand the fact that I’m having my nose shoved in my own prejudices.”

    Real Time with Bill Maher: Tom Morello

    Real Time with Bill Maher (6/10/16)

    JJ: You’ve been interviewed, you’ve been spoken to a lot, and I can imagine some of the things that reporters come at you with. I remember, years ago, you went on Bill Maher, and had that experience. I wonder, do you ever feel like you need to redirect? I find sometimes I have to say, “Well, I’m not going to respond to that question. I’m going to say something different.” Do you ever need to redirect reporters, mid-conversation?

    TM: I would say that I wish sometimes that there was more thoughtful reporting than what I’m exposed to, because to most people who cover music, I’m a unicorn. They don’t have a lot of artists that they’re exposed to that have a lifetime of political engagement. So a casual music journalist tends to ask the same seven questions, over the course of 30 years. I actually look forward to stuff that’s a little bit more on the Bill Maher end of the spectrum, where it’s a little bit more sparring, or it’s a little bit more thoughtful or more in-depth. Because they’re like, “So what’s it like being in a political band?” –that level of discourse.

    JJ: Exactly. Well, I would say a word that I would use to describe you, Tom, is “jovial.” You’ve made yourself this big fat target, and you seem to be enjoying yourself, like, “This is what I trained for.” To what do you attribute this willingness to be misunderstood, and even hated?

    TM: Well, I mean, I’m not jovial because people hate, let me just make that very, very clear.

    JJ: No, clear, clear. You’ve been jovial the 30 years I’ve known you.

    WMMR: Tom Morello is Cool, But His Mom, Mary Morello, Is Cooler

    WMMR (5/30/24)

    TM: Yeah, I think that’s independent. It’s independent. I mean, part of it is having a really, really clear North Star. From 16- or 17-years-old, I can attribute a large measure to my mom, Mary Morello, who is currently 101 years old, and still the most radical and popular member of the Morello family. But there’s always been this social justice North Star that is unbending and uncompromising, and I know what I was put here to do.

    I didn’t choose to be a guitar player. That chose me. So I’m kind of stuck finding a way to express my convictions in my vocation, and just no two ways about it. Countless opportunities go away when you say the things I say, play the things I play and believe the things that I believe, and it’s totally fine. There’s a contingent of the audience that is smaller than it would be otherwise. But when people make music, make any art, that is widely and generally loved and absorbed by the vast majority of the population, it tends to be shitty art, and I’ve never been interested in that.

    JJ: Jim and I used to say we live our life between two Marx quotes: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it,” and “I have spoken and saved my soul.”

    TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    JJ: It’s a difficult engagement; for many people, it’s more difficult today than it ever has been, but for many of us, it’s been difficult our whole lives, and knowing when to speak, and how to also keep ourselves safe, and all of that.

    Spin: Tom Morello Taps Into ‘Rage’ Energy

    Spin (2/11/25)

    But I’ll say, I’ll just read a quote from you:

    It’s not a time to shy away from resistance. It’s a time to lean in. On a cultural front, that’s what these shows are, my small contribution to withstanding the fascist gale that is blowing.

    Just talk, finally, Tom Morello, about how you see the present moment, your role within it, and what you’d like folks to think about.

    TM: Well, having been engaged in activism of some sort for, my gosh, 40+ years now, it’s a realization that each of us are a link in the chain. Those of us that have a conviction that the world can be a more peaceful, a more equal, a more just place:  The arc of history may bend towards justice, but sometimes it swings back the other way, and that doesn’t mean that you should despair. That means you should realize what is moving the meter are people, no different than anyone listening right now. When there’s been progressive, radical, even revolutionary change, it has come from people no different from anyone listening to this right now.

    So while that may sound daunting, the good news is that those people who have moved the meter, from Spartacus to today, have been no different from the people—like, no more money, power, influence, courage, intelligence, creativity. It’s a matter of standing up in your time, and doing it to the best of your ability, and recognizing that, in this particular historical moment, it’s a little bit now or never. If you’ve got feelings, you’ve got to express them. Apply yourself in your place of work, in your school, in your union, in your town, in your country right now. The cavalry is not coming. You’re it.

