CBP will spend up to $50 million on what it refers to as “Less Lethal Specialty Munitions,” a euphemism for weapons intended to merely hurt or disable a target rather than killing them. The agency is looking for a vendor who can supply vast quantities of 123 different types of munitions across 10 different categories, the contracting document says.

“The sheer quantity and the myriad different weapons is the most remarkable thing to me,” Rohini Haar, an emergency physician and researcher of less lethal ordnance told The Intercept. “When there’s so many different kinds, it makes you question, tactically, what’s the goal there?”

Federal agents’ indiscriminate use of “less-lethal” chemical weapons against the nonviolent demonstrators became a hallmark of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Contract documents show the Department of Homeland Security will continue to stockpile a massive arsenal of tear gases and projectile weapons. (Neither CBP nor its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, immediately responded to requests for comment.)

Haar questioned whether the Department of Homeland Security will be able to suitably train federal agents to use such a wide variety of weapons.

“Each of them has a different sort of technical spec or specifications,” she explained. “Some of them are handheld grenades that you have to know to throw, but not hit people’s heads. Some of them are fired from a weapon, like a launcher, and so you have to be standing farther away than you would be with a grenade.”

Two Tear Gases

The shopping list includes a litany of different ways to hit people and objects with two common types of tear gas: chlorobenzalmalononitrile, or CS, a chemical weapon previously used by the U.S. in Vietnam but now banned for military use, and oleoresin capsicum, or OC, derived from chili peppers.

CBP agents already regularly use CS and OC-based weapons in the field, including against protesters. The procurement document shows that armed federal officers will continue to wield the threat of chemical agents against the public despite ample documentation of misuse.

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Some of CBP’s desired weapons are designed to spread these chemical weapons indiscriminately. Included on the wish list are quart containers of liquid CS and OC meant to be spread through thermal “foggers,” dispersal devices meant to create mists with microscopic droplets of liquid. Defense Technology, a longtime chemical weapons vendor for CBP and U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, says its Golden Eagle Pepper Fogger Generator can output 100,000 cubic feet of tear gas in 26 seconds.

Both chemicals are potent chemicals that can cause health effects far beyond debilitating pain.

“Greater exposure to chemical agents,” a 2023 study by the University of Minnesota School of Public Health found, “was significantly associated with higher odds of an adverse reproductive health outcomes.”

The outcomes included “uterine cramping, early menstrual bleeding, breast tenderness and delayed menstrual bleeding.”

The procurement list includes smoke grenades in four different colors and 12 different varieties of tear-gas grenades.

The weapons will be ordered in enormous volumes. CBP projects purchasing over 242,000 munitions from the “Hand Delivered Pyrotechnic Canisters” category and over 100,000 rounds of “impact munitions” fired from grenade launcher-style tubes.

The latter category includes foam-tipped “sponge cartridge” ammunition designed to either release a tear gas-style chemical upon hitting someone or merely harm them through sheer force of impact.

Maimed, Deafened, Blinded

Fired at close enough range, so-called less lethal rounds can easily kill or maim their target.

Anti-ICE demonstrator Kaden Rummler lost sight in his left eye after he was shot in the face by a federal officer in January. After the Los Angeles Police Department fired one such round directly into the face of another protester last summer, he was injured so seriously that he required surgery and had his jaw wired shut for six weeks.

“Distraction devices,” which emit loud sounds, bright lights, or other effects to stun targets, were also on CBP’s wish list, with plans to purchase 13,000 of them. The procurement document required the weapons be capable of emitting a sound of 175 decibels, louder than a gunshot or jet engine. The National Hearing Conservation Association warns of sound of 140 decibels can case permanent damage and “death of hearing tissue” begins at 180 decibels.

“In addition to injuries caused directly by the primary blast wave, such as ear-drum rupture or lung injury, secondary and tertiary injuries can also occur as a result of these explosive devices,” says a 2023 publication by Physicians for Human Rights that was co-authored by Haar.

CBP’s inclusion of rubber-ball grenades and scattershot projectiles alarmed Scott Reynhout, a researcher who also co-authored the PHR paper. When such grenades are thrown or launched at people, they release a burst of small rubber fragments akin to shrapnel in every direction and can be configured to simultaneously release tear gas.

“The procurement of the latter weapons is worrying as these have not seen widespread use yet by CBP/ICE in protests,” said Reynhout, referring to the scattershot projectiles, which he said were akin to “rubber buckshot.”

Such weapons were used by Chilean security forces against protesters six years ago, he said, resulting in more than 400 cases of partial or full-blindness, and are also employed extensively by Iranian police and paramilitaries in their crackdowns on demonstrations.

Weapons designed to pierce building materials were also included in the wish list.

CBP plans to purchase over 12,000 “ferret rounds,” projectiles filled with powdered or liquified chemicals that punch through barriers and spread tear gas on the other side.

Haar said, “If it can go through glass, particle board, and walls, it can go through a body.”

The post DHS Launches Massive “Less Lethal” Chemical Weapons Buying Spree appeared first on The Intercept.

The officials told The Intercept that the military hastily mounted a search-and-rescue operation to reach the survivors before Iranian forces did.

The downing of the U.S. plane undermined an assertion of strength President Donald Trump made in a nationally televised speech earlier this week.

“They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100 percent annihilated,” Trump said Wednesday. “We are unstoppable as a military force.”

A month ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iranian leaders were “looking up and seeing only U.S. and Israeli air power every minute of every day until we decide it’s over.” He continued: “Iran will be able to do nothing about it. B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones, fighters controlling the skies, picking targets, death and destruction from the sky all day long.” 

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon responded to requests for comment on how Iran could down an advanced U.S. aircraft when the country supposedly no longer possesses anti-aircraft weaponry.

The loss of the F-15 is the first known instance of an American combat aircraft shot down in Iran since the war began in late February. It comes after Trump repeatedly threatened critical infrastructure in Iran and the U.S. struck the B1 bridge outside of Tehran, which killed eight people and wounded 95, according to Iranian news media.

The U.S. officials told The Intercept that the aircraft had a two-person crew and that one crew member was rescued and is receiving medical treatment for injuries. The fate of the other remains unknown. 

Last week, at least 15 U.S. troops were wounded in an Iranian attack on a Saudi air base that hosts American troops.

The U.S. military has previously provided misleading and stale casualty statistics, in what a defense official who spoke with The Intercept called a “casualty cover-up.”

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At least 15 U.S. troops in the Middle East have died since the beginning of the Iran war, including six personnel who were killed in a drone strike on Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, and a soldier who died due to an “enemy attack on March 1, 2026, at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia.” More than 520 U.S. personnel have also been injured, according to an Intercept analysis.

On Friday, Iranian state media published pictures and videos that they claimed show parts of the downed plane and one of the ejection seats.

Update: April 3, 2026, 12:45 p.m. ET
The article has been updated with additional information about the surviving crew member who was located.

The post Iran Shoots Down F-15 Fighter Jet After Trump Bragged They Had No Capability appeared first on The Intercept.

The alleged crime? Unclear. There’s no sound at first, only the silent spectacle of a person in a penis suit turning toward a cop with a stance that says, “Who, me?” A handmade sign comes into view in the person’s right hand. It reads “No Dick Tator.”

The scene in the video unfolded last fall, on a busy road just off a strip mall in South Alabama. The protester was Renea Gamble, an ASL interpreter who bought the penis suit at a nearby Spirit Halloween store.

“Featuring armholes, a sheer face panel, and an internal fan that keeps things erect,” a description on its website reads, “this costume is a guaranteed hit.”

Gamble was just shy of her 62nd birthday when she joined the October 18 No Kings rally in Fairhope, a small city on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. Organized by the local Indivisible chapter, which launched in 2025, the rally attracted some 1,000 people in deep-red Baldwin County, a mostly white, largely rural stretch of the state and one of President Donald Trump’s most stalwart bases of support.

The turnout exceeded organizers’ expectations. It also flew in the face of neighbors and critics who might dismiss protesters as paid agitators. “When you show your face to people that probably see you around town and know you live here, it combats the narrative of, like, [George] Soros busing us in,” said Kayleigh Rae, who founded Indivisible Baldwin County.

Inspired by Portland’s anti-ICE “Frog Brigade” — which turned animal costumes into emblems of resistance — the protest included a couple of unicorns and a blow-up chicken. But the penis was new.

“Everybody was cracking up,” Rae recalled. “They just thought it was hilarious.”

“A Freakin’ Weiner”

Fairhope Police Cpl. Andrew Babb was less amused.

“I’m serious as a heart attack,” he tells Gamble when the audio begins to play on the 14-minute body camera video. “I’m not gonna sit here and argue with you.”

He demands to know how she could possibly justify such an obscene display: “I would like to hear how you would explain to my children what you’re supposed to be.”

Talking to a colleague over his two-way radio after the encounter, Babb described what happened. Gamble was dressed “like a freakin’ weiner,” he says on the tape, so he ordered her to remove the costume. She refused, invoking her First Amendment rights.

“I said, ‘That’s not freedom of speech,’” Babb continues. “‘This is a family town and being dressed like that is not going to be tolerated.’”

When she started to leave, “I said, ‘No, ma’am,’” Babb says on the tape. “‘Come here, I need to talk to you.’ She pulled away from me, so I grabbed her and put her on the ground.”

The body camera footage tells a different story.

“Am I being detained?” Gamble repeatedly asks Babb, who ignores the question and continues to scold her. “If I’m not being detained, I’m gonna go ahead and leave.”

When she turns to walk away, Babb steps forward and grabs her costume from behind, throwing her on her back. Angry protesters shout at Babb as he forces her to turn over. Two more cops help him pin Gamble on the grass and handcuff her.

“By the time I got there, the cops were stuffing an inflatable penis in the back of their car,” Rae said.

It was, on one hand, hilarious — a slapstick comedy bit brought to life. In the body camera footage, Babb tries and fails to fit Gamble into his own backseat, then hands her off to another officer, who escorts her to a different vehicle. Police wrestle with the oversized costume, ultimately failing to fit the unwieldy polyester penis into the car.

It was also disturbing. Gamble screams in pain in the video as the cops try to push her into the backseat, the handcuffs digging into her wrists. Babb asks where the zipper is and, as he peels off the penis suit, asks Gamble for her name.

She replies, “Aunt Tifa.”

Doubling Down

Gamble was one of only a small handful of people arrested at the nationwide No Kings protests last fall. She was briefly jailed and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, then released on a $500 bond.

Videos of her arrest went viral, taking off on TikTok and airing on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” A progressive Fairhope-based political cartoonist held a caption contest for his rendering of the arrest. In December, a Mobile-based talk radio station held a listener poll to choose its annual Alabamian of the Year, with “Inflatable Fairhope Protest Penis” receiving the most votes.

In Fairhope and around the country, many people were outraged at the cops’ manhandling of a grandmother in her 60s. But it also seemed obvious that the case would go away once cooler heads prevailed.

Instead, the city of Fairhope doubled down. Rather than dropping the case, the city attorney slapped Gamble with additional charges earlier this year: disturbing the peace and giving a false name to law enforcement. Her trial, first set to take place months ago, has been delayed multiple times. It is now set for April 15.

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At a time when Trump and his allies have escalated attacks on dissent — prosecuting protesters as terrorists and punishing free speech — Gamble’s misdemeanor charges in small-town Alabama seem relatively minor. A conviction would most likely to result in a fine and a suspended sentence, according to her lawyer, David Gespass, a veteran civil rights attorney who has spent decades representing people abused by police — and who called the whole thing “absurd.”

Nonetheless, Gespass did not expect the prosecution to get this far. “One would have thought at some point somebody would have decided to dismiss the case,” he said.

He was especially struck by the knee-jerk response by city leadership, which endorsed Gamble’s arrest before the facts were clear.

“This type of behavior or display is not acceptable and will not be tolerated in Fairhope,” Mayor Sherry Sullivan told reporters. “Protests should remain peaceful and free of profanity and obscene displays.”

Fairhope City Council President Jack Burrell said the costume violated “community standards.”

To Gamble, who has turned down media requests while her prosecution is pending, the case is about much more than her individual rights.

“What Renea has been saying all along is that it’s not so much about her,” said Gespass. “It’s the Constitution and the First Amendment that are on trial.”

“Mayberry on the Bay”

Gamble’s prosecution has moved forward as state and local governments are pushing to clamp down on free expression and expand censorship all over the country. Battles over speech have been especially heated in schools and public libraries across the South.

Just this week in Tennessee, a contentious library board meeting culminated in the firing of the library director over her alleged refusal to move scores of children’s books with LGBTQ+ subject matter to the adult section.

It was a similar fight, over the Fairhope Public Library, that set the stage for tensions that erupted after Gamble’s arrest. Over the past few years, the Alabama Public Library Service, which disperses federal funds, has remade its board and rewritten the rules around material considered offensive or obscene. In a controversy that made national news, the state agency stripped funding from Fairhope’s library over its refusal to move books flagged by right-wing activists.

The efforts were spearheaded by a “Moms for Liberty” activist who now heads a group called Fairhope Faith Collective — and who decried the No Kings protest where Gamble was arrested as a failure by local politicians.

“If they were doing their job by upholding conservative values in our city these people wouldn’t be attracted to Fairhope,” she complained on Facebook.

In a separate post, she applauded Gamble’s arrest: “It looks like the ‘Penis Perp’ may be connected to ANTIFA,” she wrote, adding that Gamble’s conduct was “typical ANTIFA behavior.”

Beyond social media, however, locals do not seem to share such rigid views. Although the city overwhelmingly voted for Trump in the last election, residents of Fairhope have vocally opposed the defunding of their library. Many see it as a betrayal of the city’s cherished identity as a haven for literature and the arts.

Fairhope was founded as a utopian experiment in the late 1800s: a “single tax” settlement modeled on a belief that land ownership should serve the greater good. The image of a place founded by independent thinkers has imbued Fairhope with an enduring sense of civic pride.

Its natural beauty and small-town charm — nicknamed “Mayberry on the Bay,” after the town in “The Andy Griffith Show” — has also made Fairhope a popular destination for retirees from northern cities. Today, the fast-growing city is predominantly white and more affluent than its neighbors, while its origin story remains a badge of honor — “a colony built by and for artists, writers and other ne’er do-wells,” as JD Crewe, the progressive political cartoonist, put it last year.

Rae, the Indivisible Baldwin County organizer, said that, in addition to other issues like aggressive immigration enforcement in the area, the library controversy has drawn people to their cause. At a Fairhope city council meeting earlier this year, activists stood outside holding signs that read “Ban bigots, not books.”

Meanwhile, the claim that the Fairhope Police Department is the arbiter of family values has been met with a wave of scorn and derision. Babb, a K-9 officer who regularly represents the police force at community events, brought a flood of criticism to the department’s social media accounts after Gamble’s arrest.

“I would NOT trust this clown around elderly people anymore,” one commenter wrote on an old Instagram post showing Babb at a “Coffee With a Cop” event held at a local senior center. “What if they happen to somehow offend him?”

Long-Term Gamble

In an email to The Intercept, Sullivan, the mayor, declined to say more about Gamble’s prosecution. “I cannot comment on pending court cases,” she wrote.

The city attorney, Fairhope Police Department, and city council president did not respond to requests for comment.

In his statements to the press last year, Burrell, the city council president, said he wanted to be sure that people’s constitutional rights were respected.

He added, “And I hope the police have enough evidence that they stand behind the charges.”

More than five months later, however, the evidence against Gamble remains a mystery. There are no witness accounts or recordings that show her breaking the law.

According to the official statement by the Fairhope police after the arrest, Babb arrived at the scene due to complaints over “traffic hazards in the area,” not anything Gamble had done. In a more recent filing ostensibly meant to clarify the charges, Municipal Court Prosecutor Marcus McDowell, who is also the city attorney, wrote that “members of the public called police concerning traffic safety issues and a person dressed as a giant penis thereby created a substantial traffic and safety hazard.”

Gespass, the civil rights lawyer, maintains that the city is seeking to punish his client simply for exercising her right to free expression. In a motion to dismiss the charges filed last November, he argued that Babb arrested Gamble based “solely upon his own prejudices.”

“No provision of Fairhope’s disorderly conduct ordinance applies to what she was doing or wearing when she was arrested,” he wrote. “Both her costume and her actions were protected First Amendment speech.”

In a one-line order, Municipal Judge Haymes Snedeker denied the motion.

More recently, Gesspass sought to subpoena the records from the radio station poll that elected Gamble as “Alabamian of the Year.” Although Gamble has not been charged with obscenity, her arrest was based on the accusation that her costume was obscene. Under prevailing case law, the question of whether something is obscene turns in part on “contemporary community standards.” While city leaders claimed that Gamble violated community standards, the radio poll showed the opposite, Gespass wrote. Snedeker disagreed, granting McDowell’s motion to toss the subpoena.

As her trial approaches, activists are preparing to show up at the courthouse to show their support for Gamble, now a minor celebrity known as Fairhope’s “Penis Lady.” In the meantime, more Fairhope residents joined the most recent No Kings protests on March 28, growing the number of participants to just under 1,200 people. This time, police set up barricades between the street and the protest.

The protest maintained its sense of humor, advertising itself as the “Official Site of #PenisGate.” On the Indivisible chapter Facebook page, Rae added photos of homemade signs in advance of the rally. One made creative use of a cartoon banana next to the words, “Free Speech is A-PEEling” and “Fuck ICE.” Another, featuring a wide-eyed hot dog, read, “Don’t Be a Meanie, It’s Just a Weenie.”

Gamble has tried to keep a low profile since her arrest. At the No Kings protest last week, though, the “No Dick Tator” sign appeared in the hands of a masked woman who wore dark sunglasses and a bandana over her face.

It was Gamble, again wearing an inflatable costume.

She was dressed as an eggplant.

The post Grandmother Faces Trial in Alabama for Wearing Penis Costume to No Kings Protest appeared first on The Intercept.

After more than a month into the U.S.–Israel conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump addressed the nation directly for the first time on Wednesday about why he dragged the country into an unprovoked illegal war. During his wide-ranging speech, Trump made numerous false claims, including repeatedly emphasizing the nuclear threat Iran posed.

The reasons the Trump administration have given for partnering with Israel in this war have been varying and at times include religious undertones, especially from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth regularly infuses Christian right rhetoric in how he speaks about the war on Iran and the military more broadly.

During a recent religious service at the Pentagon, Hegseth prayed for God to give U.S. troops “wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

“Hegseth belongs to a denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. … [He] believes that he is carrying out a spiritual and actual war to vanquish a Christian nation’s enemies and protect and promote a Christian nation,” explains investigative journalist Sarah Posner, who covers the religious right, on The Intercept Briefing. “For Hegseth, biblical law is the only law he feels obligated to obey. The law of war, international law governing military conflicts, and human rights and civilian rights in war — he believes don’t apply to him.”

This week on the podcast, Posner speaks to host Jessica Washington about how various factions of the Christian right are shaping U.S. foreign and domestic policies. 

“I don’t think the mainstream media has ever taken the Christian right seriously enough. They have consistently viewed Trump’s relationship with white evangelicals as ranging from harmless to purely transactional. When in fact, I think that they’re very deeply ideologically embedded with one another,” she says.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript 

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.

Akela Lacy: And I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at the Intercept and co-host of the Intercept Briefing with Jessie.

JW: Before we jump into the news of the week, we have some news too. The Intercept Briefing has been nominated for a Webby Award for best news and politics podcast; help us win by voting for us, please.

AL: Yes, definitely vote for us if you like what we’ve been doing with this podcast. We’ve been working really hard to make it better for you, so show us some love.

JW: You’ll make our day. We will add a link to vote in our show notes.

Now onto the news. 

On Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump addressed the nation directly for the first time about why he dragged the U.S. into an unprovoked, illegal war with Iran. 

During his rambly 20ish-minute speech, he made numerous false claims, including repeatedly emphasizing the nuclear threat Iran posed. Trump’s own intelligence agency reported last year that “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”

Akela, what did you make of Donald Trump’s speech?

AL: He sounded less energetic than he typically does. The overall tone was, again, as you said, rambling, non-committal, and saying obviously extreme things with this very apathetic tone, which I found interesting. There’s a lot of rumors that he’s not in the best of health, so that was running through my mind through this.

But stepping back a little bit, thinking about what was the purpose of this speech, it was obviously an attempt to agenda set and shape the tone on this war — saying that we’re winning the war, that Iran is decimated, both of which we know are not true, but part of the administration’s attempt to control the narrative on this issue and also combat criticism that the president who has campaigned and thrust himself forward as anti-interventionist is doing exactly the opposite.

JW: The war clearly has been getting to Donald Trump. You can see it in his energy, as you just mentioned. We can also see gas prices are rising. Obviously, the Strait of Hormuz being closed as a result of this war is something that is having catastrophic financial impacts. We also have midterms going on.

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This is definitely having a broader political impact. Last week, I did a story on Melat Kiros, who is being endorsed by the Sunrise Movement as a part of their broader anti-war campaign. We’re definitely seeing candidates latch onto this idea that you can’t take AIPAC and defense money and be meaningfully anti-war.

Akela, how are you seeing it play out in the midterms and in politics more broadly?

AL: This is becoming a huge midterm issue. There’s a wave of insurgent candidates who have been vocal against the war on Iran and challenged both Democratic leadership and incumbents on their stances, including support from the leading pro-Israel lobbying group, which has backed Trump’s war on Iran, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

We’ve also reported on the effort by progressive groups to get Democrats to exploit what is a growing rift among Republicans, both on Iran and on Israel. We reported that the pro-Palestine group Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project has been urging Democrats on this issue. They’re also planning to spend $2 million on ads this cycle, hitting Republicans in toss-up districts on Israel, but using that as part of a broader strategy to hit Republicans on rifts on foreign policy, which is obviously the bulk of that being on criticism on Iran right now. 