    JJ: We’ve been speaking with guitarist, activist, now filmmaker Tom Morello. Thank you, Tom. Love to your mother. Thank you for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    TM: Thank you so much. Say hi to the family for me.

    JJ: I will do.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    In The Political Economy of Human Rights (South End Press, 1979), Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman argued that the American ruling class and corporate media regard bloodbaths as being constructive, nefarious or benign. A constructive bloodbath is typically carried out by the US or one of its proxies, and is endorsed in establishment media. The most obvious contemporary example is the genocidal US/Israeli campaign in Gaza, approved by media commentators in the New York Times (2/11/25), Wall Street Journal (3/20/25) and Washington Post (10/24/23).

    Headlines condemning massacres in Syria

    Headlines from the Washington Post (8/27/12, 8/23/12), New York Times (6/2/11) and Wall Street Journal (6/15/12) treated massacres in Assad’s Syria as what Chomsky and Herman called a “nefarious bloodbath.”

    The two other approaches that Chomsky and Herman outline illuminate the corporate media’s approach to Syria. When Bashar al-Assad was in power in Syria and the US was seeking his overthrow, corporate media treated killings that his government and its allies carried out as nefarious bloodbaths: Their violence was denounced in corporate press with unambiguous language, and prompted demands that the US intervene against them.

    For David Brooks of the Times (6/2/11), the Assad government was “one of the world’s genuinely depraved regimes,” and thus it was necessary for Barack Obama to “embrace the cautious regime-change strategy that is his current doctrine.”

    An editorial in the Journal (6/15/12) saw “Mr. Assad’s efficient butchery” as a reason that the US should conduct an “air campaign targeting elite Syrian military units.” This

    could prompt the general staff to reconsider its contempt for international opinion, and perhaps its allegiance to the Assad family. Short of that, carving out some kind of safe haven inside Syria would at least save lives.

    The Post published an editorial (8/27/12) saying that “according to opposition sources, at least 300 people were slaughtered in the town of Daraya late last week.” The piece added that this

    newest war crime, like those before it, reflects a deliberate strategy. As the Post’s Liz Sly has reported [8/23/12], the Assad regime is seeking to regain control over opposition-held areas by teaching their residents that harboring the rebels will be punished with mass murder.

    The paper called the Obama administration “morally bankrupt” for not taking more aggressive military action in Syria.

    Embracing Damascus

    France 24: Syria monitor says more than 100 people killed in two days of sectarian violence

    France 24 (5/1/25): “The latest round of violence follows a series of massacres in Syria’s coast in March, where the Observatory said security forces and allied groups killed more than 1,700 civilians, mostly Alawites.”

    In the months since Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa came to power, with substantial assistance from the US and its partners (New York Times, 8/2/17), his government has opened Syria’s economy to international capital, arrested Palestinian resistance fighters, indicated that it’s open to the prospect of normalizing relations with Israel, and opted not to defend Syria against Israel’s frequent bombings and ever-expanding occupation of Syrian land. In that context, Washington has embraced Damascus, with Trump praising al-Sharaa personally, and finally lifting the brutal sanctions regime on Syria.

    As these developments have unfolded, US media have switched from treating bloodbaths in Syria as nefarious to treating them as benign. A benign bloodbath is one to which corporate media are largely indifferent. They may not openly cheer such killings, but the atrocities get minimal attention, and don’t elicit high-volume denunciations. There are few if any calls for perpetrators to be brought to justice or ousted from government.

    Those unaware of the shifts in Syria and US policy toward it might expect the horrors of Syria’s recent massacres to generate a cavalcade of media denunciation. In March, the new Syrian government’s security forces and groups allied to it reportedly killed 1,700 civilians, most of them from the Alawite minority (France 24, 5/1/25), following attacks that Assad loyalists carried out on security and military sites.