This group, IMEU Policy Project, is one of the groups that met with the Democratic National Committee over concerns about how Gaza could hurt Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign. This was part of that big story from Axios on Democrats having this secret autopsy on Gaza. Progressive groups are really looking at how to take advantage of this issue in the midterms and take over what they see as a vacuum where Democrats are refusing to do that and leaving opportunities on the table.

That sort of investment on ads from this group is one of the biggest investments from pro-Palestine groups on ad spending this cycle in a cycle where we’ve seen unprecedented levels of outside spending in midterm races where these issues are playing a big role with voters.

JW: You’re right. We’re really seeing this play out in so many different races, this cycle. And Akela, I believe you had a story out this week that also touches on that.

AL: We reported exclusively that Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed State Assembly Member Claire Valdez on Thursday in New York’s 7th District Democratic Primary, which is of interest to our audience because it is really one of the biggest contests where progressives and socialists and various factions of the left in New York City are battling over who will determine the future of the left under [Mayor] Zohran Mamdani.

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So this race has pit progressive groups against each other. Outgoing Rep. Nydia Velázquez has endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who has backing from progressive groups like the New York Working Families Party, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and several city council members.

Then on the Sanders side, where he just jumped in the ring on the side of the socialist faction of the left, which is backing Valdez, including Mamdani, Democratic Socialists of America, and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain.

This race is not heavily focused on Iran, but Claire Valdez and Reynoso have both been very vocally opposed to the Iran war. We know Bernie Sanders has long been vocal against this war as well. It’s just another example of how this is becoming a new litmus test — again, for mostly progressives, but they’re also using it to put pressure on the broader party.

JW: It’s clear from your story and other reporting from The Intercept over the last month that the war on Iran is really creating political pressure for Republicans and Democrats.

Obviously, we’re mostly talking about a lot of those divisions on the left. But on the right, there are also these real religious pressures that we haven’t spoken about as much. But on the podcast today, I spoke to Sarah Posner, an investigative journalist who covers the religious right about how the Christian right’s apocalyptic views of end times are shaping U.S. foreign and domestic policies.

Sarah is a contributing writer at Talking Points Memo, host of the podcast Reign of Error, and author of the book “Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.”

This is our conversation. 

Sarah, welcome to the Intercept Briefing.

Sarah Posner: Thanks for having me.

JW: There’s so much I want to talk to you about, so let’s dive in. The U.S.–Israel war on Iran has been going on for more than a month now, and its end appears illusive.

Last week, during a religious service at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared a prayer a chaplain gave to the team who raided Venezuela and kidnapped the former President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Let’s hear a clip.

Pete Hegseth: Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence. Surround them as a shield. Protect the innocent and blameless in their midst. Make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned not empty-handed. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.

JW: So Hegseth regularly infuses Christian rhetoric in how he speaks about the war on Iran and the military more broadly. And here, he prays for overwhelming violence and no mercy.

Can you talk about the religious messaging that Hegseth has invoked throughout this war and in other military missions the Trump administration has taken?

SP: Hegseth belongs to a denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. It is a denomination that adheres to the tenets of a Christian movement called “Christian Reconstructionism.” They believe that the Bible — and in particular, what they consider to be biblical law — governs every aspect of life: your personal life, your life at work, your life as a public figure, your life in civilian life, your life in military life, all of it. It’s a very aggressive Christian supremacist ideology in which Hegseth believes that he is carrying out a spiritual and actual war to vanquish a Christian nation’s enemies and protect and promote a Christian nation.

So for Hegseth, biblical law is the only law he feels obligated to obey. The law of war, international law governing military conflicts, and human rights and civilian rights in war — he believes don’t apply to him.

He expects — I think, through his public statements and these monthly prayer gatherings that he has at the Pentagon auditorium — to have the military follow not just Christianity, but his particular brand of Christianity.

JW: What you just said is really interesting to me. Obviously, muscular Christianity, war-mongering Christianity isn’t new; we can go back to the Crusades. But is there something new, though, in what Hegseth and his ilk are talking about?

SP: It’s not new in terms of the religious right. This idea of Christians taking dominion, not only of America, but the world, has been a driving force of the Christian right’s view of foreign policy and their role in politics domestically. But I think what’s new about Hegseth is how unabashed he is about declaring this in public spaces and enforcing it, or attempting to enforce it in the military.

Another big difference is that we are more accustomed to hearing the popularized Christian Zionist message of “We need to go to war with Iran because they’re an enemy of Israel, and it’s our biblical obligation to defend Israel, and potentially, this is one piece of a series of events that will trigger the end times and the return of Jesus.”

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Hegseth comes from a slightly different religious tradition where they don’t adhere to that rapture, tribulation, armageddon narrative. Instead, they believe that they are on a divine mission to establish God’s kingdom on Earth, and then Jesus will come back.

So for him, it’s a much more muscular, aggressive, imperialist kind of messaging. So when you hear him talk about the military action in Venezuela or potentially Greenland and now in Iran, it’s much more focused on that, as opposed to something that centers Israel and centers the armageddon narrative as the reasons why we might be doing this.

JW: I want to dive deeper into that side of things, the kind of Christian Zionist side. You’ve written about John Hagee, a televangelist and founder of Christians United for Israel, who thanked Trump for entering the war while he was standing behind a sign that read “God’s Coming … Operation Epic Fury.”

Who is Hagee, and how does he view the war, and how widely held is that view among the Christian right?

SP: So I think Hagee’s view is more widely held than Hegseth’s view. So Hagee is an 85-year-old megachurch pastor and televangelist from San Antonio, Texas. He’s extremely influential in the evangelical world, and he has been extremely influential in Republican politics.

In 2006, he founded the organization Christians United for Israel, which is the political side of his religious arguments about why Christians should “support Israel.” For many years, he’s argued that Christians have a biblical obligation to support Israel, and by that he means support an Israeli right-wing government, support settlers, and occupation, support the war on Gaza, et cetera.

All of this is very tied up in his view of a Bible prophecy about the sequence of events that will happen prior to Jesus’s return. Now, he would argue that he’s not trying to hasten that return, that all of that will happen on God’s timing, but he’s been arguing that the United States should go to war with Iran for at least 20 years.

The political side of the argument is Iran is acquiring a nuclear weapon. He has argued that whether it was true or not. Then, on the religious side, he argues that a war with Iran will trigger a series of events that will lead to the second coming of Jesus. So he has played both sides of this very successfully.

So he makes the religious plea from his pulpit, and sometimes the political plea from his pulpit too. But then through CUFI — through Christians United for Israel — he makes these political arguments as to why it’s the U.S. obligation to defend Israel from aggression from Iran, or go to war with Israel to preempt aggression from Iran.

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But he has built this organization in 20 years to encompass many, many evangelicals who are predominantly Republican voters across the country. He had the ear of the Bush White House, and he had the ear of the first Trump White House. He delivered the benediction when they had a ceremony, when Trump moved the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

He has boasted of his strong connection to Trump, and that Trump understands the importance of centrality of Israel, not only to American foreign policy, but to this religious narrative in which Hagee argues that when Jesus comes back, he will rule the world for 1,000 years from a throne on the Temple Mount.

JW: I came across Hagee for the first time covering Daystar, which I’m sure you’re very familiar with. For those who don’t know, it’s essentially an evangelical Christian broadcasting network that hosts a bunch of different televangelists. They’ve got various scandals over the years that we won’t get into, but the important thing to know about them is they’re very much a part of the kind of constant drumbeat of pro-Israel, of this is a sign of the end times, and very much pushing U.S. foreign policy in a direction that is pro-Israel and fueling war in the Middle East. I guess, at least that’s what they’re pushing.

But my question is, how influential are these people, really? How much is this kind of prophesizing around the end times actually pushing U.S. foreign policy?

SP: Evangelicals and particularly charismatic evangelicals like Hagee, people who believe in these prophetic statements, believe that they can receive direct prophecies from God. People who believe that in our midst are modern-day prophets and apostles who are receiving revelations from God that they need to then carry out in their personal or public life. This is a very significant part of the Republican base, and in particular, a very significant part of the Trump base.

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In contrast to other Trump supporters and other religious Trump supporters, they’re far more devoted to Trump. They are probably the most loyal to Trump, in part because they believe that he has been very loyal to them, and because they believe that he’s anointed by God to save America and the world.

Those two things are actually very tied together because of the way that both his presidencies have been very influencer, celebrity-driven. Being close to Trump for a burgeoning charismatic influencer is very important, because if you get a little boost from Trump, then more people will watch your YouTube, and more people will follow you on X, or whatever your social media platform is.

Those things are very tied together. It’s not just a one-way street. But Trump is very intermingled with that world. His top religious adviser and director of the White House Faith Office, Paula White, she comes from that world of televangelism and prosperity, gospel preaching, and signs and wonders and miracles — that charismatic Christian world.

So in many ways they are the most influential religious block on Trump, and that obviously is causing a little bit of consternation in the MAGA base currently.

JW: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One question I have, and this is a little bit of an aside, but is there a penalty for these people to continuously predict the end times?

That seems to be a large part of what we’re talking about with wars in the Middle East. Does anyone pay a price for that?

SP: Almost never. Typically, in this world, once somebody is considered a prophet and they make a prophecy, sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong. I think that’s why somebody like Hagee is so careful to say this is all God’s timing. A lot of them are careful to say things like, is this a sign of the end times? Might we be experiencing the end times? They phrase it in the form of a question instead of saying, “This is the thing that is definitely going to trigger the end times.”

I think from a marketing standpoint, consistently raising it as a question, it generates a little bit more anticipation and excitement. They’ve been doing this for decades, not just with regard to what’s going on in Iran, but just other things that might be a sign of the end times. So nobody really pays a price because their followers are invested in this world where anticipating and getting ready for, and thinking about and wondering when the end times will happen is just very much embedded in their culture.

JW: I’ve been wondering about the end times and these predictions. My mom is a former Catholic, so I was raised a little bit Catholic, a little bit Unitarian. So there was not all this lore.  

SP: Yes, this is definitely very much an evangelical thing and not a Catholic thing, and that is part of the reason why there is friction in the MAGA base over not just the Iran war, but Trump’s closeness with Netanyahu.

JW: You can see this growing division on the right more broadly among some of the loudest MAGA voices, questioning Israel’s influence in American politics. That criticism has been increasing as the Trump administration pursues its illegal war on Iran.

Recently you wrote about Candace Owens and Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who resigned in opposition to the war.

Sarah, what do you make of the growing number of critical MAGA voices, and how they’re framing their opposition. What do you make of Owens in particular and her messaging? What’s the end game?

SP: Candace Owens is a raging antisemite. Every discussion of Owens needs to acknowledge that. So when she talks about being anti-Israel or being anti-Zionist, her criticisms are not just legitimate criticisms of the Israeli governments and the Israeli military’s actions. All of her criticisms are imbued with antisemitic conspiracy theories and rank antisemitism, Holocaust denial, that sort of thing. Just so that we’re on the table with that.

JW: Good disclaimer.

SP: But I think that she and some of her colleagues and allies in the far-right Catholic MAGA world are trying to do a sort of horseshoe thing, where they want leftists who are anti-Zionist or anti-Israel, to give them a pat on the back for being the right-wingers who have come out against Israel’s actions and Israel’s policies, and the American relationship with Israel. Owens and her allies are making this not just about Israel, but also about Catholics and evangelicals.

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For most mainstream Catholics, even conservative ones — ones who you might think of as being George W. Bush Republicans, they’re anti-same-sex marriage, anti-abortion, that sort of thing — but the Israel stuff just isn’t that important to them. She is trying to make it important to far-right Catholics. So she’s trying to make it important by starting a little intra-MAGA war between Catholics and evangelicals over this issue.

She and her allies have tried to make the argument that it’s a violation of their religious freedom to have to submit to or agree with these kinds of policies that Christian Zionists promote because that is not part of their Catholic faith. 

Now, it’s true that the whole end-times scenario that someone like John Hagee promotes is not part of the Catholic faith, but Owens always doubles down on the antisemitism on top of that. So it’s a complicated world.

The other thing about trying to determine how big is this MAGA rift, really. One thing that’s important to understand is that white evangelicals make up a huge part of a very important part of Trump’s base, and they’re very homogenous in this way. Eighty percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump, and a huge segment of them are Christian Zionists.

Catholics are more split 60-40, 50-50 on whether they’re Democrats or Republicans. And Catholic converts like Candace Owens, who are extremely far right, make up a very small segment of Catholics as a whole, even a small segment of Republican Catholics.

So I think when we’re trying to assess her influence, in a way we’re comparing apples and oranges because we’re trying to compare someone who has had a podcast and a huge following on Twitter for a few years with a movement that has spent decades making this end times theory, or this end times narrative, a core part of what their followers believe.

[Break]

JW: So now I want to talk about another kind of Christian right influencer: the Heritage Foundation, obviously the people behind Project 2025, but their new report is receiving less attention. It’s called “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation For The Next 250 Years.”

This report outlines a vision that “restores” what they call the “natural family,” defined as marriage between a man and a woman, and how that mission is fundamental to saving America’s future. Can you talk about how we’re seeing that vision show up in policymaking and in bills like the SAVE [Safeguard American Voter Eligibility] Act?

SP: In terms of policymaking, I think that they’re trying to [push] a lot of small bore things through, say, the Department of Health and Human Services or the FDA. They want to try to ban mifepristone so that abortion will be inaccessible to people. They want to do things to promote adoption by Christian families instead of non-Christian families or instead of same-sex couples.

Every anti-LGBTQ policy is a furtherance of this “natural family” policy in that Heritage Foundation document. They want to, through anti-abortion measures, enforce motherhood for women and also create an image of the “natural family marriage between a man and a woman.”

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It’s an explicit anti-LGBTQ agenda, and they’ve been extremely, explicitly anti-trans. From their perspective, trans people threaten their whole idea of a binary sex — men and women, and that’s it. It explains a lot about why they’re going so hard after trans people’s rights.

With regard to the SAVE Act, I’m not sure what they’re doing there. Because the SAVE Act would punish women who took their husband’s names because then you wouldn’t be able to register to vote unless you got your birth certificate, which then your birth name wouldn’t match your current name. So it creates a whole host of problems. That to me is an odd thing for them to be pushing right now, but it’s also in line with a segment of the religious right, including Pete Hegseth’s pastor that believes that women shouldn’t even vote. But I feel like they’re stepping all over themselves with what they’re proposing in the SAVE Act.

JW: Yeah, and I wanted to get into that. The report doesn’t explicitly mention transgender people. They just say gender ideology throughout their entire Save the Family report. But it’s essentially just ragging on transgender people, queer people. A lot of ragging on feminists, birth control.

There’s obviously discussion of how to have more families, more kids.  But it almost seems more focused on enemies than it does on actually promoting kids and families. Should we understand it as a document that actually is trying to push for more kids and families, or is this about mandating a specific type of Christian lifestyle?

SP: The latter. In order to do that, they have to marginalize other people. So in their view, if trans people exist, then there is no binary between men and women in which these gender roles are very clearly defined and delineated.

JW: To you, it’s much more about, OK, how do we make people live the lives that we want them to live? And how do we find enemies who we can terrorize to make that happen?

SP: Well, think about it this way, that what they are proposing runs counter to the way American culture has been for the last 50 or 60, 70 years and runs counter to — not Dobbs, obviously, that’s an exception — but it runs counter to things that have become more accepted, like marriage equality and I wouldn’t include trans rights in that category because it hasn’t been accepted. I think that is what is driving them to create enemies, in order to make this “traditional family” seem more appealing to people or seem under threat by something.

If the traditional family is the ideal — where there’s a man and a woman and kids, and the woman stays home and doesn’t go to work and all of that — then all of these other people, women who don’t get married, single moms, trans people, same-sex couples, they’re a threat to that. They see it as a threat. They would consider a threat to their religious freedom because they think that their religion demands these kinds of family relationships. And so it’s a very radical document. I think that there are people within the administration who take it very seriously.

JW: We haven’t discussed race yet, and I think that’s always the kind of underlying thing in the corner when you’re talking about Christian nationalism, specifically white Christian nationalism. In this document they only mention Black people so much as to say, not enough Black people are getting married, that’s a problem, and then leave that to the side. They don’t mention race generally, but how do you view race in this vision?

SP: Overall, the Trump regime has attempted to completely eviscerate civil rights for Black people. I mean completely. Dismantling the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, dismantling the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. So I think within the context of this pro-natalist argument, it’s a paternalistic view. “It would be better for Black people if they also adhere to this traditional family structure.” I feel the 1980s are hovering over us right here, and that was when a lot of this pro-family, pro-natalist stuff of the modern religious right was hatched.

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But I think that it is a clear broadside just against any kind of culture that they consider to be non-compliant with their idea of the traditional family whether that’s women who have chosen not to get married, moms who’ve chosen not to get married. When you see how they’ve tried to marginalize, say, trans people from public life, this gives you a lot of insight into how they view, let’s say, non-complying people with their view of what America should be.

JW: While we’re talking about the Save the Family and the religious right’s views on marriage and family and race, in that regard, I also wanted to ask you about their views on immigration and race. How do you perceive the Christian right when it comes to this issue?

SP: White evangelicals are among Trump’s staunchest supporters when it comes to immigration. When you look at the polling data about their views of his position on immigration, in general, and in particular, the ICE crackdowns in Minneapolis and other cities, white evangelicals are among his staunchest supporters. And this is very much tied into their view of what a Christian nation is, and their acceptance of the argument, their embrace of the argument that undocumented people are necessarily criminals because just the act of having come here “illegally” is a crime. That is very much tied into their perception that America was founded as a Christian nation. Somehow that was taken away from us by many things that happened over the course of the 20th century, including immigration, including the Civil Rights Act, including women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, all of that. So when they talk about restoring the Christian nation, what they’re really talking about is restoring a white Christian nation.

JW: I want to get into the deeper, the broader impact of these groups. Your podcast Reign of Error illustrates how the Christian right isn’t a fringe movement, but how its various figures, groups, and sects are in the halls of power shaping policies and remaking America from local offices to the White House. 

Can you talk about the infrastructure the Christian right has been able to build over the years to wield that level of influence and policymaking?

SP: I think a lot of people think of the religious right as being a lot of megachurch pastors at the pulpit telling people how to vote and that it’s just people getting instructions every November and going to the polls and hitting the lever for the Republican candidate.

It’s much thicker and deeper than that because they have built mechanisms for creating and enforcing this political ideology, not only in their churches, but through television shows, conferences, books, and with the advent of social media, of course, YouTube, X, TikTok, all of the social media that they have at their disposal, and so you have that element of it. You have political organizations that work with religious leaders to recruit religious people, and even pastors to run for office and to organize voters to go to the polls on Election Day.

You have organizations that were created to counter institutions that liberals and the left had built. So to counter the ACLU, they founded the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has litigated most of the cases, producing some of the Supreme Court’s worst precedents in recent years, including the Dobbs decision. ADF was behind challenging the ban on conversion therapy in Colorado that the Supreme Court ruled on recently. 

So you have all of these things together. You have the Heritage Foundation, which was created back in the 1970s to counter the Brookings Institution — which is not really like a leftist organization by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s how they perceived it. So you have these different layers of convincing people and keeping them engaged in the political project and the political process. 

Then you also have on the legal front, not just these legal organizations, but Christian law schools that are educating the next generation of Christian lawyers who will go out and litigate these cases, maybe become judges. So they have built an infrastructure, a multi-layered infrastructure that is intended to be intergenerational, that’s intended to last for decades. That’s not intended only to run from election cycle to election cycle.

They spent 50 years to overturn Roe vs. Wade. They didn’t give up. They chipped away for many decades. When you think about that, they worked at the state level to chip away at it. They worked the legal process to chip away at Roe at the state level. They chipped away at abortion rights. 

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At the same time, when I talk about the multi-layered, they had institutions and organizations that helped train judges to rule from these right-wing perspectives, that would advocate for judges that were nominated to the bench by George W. Bush or Donald Trump to become District Court judges, appellate judges, Supreme Court justices. That’s what I’m talking about when I say it’s a multi-layered infrastructure because you have all of these things working together. There’s never a sense of victory like, “Oh, we got that done, yay us, and now we’re gonna take a break.” No, they did not even stop for a minute after they overturned Roe vs. Wade. Now they’re on to trying to ban mifepristone.

It’s important for people to understand that they never see any victory as their final achievement. It’s just one piece in a long road that they’re very dedicated to trotting.

JW: Given this relentlessness that you’re describing and the level of influence that we’re talking about here, especially even within the Trump administration, do you think that mainstream media is taking the Christian rights seriously enough?

SP: I don’t think the mainstream media has ever taken the Christian right seriously enough. They have consistently viewed Trump’s relationship with white evangelicals as ranging from harmless to purely transactional. When in fact, I think that they’re very deeply ideologically embedded with one another.

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It’s partially a function of a little bit of nervousness about even touching religion, that they don’t want to be seen as being critical of somebody’s religious beliefs or religious practices. But I think it has taken a long time for the media to wake up to how extreme they are and how successful they’ve been at capturing, not just the Republican Party but Trump in particular.

JW: That was really informative and pretty alarming, but we’re going to leave it there. Thanks, Sarah, for joining me on the Intercept Briefing. 

SP: Thank you, Jessica.

JW: To keep up with how the Christian right is shaping policy in the U.S. today, follow Sarah’s work at Talking Points Memo and her podcast Reign of Error, which I highly, highly recommend.

Before we go, we’d love it if you helped The Intercept Briefing win its first Webby Award for best news and politics podcast. So please vote for us. We’ll add a link to vote in our show notes. Thanks so much! 

That does it for this episode. 

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join. 

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

Let us know what you think of this episode, or If you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.