    Amnesty International (4/3/25) reported:

    Our evidence indicates that government-affiliated militias deliberately targeted civilians from the Alawite minority in gruesome . . . attacks—shooting individuals at close range in cold blood. For two days, authorities failed to intervene to stop the killings.

    Amnesty called the killings “reprisals,” a reference to the sectarian view that the Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shia Islam, deserve to be collectively punished for the Assad government’s crimes. The group observed that families of Alawite “victims were forced by the authorities to bury their loved one[s] in mass burial sites without religious rites.”

    The Druze, a religious minority with Islamic roots that accounts for approximately 3–4% of Syria’s population, have also been massacred. At the end of April, “auxiliary forces to the Syrian ministries of defense and interior” killed 42 Druze in an ambush on the Damascus/Al-Suwaidaa highway, and another ten civilians from Druze community “were executed by forces affiliated with the Syrian ministries of defense and interior” (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 5/2/25). Some of the victims’ bodies were incinerated (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 5/1/25).

    ‘Lack of control’

    NYT: Syria Is Trying to Get Up With a Boot on Its Neck

    A New York Times op-ed (4/2/25) treated the killing of “hundreds of Alawite civilians” as a sign of ” the government’s lack of control over its own forces.”

    Yet commentary on the grisly mass murders of people from these minority groups has been decidedly muted. The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and New York Times together have published just one op-ed that focused on the killings. The lone piece (Washington Post, 3/10/25) pointed out that Syrian government forces have evidently “embark[ed] on the sort of sectarian slaughter of civilians that many had feared when rebel forces gained power three months ago.” Author Jim Geraghty, however, stopped short of issuing the call for US military intervention that characterizes media responses to nefarious bloodbaths.

    Other op-eds treated the al-Sharaa government’s violence as little more than a footnote. A Journal editorial (5/9/25) offering a rundown of recent developments in Syria waited until the last line of the sixth paragraph to mention that “government-aligned forces have slaughtered Alawites and attacked Druze,” as if doing so were a minor detail. A Times essay (4/2/25) took nearly 800 words before referencing the massacres:

    And in March, when insurgents loyal to the Assad regime clashed with security groups affiliated with the new government and bands of fighters—including some nominally under the control of the government, according to rights groups—responded by killing hundreds of Alawite civilians as well as suspected insurgents, it displayed the government’s lack of control over its own forces and ignited fears that the country was descending into sectarian violence.

    Painting massacres of hundreds of civilians from minority groups as a “respon[se]” is far from the full-throated denunciations deployed for nefarious bloodbaths: “killing hundreds of Alawite civilians” evidently does not show that the government is “depraved,” but rather demonstrates its “lack of control over its own forces.”

    ‘Recent surge in sectarian violence’

    NYT: Trump Meets Syria’s Leader After Vowing to Lift Sanctions on Ravaged Nation

    A New York Times news report (5/14/25) on a meeting between the US and Syrian presidents referred vaguely  to “a recent surge in sectarian violence.”

    For the New York Times (5/14/25), the massacres of Alawites and Druze weren’t important enough to warrant mentioning in their rundown of Trump’s meeting with al-Sharaa. The paper referred instead to “the unstable situation” in the country and “a recent surge in sectarian violence.” That vague language provided no sense of the severity of the violence, or of the al-Sharaa government’s share in the responsibility for it, highly relevant information in an article about the Washington/Damascus embrace.

    The phrase “recent surge in sectarian violence” is particularly obfuscatory, as it wrongly suggests that it’s impossible to assign responsibility for that violence, even though it’s well-established that the government and its allies have done most of the killing (Amnesty International, 4/3/25; Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 5/2/25). The wording also inaccurately suggests that this phenomenon is new, an implication debunked by the Carnegie Endowment (5/14/25):

    In 2015, fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, a predecessor of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham [HTS], which is led by Syria’s president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, killed at least 20 Druze villagers in Qalb Lozeh in Idlib governorate. Others were coerced into converting to Sunni Islam, while Druze shrines were desecrated and graves defaced.

    Similarly, in August 2013, Jabhat al-Nusra was part of a coalition of armed groups that attacked predominantly Alawite villages, killing 190 civilians, including 18 children and 14 elderly men (BBC, 10/11/13). That track record might have been the basis for expressions of moral outrage against the al-Sharaa government’s “butchery,” but, fortunately for HTS and its partners, their massacres are benign.

    The relative indifference with which the corporate media has treated sectarian killings carried out by HTS and allies, both before and since they came to power, could also have something to do with the US’s role in helping foment sectarianism in Syria in the run up to the war in the country (Truthout, 10/9/15).

    A New York Times (5/16/25) report on Saudi Arabia and Qatar paying off Syria’s World Bank debt called that move “the latest victory for Syria’s new government as it attempts to stabilize the nation after a long civil war and decades of dictatorship.” Reporter Euan Ward went on to say that “there are still significant challenges ahead for the fractured nation, which has been rocked by repeated waves of sectarian violence in recent months.” At no point did Ward note that the government he said was trying to “stabilize” the nation has been carrying out that “sectarian violence.”

    Nor did the Times‘ May 14 or May 16 articles mention, as the Conversation (5/12/25) did, that civil society groups have called for the al-Sharaa government “to issue protective religious rulings for minority communities”—the sort of step a government would take if it were seeking to “stabilize the nation.” “Their appeals have gone unanswered,” the Conversation noted.

    The difference in the tenor of coverage of killings by the Assad government and that of the al-Sharaa government’s killings demonstrates the cynicism of corporate media’s humanitarian rhetoric whenever a state in America’s crosshairs is accused of serious crimes. Such preening is not merely hypocritical. It has nothing to do with protecting any population, and everything to do with how the US ruling class generates consent for its blood-drenched empire.


    FEATURED IMAGE: Amnesty International’s depiction (4/3/25) of Syrians protesting sectarian killings (photo: Delil Souleiman/AFP).

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    NYT: Justice Department Investigates California Over Trans Athlete Policies

    The New York Times (5/28/25) gave the last word to a Trump official who framed trans participation in high school sports as “violating women’s civil rights.”

    California public schools are the latest target of Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which is ramping up an investigation into high school sports after a transgender girl qualified for three track and field events at the upcoming state championships.

    The DoJ is alleging that the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) allowing transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports could violate Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex.

    The New York Times (5/28/25) covered this latest right-wing attack on trans youth in a fashion all too common for the paper (FAIR.org, 5/11/23): devoid of any perspectives from trans individuals.

    The article, by Soumya Karlamangla, quoted four government officials who are against the participation of trans girls in girls sports. After quoting Trump demanding that “local authorities” bar the trans athlete’s participation, the paper turned to Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, who said in a statement, “It is perverse to allow males to compete against girls, invade their private spaces, and take their trophies.” The Times left this claim unchallenged, despite its inflammatory and misgendering language.

    It quoted Gov. Gavin Newsom, speaking on his podcast (3/6/25) to far-right influencer Charlie Kirk, calling trans athletes’ participation in female sports “deeply unfair.” And it quoted Bill Essayli, US attorney for the Central District of California, asserting in a statement that “discrimination on the basis of sex is illegal and immoral”—by which he means that including trans female athletes discriminates against other women, and seeks to deny that discrimination against trans athletes is sex discrimination.

    The Times made no effort to evaluate Essayli’s claim—for instance, by noting that courts have interpreted Title IX preventing discrimination “on the basis of sex” to also protect trans students.

    Against these four anti–trans rights sources, the piece cited only one statement from a coalition of LGBTQ advocates, which pointed out that sports organizations were following “inclusive, evidence-based policies that ensure fairness for all athletes, regardless of their gender identity.” The coalition argued: “Undermining that now for political gain is a transparent attempt to scapegoat a child and distract from real national challenges Americans are facing.”