The post Trump’s Holy War Abroad and at Home appeared first on The Intercept.

In a letter shared exclusively with The Intercept, Safora Yousufzai calls on President Donald Trump to release her son, 60-year-old Mohammad Rahim, citing his poor health and “advanced age” and arguing that “his prolonged detention has significantly affected both his physical and psychological well-being.”

Yousufzai points out that Afghanistan’s government released 64-year-old linguistics researcher Dennis Walter Coyle last month, after he spent over a year in captivity. His family had urged the Taliban to “look upon him with leniency” in a letter, which Afghanistan’s foreign ministry cited in their announcement of his release.

The Trump administration claimed credit for negotiating Coyle’s return — and proclaimed its commitment to “ending unjust detentions overseas.”

Now, Yousufzai is hoping to hold the administration to that promise.

“In light of recent humanitarian actions undertaken in comparable circumstances — such as the release and repatriation of detainee Dennis Coyle to his family, I respectfully express my hope that similar consideration may be extended in my son’s case,” wrote Yousufzai. “Such actions reflect not only legal discretion but also a broader commitment to human dignity and humanitarian values.” 

U.S. forces detained Rahim in Pakistan in 2007 and transferred him to the notorious military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 2008. The U.S. government accused the Afghan national of being an interpreter and courier for Osama Bin Laden in Al Qaeda, but he was never charged or tried for any crimes.

The Biden administration reportedly offered to release Rahim in exchange for a prisoner swap including Mahmood Habibi, a U.S. citizen who was reportedly arrested in Afghanistan in 2022, after the U.S. killed Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. That deal never went through, and the Taliban has reportedly continued to request Rahim’s release. The Taliban publicly denies holding Habibi, who is still in custody, saying that they are unaware of his whereabouts. 

The White House and State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

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The CIA tortured Rahim while he was in its custody, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s use of torture. Rahim was subjected to “extensive use of the CIA’s enhanced-interrogation techniques,” the 2014 Senate report reads. According to their records, he was subjected to facial slaps, diet manipulation, and eight sleep deprivation sessions. During one of the sessions, he was kept awake for six straight days. Not sleeping for even three days can have lasting and profound negative impacts on cognitive health.

While he was being intentionally deprived of sleep, he was “usually shackled in a standing position, wearing a diaper and a pair of shorts,” the report adds. While in custody in 2007, he was provided a diet that “was almost entirely limited to water and liquid Ensure meals.” 

Administration officials have not spoken publicly about whether they would consider releasing Rahim. However, according to the New York Times, a senior U.S. official said that Rahim would not be a part of future deals with the Taliban. 

“At a minimum,” his mother wrote to Trump, “universally recognized human rights principles and norms call for a careful reassessment of his situation, with due consideration given to his age, health, and length of detention.” 

In her letter, Yousufzai also pleaded with the Trump administration to think of Rahim’s daughter, who she said has “been deprived for years of the care, affection, and guidance of her father.” 

Yousufzai, who is elderly herself, wrote that she hopes the Trump administration will allow her to see her son at least one last time before her death.

“As I approach the later stages of my life, the opportunity to see my son again remains my most earnest and final hope,” she wrote. “I respectfully urge your administration to take a thoughtful and humane step toward resolving his case, consistent with the values of justice, mercy, and respect for human dignity.” 

The post Mother of the Last Afghan in Guantánamo Bay Begs Trump to Free Her Son appeared first on The Intercept.

Such a free and unrestrained press requires a cohort of committed legal advocates. Whether to counter the federal government’s repeated insistence on ignoring freedom of information laws, or the Trump administration’s overt hostility and retaliation against news organizations that confront and debunk its unconstitutional narratives, a robust network of attorneys is needed to protect the press’s constitutional function.

That’s why President Donald Trump’s unconstitutional executive order aiming to punish preeminent United States law firms over their pro bono clients represents an unacceptable attack on the legal profession and poses a threat to an independent press. And that is why 42 media organizations and press freedom advocates, led by The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief Thursday urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to affirm four District Court decisions. All four lower courts found the Trump administration’s executive order that imposed sanctions on law firms for representing President Donald Trump’s political opponents unconstitutional.

The amicus brief, authored by Andrew Sellars and Kendra Albert of Albert Sellars LLP, argues that the press plays an essential role as both a proxy for the public and a check on government power. This role requires an oppositional relationship with government interests. The president’s executive orders targeting lawyers with clients opposed to his agenda severely restricts press organizations’ access to legal counsel, particularly for outlets relying on pro bono or reduced-fee representation.

“An independent media requires First Amendment champions to guarantee citizens access to the information necessary to hold our government accountable,” said David Bralow, PFDF’s legal director. “This is why The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, legal advocates, and other partner organizations nationwide filed an amicus brief to prevent the administration’s unconstitutional efforts to intimidate lawyers fulfilling their professional oaths.”

The coalition includes news organizations, press associations, advocacy groups, media law firms, and individual attorneys with over five centuries of collective experience in First Amendment and press freedom issues.

“We are honored to represent this august group of news outlets, advocacy organizations and First Amendment attorneys at the D.C. Circuit. The public needs the press, and the press needs independent counsel, who cannot be subject to sanction because the president dislikes their clients,” said Kendra Albert, partner at Albert Sellars LLP.

“The Press Freedom Defense Fund exists for moments like this one. Alongside 42 coalition partners, we are drawing a clear line: a free press is not a privilege this or any administration may revoke,” said Annie Chabel, The Intercept’s CEO. “It is a constitutional right — and so is the independent counsel required to defend it.”

The post The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund Leads Cohort Fighting Trump’s Unconstitutional Media Attacks appeared first on The Intercept.

The race to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez in New York’s 7th Congressional District has put major progressive organizations and figures at odds. Hoping to capitalize on growing national frustration with conservative Democrats and lingering momentum from Mamdani’s win in November, national progressives and their counterparts in New York are fighting to succeed Velázquez with an ally in Congress.

They just haven’t agreed on who it should be. 

Sanders, the Vermont independent, is giving a boost to the socialist wing behind Valdez’s campaign, which includes Mamdani and the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the campaign shared with The Intercept.

“Claire Valdez is a union organizer who worked minimum-wage fast food jobs and understands firsthand how this economy fails working people,” Sanders said in a statement to The Intercept. “In my view, Congress needs more voices who come from America’s working class. Claire has the experience and vision we need to take on the oligarchy and fight for unions, Medicare for All, and affordable housing. I’m proud to endorse her campaign for Congress.”

Velázquez has endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Valdez’s main competitor. Reynoso also has backing from leading progressive officials and groups in New York City like Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and the New York Working Families Party. 

Already facing losses this cycle in races where competing progressive candidates did not consolidate their support, national progressives like Sanders are picking sides in the battle to define the future of the electoral left under Mamdani.

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Velázquez endorsed Reynoso shortly after Valdez launched her campaign in January standing alongside Mamdani and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain. Some local observers saw Velázquez’s move as a rebuke of the mayor and a harbinger of a fight between factions of New York City’s left, endangering a relationship Mamdani and Velázquez had built since she became the first member of Congress to back his mayoral campaign.

Velázquez left little room to speculate on that question in comments she made to the New York Times in January, when she said Mamdani had opened up conflict between groups in his coalition by involving himself in primaries; that she was unfamiliar with Valdez, who is originally from Texas; and that she was skeptical of newcomers to the city who think they know who should represent New Yorkers in office.

In a statement to The Intercept, Valdez named Sanders as a key inspiration for her political beliefs and career.

“Three things made me a democratic socialist: shitty jobs, the labor movement, and Bernie Sanders’ runs for president,” Valdez said. “His political revolution changed my life — and showed millions of Americans what’s possible when working people organize. I’m grateful for this endorsement and ready to join the fight in Congress against the oligarchs and for economic democracy.”

On Wednesday, the Valdez campaign announced that it had raised $750,000 from 11,200 donors in the filing period that just ended, though the Federal Election Commission has not yet processed and verified the figures. Reynoso had raised just over $317,500 by the end of 2025, before Valdez launched her campaign, according to available FEC data. His campaign has not yet announced its most recent fundraising figures and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Valdez’s endorsements include PAL PAC, the new pro-Palestine group opposing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; Justice Democrats; Leaders We Deserve PAC; Jewish Voice for Peace Action; attorney and political advocate Zephyr Teachout; Democratic New York state Sen. Jabari Brisport; and several members of the New York State Assembly.

Reynoso’s backers include Make the Road Action; New York Communities for Change; several powerful local unions including 32BJ SEIU and DC-37; Attorney General Letitia James; New York Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler and Pat Ryan; and several New York City Council members. 

The post Bernie Sanders Backs Claire Valdez in NYC House Race Dividing Left and Progressives appeared first on The Intercept.

Nearly two-thirds of Iranian Americans now oppose the war after opinions were near evenly divided at the start of the conflict, according to a Zogby Analytics survey.

The nearly 17 percentage point leap comes as the prospects that the Iranian regime will collapse seem to have dimmed, the conflict’s endgame becomes increasingly murky, and steady bombings have swelled the number of civilians killed.

Jamal Abdi, president of the nonprofit group that commissioned the poll, the National Iranian American Council, said the survey results show that the diaspora’s feelings on the war are more complicated — and more negative — than pundits have suggested.

“This is a war that is supposedly being fought in our name,” Abdi said. “There’s a lot of wish-casting and projection and voices from the diaspora claiming that there is this mandate from our community, and it’s not based on data or facts or reality. It’s based on a campaign for regime change no matter what the cost is. It’s dangerous for our community to be used like this.”

NIAC has long been one of the major voices in the diaspora expressing skepticism about war with Iran. In days leading up to the February 28 strikes that started the war, however, figures such as Reza Pahlavi, the son of the country’s former shah, were given prominent platforms to argue for regime change.

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NIAC’s March 24 to 27 poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, is the second that the group has commissioned from Zogby Analytics. An earlier survey was conducted from February 27 to March 5, a period that coincided with the final hours of U.S.–Iranian negotiations and the beginning of the conflict.

The survey results suggest that Iranian Americans are now more opposed to the war than Americans as a whole, after being more supportive at its start.

Iranian Americans are a sliver of the U.S. population, about 0.2 percent, making polling of the group more difficult than the general population. Abdi said that Zogby drew from a “significant list of contacts” in the Iranian American community to conduct the survey.

One prominent Iranian American, Ahmad Batebi — an exiled dissident who thanked President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the war began but has spoken out against targeting civilian infrastructure — questioned the poll results.

“My view is that the reported decline in support should be interpreted cautiously,” Batebi said in an email, “not only because opinion may indeed be shifting in real time, but because the more basic question is whether this polling instrument can credibly be treated as representative of the broader Iranian-American community in the first place.”

In the earlier survey, Iranian Americans showed nearly a 50-50 split in their position on going to war with Iran.

Iranian Americans now believe by a wide margin that President Donald Trump should end the conflict, according to the more recent numbers. 70 percent of respondents said that it was time to end the war. Only a quarter believed it should continue.