    Physical and mental health benefits

    Defector: It’s A Great Time To Be A Pathetic Loser

    “I’m still a child, you’re an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person,” said AB Hernandez, the 16-year-old transgender athlete, referring to the people who “spent hours heckling and harassing Hernandez as she competed” (Defector, 5/28/25).

    Including the voices of trans athletes and their families, or of more rights advocates, might have introduced readers to some of the many arguments and evidence that exist in support of allowing trans athletes to compete in alignment with their identities.

    Gender nonconforming people are already at heightened risk for suicide, according to a 2020 study. Eighty-six percent of trans youth have considered killing themselves. School belonging, emotional neglect by family, and internalized self-stigma made statistically significant contributions to recent suicidality in this population. Furthermore, a study in the journal Nature (9/26/24) found that state-level anti-transgender laws increased suicide attempts by transgender and nonbinary youth.

    Meanwhile, playing school sports confers physical and mental health benefits that should not be denied to trans children. The Human Rights Campaign’s analysis of the 2023 LGBTQ+ Youth survey, by HRC and the University of Connecticut, found that

    high school-aged transgender and non-binary student athletes reported higher grades, lower levels of depression, and were less likely to feel unsafe at school than those who did not play sports.

    Not biological men 

    Ohio Capital Journal: GOP passes bill aiming to root out ‘suspected’ transgender female athletes with genital inspection

    Ohio Capital Journal (6/3/22) noted that a proposed state ban on trans athletes was accompanied by intrusive verification requirements: “If someone is suspected to be transgender, she must go through evaluations of her external and internal genitalia, testosterone levels and genetic makeup.”

    The idea that cisgender boys will “pretend” to be trans in order to participate in girls’ sports is preposterous. Not to mention, natural variations, both physical and otherwise, are common in all sports—especially in schools where children are growing rapidly at different paces (HRC). It’s a combination of factors—not just one—that determine athleticism.

    In 2024, the Times (4/23/24) reported on a study by the International Olympic Committee that found that while trans women displayed an advantage in handgrip strength over their cisgender counterparts, they are actually weaker in other areas, like jumping ability, cardiovascular fitness and lung function. The main point of the study was that, when it comes to athletics, trans women are not biological men

    Bans on transgender athletes participating in girls’ sports also put cisgender girls at risk. For example, in 2022, House Republicans in Ohio passed a bill banning trans girls from girls’ sports. It includes genital inspection for any girl who is “accused” of being trans (Ohio Capital Journal, 6/3/22). Cisgender athletes are frequently accused of being trans by transphobes claiming to “protect” women (FAIR.org, 8/21/09; Extra!, 10/12).

    During the 2024 summer Olympics, Algerian boxing champion Imane Khelif, who is a cisgender woman, was accused of being male. Now World Boxing has announced all athletes must undergo mandatory genetic testing to determine their sex (CNN, 5/30/25).

    The Times’ framing, which allowed adult politicians and attorneys to smear already vulnerable trans children as predatory, “perverse” and invasive, without any perspectives from actual transgender people, let alone any proper legal arguments in their favor, fell short of even “both-sidesing” the issue.

    As journalist and activist Erin Reed said recently on CounterSpin (5/23/25):

    “Both sides” coverage and “the truth is in the middle” coverage and “giving both sides a chance to make their point”—that would be an improvement over what we have right now…. This is not even “both sides” reporting. It’s not even “the truth is in the middle” reporting. These papers have taken a position on this, and it’s a position that’s not supported by the science.


    FEATURED IMAGE: AB Hernandez, the 16-year-old Californian at the center of a debate about trans youth participation in sports (Capital & Main, 5/15/25).

    ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com or via Bluesky: @NYTimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

     


    This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Olivia Riggio.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  •  

    Janine Jackson interviewed independent journalist Bryce Covert about Medicaid work requirements for the May 23, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

     

    Nation: Trump Is Banking on Work Requirements to Cut Spending on Medicaid and Food Stamps

    The Nation (2/28/20)

    Janine Jackson: Welcome to USA 2025, where the only immigrants deserving welcome are white South Africans, germ theory is just some folks’ opinion, and attaching work requirements to Medicaid and SNAP benefits will make recipients stop being lazy and get a job.