Trump is scheduled to give an address on the war Wednesday night, with officials giving mixed signals as to whether he will wrap up the conflict or expand it with a ground invasion.

The recent Zogby poll also captured an increasingly pessimistic view of the war’s likely outcome. Many Iranian Americans celebrated on social media when Khamanei’s death in an Israeli airstrike was confirmed on March 1.

Hard-liners have held onto power in Iran since then, however, leading to a dimming view of the future among the diaspora. Nearly 60 percent of Iranian Americans believe ordinary Iranians will be worse off a year from now and more than half believe the Islamic Republic will remain in power.

“There was probably some initial exuberance in that first week,” Abdi said, “and that has trailed off as we have seen civilian casualties and a shuffling of chairs in the regime but not any signal that the regime itself was going anywhere.”

The post Iranian Americans Have Turned Against the War, New Poll Finds appeared first on The Intercept.

U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, appears to be engaged in what a defense official called a “casualty cover-up,” offering The Intercept low-ball and outdated figures and failing to provide clarifications on military deaths and injuries.

At least 15 U.S. troops were wounded Friday in an Iranian attack on a Saudi air base that hosts American troops, according to two government officials who spoke with The Intercept. Hundreds of U.S. personnel have been killed or injured in the region since the U.S. launched a war on Iran just over a month ago.

President Donald Trump — who wore a blue suit, red tie, and a ball cap to the dignified transfer of the first Americans killed in the war — said casualties were inevitable. “When you have conflicts like this, you always have death,” he said afterward. “I met the parents and they were unbelievable people. They were unbelievable people, but they all had one thing in common. They said to me, one thing, every single one: Finish the job, sir. Please finish the job.”

On Tuesday, Trump teased that he would wind down the war with Iran in as little as two weeks despite not achieving many of his stated aims, such as “freedom for the people” of Iran, “tak[ing] the oil in Iran,” and forcing Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” At one point, the president even declared that the war would last “as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”

CENTCOM has sent outdated statements on casualty numbers, meanwhile, resulting in undercounts, including a statement sent Monday from spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins noting that “Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, approximately 303 U.S. service members have been wounded.” The comment was three days old and excluded at least 15 wounded in the Friday attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The command did not reply to repeated requests for updated figures.

CENTCOM also would not provide a count of troops who have died in the region since the start of the war. An Intercept analysis puts the number at no less than 15.

“This is, quite obviously, a subject that [War Secretary Pete] Hegseth and the White House want to keep under major wraps,” said the defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak frankly.

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In 2024, during the Biden administration, the Pentagon provided The Intercept with detailed chronologies of attacks on U.S. bases in the Middle East that listed the specific outpost that was attacked, the type of strike, and whether — or how many — casualties resulted, along with an aggregate count of attacks by country.

The Trump administration’s numbers, by comparison, lack detail and clarity. The current CENTCOM casualty figures do not appear to include more than 200 sailors treated for smoke inhalation or otherwise injured due to a fire that raged aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford before it limped off to Souda Bay, Greece, for repairs. CENTCOM did not reply to close to a dozen requests for clarification on the casualty count and related information sent this week.

“CENTCOM and the White House should be providing accurate and timely information on the costs and casualties involved in this war. After all, it is American taxpayers who are funding it and U.S. economic prosperity and economic wellbeing that is being undermined by it,” Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates for measured U.S. foreign policy, told The Intercept.

As the U.S. has relentlessly bombed Iran, that country has responded with attacks on U.S. bases across the Middle East using ballistic missiles and drones. CENTCOM refuses to even offer a simple count of U.S. bases that have been attacked during the war. “We have nothing for you,” a spokesperson told The Intercept. An analysis by The Intercept, however, finds that bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates have been targeted.  

On Tuesday, Hegseth said that Iran retained the ability to retaliate for U.S. strikes but that their attacks would be ineffectual. “Yes, they will still shoot some missiles,” he said, “but we will shoot them down.” On Wednesday morning, officials in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar all reported missile or drone attacks from Iran.

Iranian strikes have forced U.S. troops to retreat from their bases to hotels and office buildings across the region, according to the two government officials. The defense official was livid about the Pentagon’s failure to adequately harden the bases and ridiculed Hegseth’s Tuesday prayer at a Pentagon press conference. “May god watch over all of them, each day and each night. May his almighty and eternal arms of providence stretch over them and protect them,” said Hegseth.

“Why didn’t Hegseth protect them?” the defense official asked. “Anyone with a brain knew these attacks were coming.”

Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Retired Gen. Joseph Votel, a former head of Central Command, recalled that U.S. troops in the region have faced drone attacks for at least a decade. “At that time we identified a need to protect against this threat, and it has taken far too long for the DoD to respond and provide adequate protection for our deployed troops,” he told The Intercept, referencing drone attacks during the campaign against ISIS in the spring of 2016. “It was a known expectation that, if attacked, Iran would retaliate against our bases, installations, and forces, and I agree that we should have anticipated and been prepared for this inevitability.”

Kavanagh, who previously called attention to the vulnerability of U.S. outposts in the Middle East, echoed Votel. “It has been clear for years that the rapid proliferation of drones and cheap missiles would put U.S. bases and U.S. early detection radars in the region at risk, yet the Pentagon did little to protect them,” she said. “The failure to invest in hardened infrastructure was a choice. Congress should see this failure as evidence that simply giving the Pentagon more money is not a path to national security.”  

“We would be better off if bases across the region were closed for good,” she added.

In public statements, Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi called out the U.S. for using civilians in nearby Arab monarchies of the Gulf Cooperative Council states as human shields. “U.S. soldiers fled military bases in GCC to hide in hotels and offices,” he wrote on X last week. “Hotels in U.S. deny bookings to officers who may endanger customers. GCC hotels should do same.”

Votel also expressed concern about troops using hotels and offices, noting it “could turn normal civilian infrastructure into military targets for the regime.”

Last month, an Iranian drone strike on a hotel in Bahrain wounded two War Department employees, according to a State Department cable reviewed by the Washington Post. CENTCOM did not respond to a request to confirm to The Intercept that those injuries stem from a March 2 attack on the Crowne Plaza hotel, a luxury property in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, but one official indicated this was likely.

Votel said that a failure to provide troops with adequate protection may handcuff U.S. operations. “I think this really complicates command and control and could affect unit cohesion and effectiveness,” he told The Intercept, referring to the transfer of troops to hotels and office buildings. “That said, we may not have many options if we cannot protect the military bases where they would normally be bedded down.” 

At least 15 U.S. troops in the Middle East have died since the beginning of the Iran War, including six personnel who were killed in a drone strike on Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, and a soldier who died due to an “enemy attack on March 1, 2026, at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia.” More than 520 U.S. personnel have also been injured, including those who suffered smoke inhalation on the Ford.

Prior to the current war with Iran, U.S. bases in the Middle East were increasingly targeted by a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and close-range ballistic missiles after Israel’s war in Gaza began in October 2023, most of the attacks occurring in the year following the outset of the conflict. At least 175 troops were killed or wounded in those attacks, including three service members who died in a January 2024 strike on Tower 22, a facility in Jordan. Other attacks targeted al-Asad Air Base, the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, Camp Victory, Union III, Erbil Air Base, and Bashur Air Base in Iraq and Al-Tanf garrison, Deir ez-Zor Air Base, Mission Support Site Euphrates, Mission Support Site Green Village, Patrol Base Shaddadi, Rumalyn Landing Zone, Tell Baydar, and Tal Tamir in Syria.

The casualty statistics do not include contractors, most of them foreigners who suffered non-combat injuries. Official U.S. statistics show that there were almost 12,900 cases of injuries to contractors in the CENTCOM area of operations during 2024 alone. More than 3,700 were the most serious non-fatal injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, requiring more than seven days away from work. Eighteen contractors were also killed, all of them in Iraq. The numbers are likely significant undercounts, but if even the fractional number of known contractor injuries is added to the tally, the casualty count for Americans and those on U.S. bases may top 13,600.

The post “Casualty Cover-Up”: The Pentagon Is Hiding U.S. Losses Under Trump in the Middle East appeared first on The Intercept.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court marked International Trans Day of Visibility with yet another ruling that puts the lives of trans people at risk. The justices ruled that Colorado’s statewide ban on conversion therapy for young people likely violates a Christian counselor’s First Amendment rights. The decision threatens conversion therapy bans nationwide, which are currently on the books in nearly half of all U.S. states.

The 8-1 ruling has far-reaching, terrifying potential consequences. And not only for trans youth: It indicates that speech delivered by licensed health care practitioners in a professional capacity, no matter how harmful and debunked the claims, cannot be banned as illegal conduct, because it counts as protected speech.

Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the one dissenting judge, appeared to appreciate the grave stakes of this ruling.

“Before now, licensed medical professionals had to adhere to standards when treating patients: They could neither do nor say whatever they want,” Jackson wrote in a blistering dissent. “Largely due to such State regulation, Americans have been privileged to enjoy a long and successful tradition of high-quality medical care. Today, the Court turns its back on that tradition.”

The dangers of conversion therapy to trans and queer youth cannot be overstated. According to the Trevor Project, a nonprofit suicide-prevention organization for LGBTQ+ young people, “LGBTQ+ youth who experienced conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year.”

Conversion therapy, however, may not be the only potentially harmful intervention the ruling would apply to. As Jackson added in her dissent, the ruling “might make speech-only therapies and other medical treatments involving practitioner speech effectively unregulatable — not to be reached via licensing standards, medical-malpractice liability, or any other means of state control.”

It is a ruling, then, completely in line with our Trumpian moment of decimated medical care standards and eliminationist assaults on trans people. Indeed, it was done with support from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department.

As journalist and trans rights advocate Erin Reed wrote, the court’s logic in the ruling holds that “any medical treatment delivered through words rather than instruments could now carry First Amendment protection — a framework that could shield a doctor who encourages a patient to commit suicide, a dietician who tells an anorexic patient to eat less, or a therapist who deliberately steers a vulnerable client away from life-saving treatment.”

Reed noted that the decision risks extending constitutional protections to “speech-based professional conduct” in other fields, like a lawyer giving knowingly harmful legal advice.

Speech as Medicine

The crux of the majority’s opinion rests on the contested line between speech that is protected against government interference, and conduct, which can be regulated.

“Her speech does not become ‘conduct’ just because a government says so or because it may be described as a ‘treatment’ or ‘therapeutic modality,’” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch in the majority opinion, referring to the speech of Christian counselor Kaley Chiles, who sued the state of Colorado over the conversion therapy ban with representation from the right-wing legal giant the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Gorsuch’s opinion draws an extraordinary conclusion about the role of certain speech acts in professional health care settings.

The Colorado law did not ban Chiles from holding and expressing Christian views; the law, like regulations in over 20 other states, banned conversion talk therapy — that is, speech acts delivered with the specific aim to “change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”

It is precisely professional conduct that the law regulates.

As Jackson noted in her dissent, “The Constitution does not pose a barrier to reasonable regulation of harmful medical treatments just because substandard care comes via speech instead of a scalpel.”