    Everything old is not new again, but many things that are old, perverse and discredited are getting dusted off and reintroduced with a vengeance. Our guest has reported the repeatedly offered rationales behind tying work requirements to social benefits, and the real-world impacts of those efforts, for many years now.

    Bryce Covert is an independent journalist and a contributing writer at The Nation. She joins us now by phone from Brooklyn. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Bryce Covert.

    Bryce Covert: Thank you so much for having me back on.

    JJ: Most right-wing, top-down campaigns rely on some element of myth, but this is pretty much all myth: that there’s a problem: Medicaid and also SNAP benefits discourage recipients from seeking work, that this response will increase employment, that it will save the state and federal government money, and that it won’t harm those most in need. It’s layer upon layer of falsehood, that you have spent years breaking down. Where do you even start?

    BC: That’s a great place to start, pointing out those claims essentially are all false, and I think it’s important to know, the reason we know that those things are false is because we have years of experience in this country with work requirements in various programs, and they have produced the same results over and over again.

    Urban Institute: New Evidence Confirms Arkansas’s Medicaid Work Requirement Did Not Boost Employment

    Urban Institute (4/23/25)

    So this started, essentially, with welfare, which is now known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. In the 1990s, with cash assistance to families, there was a work requirement imposed on recipients in that program that still stands today. And just wave after wave of research has found these requirements did not help increase employment on a long-term basis.

    Most people were not actually working after they were subjected to the work requirement, and instead it increased poverty. It reduced the recipients of these benefits. So it essentially didn’t help them get to work, but it did take away the money that they were relying on.

    That pattern plays out over and over again, and we have some newer evidence in Medicaid because, up until the first Trump administration, states could not impose a work requirement in Medicaid. The Trump administration allowed waivers to do so. Only one state actually did it. But Arkansas, the state that did impose this work requirement, kicked over 18,000 people off the program with no discernible impact on employment.

    JJ: And it has to do with a misunderstanding about who Medicaid recipients are, and their relationship to the workplace, period, right?

    BC: Right. Most Medicaid recipients are either working, or have some good reasons for why they’re not working. Either they can’t find full-time work, or they have conflicts, like they’re taking care of family members.

    People are disabled, many of them have an official disability and they’re on the actual disability program, but many more are disabled and can’t get on that program. It is a very difficult program to enroll in. The burdens to enrollment are super, super high. And others say it’s because they are in school, or they’re trying to find work, or they’re retired.

    So among those who aren’t working, there’s not a lot who are in any good position to go out and start working. And that’s true of a lot of recipients of other public benefits as well. So when you talk about imposing a work requirement on people in Medicaid, what you’re doing is adding administrative burden, which is to say extra steps they have to take to keep getting their benefits, that aren’t going to actually change the situation they’re facing when it comes to their employment.

    Think Progress: Mississippi is rejecting nearly all of the poor people who apply for welfare

    Think Progress (4/13/17)

    JJ: When you wrote about Mississippi, I know, with TANF, you were saying you had to prove you had a job, or were searching for one, before you could get help with childcare. And if people would just take a second and think, how do you search for a job or hold a job without childcare? So it’s not even logical. It’s more a kind of moral, strange misunderstanding of why people are outside of the workforce.

    BC: I think this applies to other programs, too. It’s hard to get to work if you don’t have health insurance like Medicaid to get yourself healthy and in a good working position. If you’re not able to get food stamps and buy food for yourself, it’s going to be hard to be out there looking for a job.

    These are basic necessities, and I think that’s another really important point to make here, is that Republicans have tried to paint lots of different programs as “welfare,” because that word is very stigmatizing. But what we’re talking about with Medicaid is healthcare. We are talking about feeling as if we need to force people to work—although really what we’re doing is forcing them to document on some pieces of paper that they’re working, which is an important distinction—in order to get healthcare, in order to take care of their bodies and be healthy.