Every major medical and mental health association has condemned the practice of conversion therapy.

Other Liberal Justices?

Given the danger posed by the court’s decision, it may seem surprising that the two other liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, sided with the far-right majority. Their decision, according to their concurring opinions, related to the fact that Colorado’s law was not written in sufficiently “viewpoint-neutral” language. 

“We need not here decide how to assess viewpoint-neutral laws regulating health providers’ expressions because, as the Court holds, Colorado’s is not one,” wrote Sotomayor.

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With this far-right supermajority Supreme Court, however, even cautiously worded conversion therapy bans may not survive the conservative justices. In the last year alone, the court has bucked precedents and ignored medical expertise, not to mention basic humanity, in previous anti-trans decisions like banning trans youth health care and ejecting trans people from the military.

The court’s Tuesday decision did not in itself strike down the Colorado law, but in siding with conversion therapy, the justices returned the case to the 10th Circuit, where the highest form of judicial scrutiny will be applied. The law will almost certainly be struck down.

If existing bans are invalidated, those seeking to stop a further proliferation of conversion therapy may now have to use “creative methods,” Reed wrote, like tort law and malpractice law.

This is the grim legal terrain forged by the Trump regime and bigoted groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, aided by too many negligent or complicit liberals. Medical malpractice and harmful speech acts are protected, whereas trans kids’ existence gets no protection at all.

The post Conversion Therapy Gets Speech Protections — But Trans Kids’ Existence Gets No Protection at All appeared first on The Intercept.

When Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr talks about broadcast licensees serving the “public interest,” he loves to emphasize “localism.” 

Localism is the idea that powerful entities (in this case, broadcasters) should serve the needs and interests of the communities they service. In the abstract, it’s hard to argue with, especially at a time when news deserts are spreading, small-town outlets are folding, and, thanks to the administration in which Carr serves, local public radio stations are reeling.

When you look at the fights Carr actually picks with broadcasters over the “public interest” requirement, however, a curious pattern emerges. They aren’t local stories at all, unless you consider Tehran and San Salvador local. They’re national and global stories that upset not residents of underserved heartland communities, but President Donald Trump, the man whose gilded face Carr wears as a lapel pin. 

Sure, when he’s playing for the home crowd, Carr will openly admit, and even brag about, helping Trump reshape the national media to his liking. That’s what he did at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, bragging about such “wins” as the Paramount–Skydance merger in Trump’s ongoing feud against media adversaries. Carr’s FCC approved that deal only after unconstitutionally extracting editorial concessions from CBS News and helping Trump launder a multimillion-dollar alleged bribe though the courts.

But in less partisan settings, from congressional testimony to mainstream media interviews, localism has become Carr’s go-to talking point whenever he’s pressed on his unconstitutional efforts to police news content or confronted with his past statements railing against the partisan suppression of news. He’s not censoring the airwaves, he claims; he’s just sticking up for the little guy. 

Yet Carr has never threatened a broadcast license because a newsroom ignored city council meetings or local crime, or offered a biased take on a school board’s budget decisions. It would, of course, violate the First Amendment for him to do that too — the FCC, as Carr once said, “does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’” But at least it would be consistent with his populist gimmick.

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In fact, his threats arise from coverage on national news networks, not their local affiliates, which actually hold the broadcast licenses he’s threatening to revoke. In other words, he’s threatening to punish local news stations for national content they don’t produce, and sometimes don’t even air, that angers Trump.

Let’s play back some of Carr’s greatest hits; see if you can spot the localism. 

• When Trump complained that news outlets were running “fake news” about Iranian missile strikes, Carr warned that broadcasters running “hoaxes and news distortions” would lose their licenses if they didn’t correct course.
• After MSNBC declined to carry a White House briefing on the deportation of Kilmar Ábrego Garcia, Carr accused Comcast of ignoring “obvious facts of public interest” and warned “news distortion doesn’t cut it.” MSNBC (now MSNOW) is not a local outlet — it’s a cable station that the FCC doesn’t even regulate. 
• Carr investigated KCBS, a San Francisco radio station, leading to rampant self-censorship in fear of retaliation. That might sound local, but the story that drew his ire was about a federal immigration enforcement operation. He didn’t care if the locals in the Bay Area wanted to know what immigration officers were up to — only that his boss does not want them to know. 
• Carr investigated CBS over the same interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris that Trump sued over, despite experts’ virtually unanimous agreement that the claims were frivolous. Then he helped Trump shake down Paramount for the aforementioned palm-grease by waiting until two days after Trump’s settlement check arrived to approve CBS parent Paramount’s merger with David Ellison’s Skydance. He touted that merger as proof of Trump “winning” his war on the media at CPAC. 
• When Trump sued the BBC over a documentary about January 6, Carr wrote to the heads of PBS and NPR demanding transcripts and video of any American broadcast of the program, claiming the British broadcast about events in Washington, D.C., contained “news distortion.”
• After late night host Jimmy Kimmel commented on the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Carr warned that if ABC and Disney did not “take action” against Kimmel, the FCC would act. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said, drawing comparisons to mafia movies.

Carr also likes to tell broadcasters what they should air, but he doesn’t implore them to report more or better local news. Instead, he launched the “Pledge America Campaign,” calling on broadcasters to meet their public interest obligations by airing “patriotic, pro-America content” celebrating “the historic accomplishments of this great nation from our founding through the Trump Administration today.”

And in an expressly anti-local “public interest” intervention, Carr enthusiastically backed Trump’s directive to give the Army-Navy football game an exclusive broadcast window. Carr said in a press release earlier this month that “such scheduling conflicts weaken the national focus on our Military Service Academies and detract from a morale-building event of vital interest to the Department of War.” Because, of course, the hallmark of community broadcasting is not letting fans watch their local teams because the Pentagon needs a morale boost for its illegal, unpopular wars.

As a prior version of Carr knew, the FCC cannot police journalism for ideological bias. Localism is a Trojan horse Carr uses to legitimize his attack on the Constitution. 

His only serious effort to impact local news undermines it instead by consolidating more local licenses under conglomerates like Nexstar and Sinclair — companies that are ideologically aligned with Trump on national issues but have long track records of ruining local coverage through cost cutting. Carr even bent ownership rules to approve a $6.2 billion Nexstar–Tegna merger, which a federal judge halted Friday because of harms to local news consumers.

Nexstar is aggressively cutting jobs at flagship stations like WGN in Chicago and KTLA in Los Angeles, even as it lobbies for permission to expand further. Sinclair has decimated local newsrooms across the country, replacing them with centralized national programming — the exact opposite of the localism Carr claims to champion.

The real Brendan Carr is the unrepentant censorship czar who shows up at CPAC and openly threatens broadcasters on X, not the slicker version who rails against coastal elites to change the subject when questioned about his unconstitutional antics. 

Carr is among the most shameless bootlickers (or Florsheim dress shoe-lickers) in an administration full of sycophants. The only localities whose interests he serves are the White House and Mar-a-Lago. He’s the last person who should be policing the “public interest,” locally or anywhere. 

The post Trump’s FCC Chief Says His Censorship Protects the Little Guy. It Really Serves One Powerful Man. appeared first on The Intercept.

“What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” U.S. President Donald Trump told the New York Times in a March 1 interview about his plans for war on Iran. Things have not gone as Trump hoped, to put it mildly. Trump’s search for the Iranian Delcy Rodríguez — a regime insider willing to comply with U.S. demands, as Rodríguez has since she ascended from Venezuela’s vice president to acting president following the January 3 U.S. attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro — hit a snag when the U.S. and Israel killed most of the would-be successors to Ayatollah Khamenei in the opening days of the war. During a March 3 meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump told reporters, “Most of the people we had in mind are dead.” (Trump omitted the crucial fact that the U.S. is to blame.)

As the war passes the four-week mark, it is abundantly clear Iran will not be the next Venezuela. Operation Absolute Resolve, the code name for the U.S. attack on Venezuela, was a spectacular success in tactical terms. The U.S. achieved its military aim of removing Maduro in just a few hours and suffered zero U.S. service member fatalities and only a handful of injuries, although the operation cost the lives of around 70 Venezuelans and 32 Cuban security forces. While this toll should not be minimized, it pales in comparison to the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran, which as of mid-March has led to at least 3,000 deaths in Iran, Lebanon, and beyond. In contrast to Trump’s “brilliant operation” in Caracas, the war on Iran has exploded. Well over a dozen countries are now involved, and the war threatens to bring the global economy to a halt due to the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a pivotal passage for oil, liquid natural gas, fertilizer, and other crucial commodities.

As the world’s eyes remain fixed on Iran, it is important to ask: What has the Venezuela model actually achieved in Venezuela? The short answer is a new form of colonialism in which Venezuela has lost its national sovereignty. Trump’s pledge to “run” Venezuela, made in the hours after the January 3 attack, has not come to pass. The attack instead led to regime change without a change of regime, in which the U.S. removed Maduro but left his regime almost entirely intact. Trump has boasted of this fact, telling the New York Times, “Everybody’s kept their job except two people,” i.e., Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, both of whom have spent the past three months awaiting trial in a Brooklyn jail. The officials who now run Venezuela come directly from Maduro’s administration: Rodríguez; her brother Jorge, who heads the National Assembly; and the minister of interior, Diosdado Cabello. In a possible sign of future changes to come, Rodríguez on March 18 replaced Venezuela’s longstanding minister of defense, Vladimir Padrino López, all but surely in coordination with the U.S.

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The flip side of this overall continuity is the Trump administration’s stunning and continuing sidelining of far-right opposition leader María Corina Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize and infamously gifted it to Trump in an unsuccessful attempt to curry his favor. Trump has supported Rodríguez because she offers that which he most wants: stability. A handover to Machado threatened to plunge Venezuela into chaos and civil war. Strictly speaking, this is not because Machado “lacks the respect within” Venezuela, as Trump claimed during his January 3 press conference. Polls indicate Machado remains the most popular politician within Venezuela. The problem, for Trump, is Machado’s longstanding opposition to any form of “collaboration” with the Maduro administration and Chavismo (the political movement associated with the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez) more broadly. This radical stance makes Machado a major threat to Venezuela’s military and state apparatus. Machado may be reevaluating her hardline position as she plans to return to Venezuela. In a March 12 press conference, Machado spoke of a “grand national agreement,” presumably a power-sharing accord, a possibility she had long rejected. Trump, for his part, has reportedly told Machado, who fled the country in 2025, not to return to Venezuela. This is purportedly out of concern for her safety but is more likely due to Trump’s (not unreasonable) fear that Machado’s presence in Venezuela would undermine the continuity Trump has sought to preserve.