    Same with food stamps. We’re saying “you must work in order to eat.” These are basic, basic necessities that people need simply to survive.

    JJ: And then we hear about the “dignity” of work. You need to work because there’s dignity there, and yet somehow a person whose grandfather owned the steel mill doesn’t need that dignity. Wealthy people who don’t work somehow are outside of this moral conversation.

    BC: Yeah, and we’re talking about imposing work requirements on SNAP and Medicaid, which is what Republicans say they want to do, in the service of tax cuts for the wealthy. Essentially, they are literally paying for tax cuts for the wealthy, to return more money to the rich, by cutting programs for the poor. And those rich people, many of them do not work, or these tax breaks help them to avoid work—the inheritance tax, for example. So that moral obligation to work does not apply.

    NYT: Trump Leadership: If You Want Welfare and Can Work, You Must

    New York Times (5/14/25)

    JJ: The New York Times column recently, from four Trump officials—I don’t remember the headline, but it was something like, “If You Can Work, You Must.” They didn’t marshal any evidence. They didn’t have data, just vibes. Those are some racist, racist vibes, aren’t they?

    BC: Yes. That is an important point, that all of this cannot be separated out from racism.

    I mean, the conversation over welfare and TANF in the 1990s, that was all race. It was about white Americans feeling like Black Americans were getting the dole, and were too lazy to work and had to be forced to work. The numbers at the time did not bear that out. More white Americans were getting cash assistance than Black ones.

    But it’s a really deep-seated belief among Americans, and I think when you see, as in that op-ed, for example, or other places where Republicans are trying to call these other programs “welfare,” it’s barely even just a dog whistle. It is pretty blatant that they are trying to paint other programs as things that help Black people who are too lazy to work.

    It’s all caught up in that idea, even though, again, the numbers do not bear this out. White people are more likely to be on these programs. We see equal employment rates among both populations. This is not actually a problem to solve for, but it is one I think a lot of Americans, unfortunately, really believe.

    Nation: The Racist, Insulting Resurgence of Work Requirements

    The Nation (6/8/23)

    JJ: I’m going to ask you about media in another second. I just wanted to pull up another point about the racism, which is that it’s not just the mythologizing and the “welfare queen,” that those of us who are old enough will remember. But you wrote about how states with larger Black populations have stricter rules, and how when states were asked for exemptions on pushing these work requirements, they exempted majority white counties. So it’s not just the racism in the rationale, the racism in how it plays out is there too?

    BC: Absolutely. I mean, these policies hit Black people more heavily. They are more stringently applied in Southern states that have higher Black populations, that are more hostile to their Black populations. And like you said, in the first Trump administration, when states were seeking exemptions, it was more majority white populations who got them. This is just really a fundamental racist myth we have in this country that’s proven very hard to shake, that Black people are lazy and rely on the government to get by and must be forced to work, when just nothing about the actual numbers and data bears that out.

    JJ: I sometimes feel like reporters, even if they’re well-intentioned and trying to make it personal, they can kind of make it a thought experiment for folks who are better off. If you were struggling, wouldn’t you take the time to fill out a form? It’s just paperwork. Couldn’t you go across town to the office and fill out that form? And it just represents a total disconnect, experiential disconnect between anyone who has ever had to deal with this and those who have no idea about it at all and just kind of parachute in and say, Oh wow, filling out a form. What’s the big deal?

    Bryce Covert

    Bryce Covert: “This is not about, in fact, helping people to work. This is, instead, about kicking people off the program.” 

    BC: Yeah, I think most well-off Americans have no idea how hard it is to apply for these programs, to stay on these programs, the paperwork that’s involved, the time that’s involved. And also when we’ve seen work requirements in Medicaid, for example, they are set up in a very complex way. Arkansas’s website was only available during the working day, and then it would shut down, and you couldn’t log your work requirement hours at night. I think that belies the fact that this is not about, in fact, helping people to work. This is, instead, about kicking people off the program.

    You can see that in the fact that the reason Republicans are talking about work requirements right now is because they need to find spending savings to pay for the tax cuts. If this were not about kicking people off and spending less on benefits, then this wouldn’t be part of this current conversation about their “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” So these are huge administrative burdens, and it’s also a big burden for something that is a deep necessity. I think the mental impact, the emotional impact of being made to jump through these huge hoops for something as basic as food, it’s really extreme.

    For example, I recently had to go to the DMV to get my Real ID. I had to go to the office in person. I had to wait for hours. I had to bring all the right paperwork. It was a huge burden, but this was for something that would just make it a little easier to travel on an airplane.

    Think about going through the same process, having to show up somewhere in person, waiting for hours, making sure you have all the right documentation, and if you don’t, then you don’t get the thing that you’re seeking, but what we’re talking about is whether or not you get healthcare. What we’re talking about is whether you get food stamps. I think it’s an experience that’s hard for people who haven’t gone through it to grasp.

    NYT: Millions Would Lose Health Coverage Under G.O.P. Bill. But Not as Many as Democrats Say.

    New York Times (5/13/25)

    JJ: To bring it back to today, May 21, some coverage that I’m reading straight up says some 8.6 million people are going to find themselves uninsured. Other stories matter-of-factly describe work requirements, and some Republicans’ anger that they’re not going to kick in sooner, as about “offsetting” the tax cuts for the wealthy, as though we’re just kind of recalibrating, and this is going to balance things in a natural way.

    I guess I would say I’m not getting the energy that there are 14 million children who rely on both Medicaid and SNAP, and there’s children who could lose healthcare and food at the same time, and that includes 20% of all children under the age of five. From news media, I’m getting Republicans versus Democrats; I’m not so much getting children versus hunger.

    BC: Yeah, I think, unfortunately, these kinds of political debates tend to be covered like they are just political back and forth. Democrats think this, Republicans think that. It is legitimately harder to explain to people what this will mean in real life. I have reported on the impact of work requirements. For example, I went to Arkansas when they were in effect. It’s hard to report on. The people who are impacted are vulnerable. They have chaotic lives. They may not even know that they are subject to it.

    Unfortunately, I think it’s likely that if this passes and these cuts are implemented, we will see more stories about what happens, because it will be a little easier to say concretely, “This kid right here doesn’t get food or healthcare anymore.” But it would be nice to have that conveyed ahead of time, so the public understood what was happening before it went into effect.

    JJ: We’ve been speaking with independent reporter Bryce Covert. You can find her work online at BryceCovert.com. Bryce Covert, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    BC: Yeah, thank you for having me.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  •  

    Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).

     

    Tom Morello

    Tom Morello at Occupy Wall Street (CC photo: David Shankbone)

    This week on CounterSpin: Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and…Oprah? They’re among the entertainers in Trump’s ALLCAPS sights for, it would seem, endorsing Kamala Harris in the election? And/or maybe saying something unflattering about him or his  actions—which, in his brain, and that of the minions who’ve chosen to share that brain, constitutes an illegal political contribution to his opponents, wherever they may lurk.

    At a moment when politicians who swore actual oaths are throwing over even the pretense of democracy, or public service—or basic human decency—many of us are looking to artists to be truth-tellers and spirit lifters; to convey, maybe, not so much information as energy: the fearless, collective, forward-looking joy that can sustain a beleaguered people in a threatening time.

    There’s a deep history of protest music and music as protest, and our guest is very intentionally a part of it. Tom Morello is a guitarist; part of Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, Prophets of Rage and The Nightwatchman, among many other projects. His music has always been intertwined with his activism and advocacy for social, racial, economic justice; so we talk about the work of artists in Trumpian times with Tom Morello, this week on CounterSpin.

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the embassy shootings, a lawmaker’s arrest and commencement protests.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.