For now, Venezuela remains in the hands of former Maduro officials, who have presided over a transformation of Venezuela’s domestic and foreign policy that is both stunning and limited. The details of this transformation, and the way it is happening, lay bare Venezuela’s profound lack of national sovereignty. While Trump is not “running” Venezuela in an operational sense, the U.S. is now effectively dictating the country’s policy. This is evident in many ways, starting with the fact that the Rodríguez administration must submit a monthly budget to the U.S., which has the discretion to approve or reject Venezuela’s requests. The Trump administration has also seized at least 80 million barrels of Venezuelan oil and controls the sale of this oil, with the proceeds held not in Caracas but in a U.S. Treasury account (prior to that, they were held in a U.S.-controlled account in Qatar). American Democratic Party leaders have repeatedly questioned this arrangement, which is not only blatantly colonial and opaque but also creates the clear potential for corruption and malfeasance.

Under direct pressure from the Trump administration, Venezuela’s National Assembly has implemented sweeping oil and mining reforms. In late January, the National Assembly passed a major reform of Venezuela’s hydrocarbons law regulating oil production. The reform institutes three fundamental changes: First, it dramatically lowers the taxes and royalties foreign oil companies pay to the Venezuelan state. Under the 2006 hydrocarbons law, the Venezuelan state took up to 65 percent of oil proceeds. The reform permits this to be reduced to 25 percent, lowers income taxes to 15 percent (from 30 percent), and caps royalties at 30 percent, with the executive given discretion to lower it even further. Second, the reform allows foreign oil companies to operate independently, instead of the previous mandate that foreign companies operate through joint projects with Venezuela’s national oil company, PDVSA. Third, the reform allows arbitration over disputes to occur in foreign courts, eliminating the earlier requirement that disputes be resolved within Venezuela. These changes give foreign oil companies dramatically greater material benefits and control over the country’s oil.

Foreign oil companies are already taking advantage. Shell and Chevron are reportedly close to signing major new deals for production in Venezuela. Chevron is the only U.S. oil major that remained in Venezuela throughout the Hugo Chávez and Maduro years, with Shell (like Exxon and others) having left the country in the wake of the 2006–2007 nationalization process under Chávez. Despite these deals, it will take significant time and resources — upward of $100 billion and a decade of work, according to experts — for Venezuela’s oil industry to approach its previous levels of production. These latest deals come in the wake of the second recent visit by a Trump Cabinet member to Venezuela. Energy Secretary Chris Wright toured Venezuela in mid-February, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum traveled there in early March, when he gushed about Washington’s desire to access Venezuela’s mineral resources. CIA Director John Ratcliffe and U.S. Southern Command General Francis Donovan have also recently traveled to Venezuela. During Burgum’s visit, Rodríguez promised to work at “Trump speed” to ramp up the U.S.’s access to Venezuela’s mineral resources. Rodríguez has been as good as her word, with the National Assembly swiftly moving to approve a new mining law that, like the hydrocarbons reform, will roll back decades-old nationalist legislation.

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The U.S. has also pushed Venezuela to sever its relations with its rivals China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba. A statement from Venezuela’s foreign ministry late last month about the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran shows the profound changes underway. The statement (which was later taken down) condemned Iran but failed to condemn or even name the U.S. or Israel. This is a major shift from the Chávez and Maduro years, when Venezuela stood with Iran and regularly condemned the U.S. and Israel. The change in Venezuela’s foreign policy is most clear on Cuba, which for more than a decade relied heavily on highly subsidized Venezuelan oil. After Maduro’s capture, Venezuela ceased all oil shipments to Cuba, directly contributing to the profound energy crisis it is now facing, marked by regular nationwide blackouts. The Trump administration has done everything it can to deepen this crisis by applying heavy pressure on Mexico and other countries to stop providing oil to Cuba. Trump’s open goal is regime change.

While Venezuela’s economic and foreign policy has shifted quickly and decisively, political change since Maduro’s capture has been much more slow going. There is still no timetable for elections, and the Trump administration is not pushing for a democratic transition any time soon. According to a New York Times report, Rubio and Rodríguez have discussed the possibility of holding elections in late 2027, and Rubio has made clear that there must be a new democratically elected government in Venezuela before Trump leaves office in 2029. Rodríguez has taken a few steps toward political liberalization. She has pledged to close the notorious El Helicoide prison, and on February 19 the National Assembly passed an amnesty law, which has been greeted as a positive development but criticized for limiting the time period and offenses covered by the law. According to a March 17 report by the Venezuelan human rights organization Foro Penal, as of February 24 the government had released over 400 political prisoners.

A key question is: How do ordinary Venezuelans feel about the changes happening in their country? One answer comes from the first in-person poll conducted in Venezuela following Maduro’s removal, with 1,000 respondents interviewed between January 24 and 30. The poll indicates Venezuelans largely support the January 3 operation and feel cautiously optimistic about the future but deeply unsatisfied with their economic situation and wary of the Rodríguez administration. Fifty-five percent of respondents approve of Maduro’s removal and 77 percent view him unfavorably. Rodríguez fares a tad better, with 73 percent viewing her unfavorably, while 37 percent approve and 41 percent disapprove of her performance as acting president. 

This suggests many Venezuelans are in a wait-and-see holding pattern with Rodríguez. Tellingly, 62 percent of respondents list cost of living as their priority versus just 7 percent prioritizing democracy. The poll also indicates Venezuelans are evenly split in their views of the U.S. government and Trump, with roughly half supportive and half opposed. Of the respondents, 72 percent reported they feel Venezuela is moving in a positive direction and 83 percent feel optimistic about the future.

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These findings are in line with recent public comments by Venezuelan scholars and journalists. In a February 3 online Atlantic Council forum, Guillermo Aveledo, a political science professor at Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas, said most Venezuelans were feeling cautiously optimistic but continue to fear government repression. Aveledo also spoke of how citizens and the government will be testing the waters in the coming weeks and months to see what is acceptable in terms of public speech and protest.

During a March 11 interview I conducted with him, Andrés Antillano, a member of the anti-imperialist leftist organization Corriente Comunes and professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, expressed a similar but more critical view. Antillano said, “I believe Trump is more popular in Venezuela than in the United States,” and added, “there’s a consensus that what happened [on January 3] is for the better of the country.” He noted, “Government actors are happy because they’ve preserved their power. The right is happy because Trump, their great hero, is ruling. And the people are happy because of their expectation … that their life conditions are going to improve.” Antillano feels this is mistaken: “Not only have we not seen an improvement but in material terms, in economic terms, the situation has gotten worse and worse.” 

Antillano views Venezuelans’ continuing immiseration — due to years of government mismanagement and punishing U.S. sanctions (which Trump eased on March 18, in a major policy shift allowing U.S. oil companies to deal directly with PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company) — as the reason for their acquiescence to Venezuela’s subordination to the U.S.

“People don’t care about the idea of sovereignty or nationhood when they’re dying of hunger,” he said.

Antillano remains deeply pessimistic about Venezuela’s future. “We are in a subordinate, colonial relationship. We’re a protectorate,” he said. He also said: “[Machado] wants to return to the country to defend the idea of the political transition. Thus, we could see the great irony of María Corina becoming the anti-imperialist figure and the Bolivarian government, with its anti-imperialist origins, becoming the great defender of Trump. It’s crazy, very strange. Everything that’s happening is very sad.”

He continued: “As a friend told me, Venezuela has gone from being a laboratory for emancipatory practices to being a laboratory for the new colonialism.”

But Antillano doesn’t believe all is lost, and said he believes “an important cycle of protest is coming.” He said Corriente Comunes “is actively driving the processes of struggle as the illusion of improvement — stemming from the colonial relationship with the United States — gradually fades away.” Antillano said that Corriente Comunes had recently “held a workers’ gathering, and we believe a very significant mobilization is about to take place in all the country’s major cities, a mobilization for wages, wage increases, and labor rights, which will be the largest in many years.”

The mobilization occurred March 12, the day after we spoke, and videos show it was large and contentious. Protesters broke through a line of police blocking the National Assembly and forced legislators to listen to their salary and pension demands. While Trump and Rodríguez are seeking economic liberalization without democratization, Venezuela’s workers and leftist activists have other ideas. Venezuelans will seek to write their own story, despite being mired in conditions not of their own making. Time will tell what vision of the country will prevail, and for the foreseeable future, all actors in Venezuela will have to reckon with the imperial behemoth to the north.

The post Trump Wanted to Replicate His Venezuela “Success” in Iran. What Has It Even Looked Like? appeared first on The Intercept.

The data belies a common talking point made by the White House during the massive immigration operation: that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were arresting thousands of “dangerous criminal illegal aliens.”

From December 2025 to mid-March 2026, ICE made 4,030 arrests in the state. Of them, a staggering 2,532 arrests, or 63 percent, were of people with no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, according to the data, which was previously unreported.

On February 4, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, “President Trump’s commonsense immigration enforcement policies are delivering the public safety results the American people demanded, with more than 4,000 dangerous criminal illegal aliens already arrested in Minnesota since Operation Metro began.”

ICE’s own data contradicts the White House’s claim that all 4,000 people arrested were “dangerous criminal” undocumented immigrants at a time when about two-thirds of them had no records. (The White House referred a request for comment to ICE, which did not immediately respond.)

“The data confirms what the American people have overwhelmingly known, which is that Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis was a complete failure,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School and a faculty fellow at the Deportation Data Project. “Instead of targeting the ‘worst of the worst,’ it was ordinary law-abiding people who were caught up in the immigration dragnet, resulting in the needless and cruel separation of families and inflicting untold suffering on American children.”

The findings are based on The Intercept’s analysis of federal government data provided by ICE in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Deportation Data Project. The new tranche of data, published on Monday, includes information on all ICE arrests made nationwide till March 10.

Skyrocketing Arrests

The proportion of ICE arrests in Minnesota of immigrants without a criminal record increased sharply during the winter operation, dubbed “Metro Surge” by the Trump administration.

Between Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 and the end of November 2025, 44 percent of all ICE arrests in the state were of people without criminal records. From December until February 12, the date that border czar Tom Homan said the operation was coming to an end, 64 percent of all ICE arrests in the state were of people without criminal records.

The period of the surge also represented a giant jump in the number of arrests themselves. Nearly 4,000 of the 5,998 ICE arrests in Minnesota since Trump took office occurred between December and February 12.

In January alone, there were 2,530 ICE arrests recorded in Minnesota, underscoring the impact of the operation. In comparison, there were 177 ICE arrests in the state in November, the last month before the surge began.

A vast majority — 97 percent — of ICE arrests in Minnesota between December 2025 and February 12 were “street arrests”; all of those were listed in the data as non-custodial arrests referring to detentions where the person is not taken from another agency’s custody.

In contrast, only 52 percent of all ICE arrests elsewhere in the country in the same period were non-custodial arrests.

After Renee Good Killing

The enforcement surge in Minnesota began in early December, then ramped up in January following the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. The Trump administration responded to the killing by doubling down and sending hundreds more federal agents to the state to intensify the immigration enforcement crackdown.

Now, The Intercept’s analysis of ICE arrests data shows that after Good was killed, the rate of ICE arrests in Minnesota more than doubled.

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There were 1,225 ICE arrests, or around 32 arrests per day, recorded in Minnesota from December 2025 until January 7, 2026, the day Good was killed. 

Since then up until February 12, when Homan said the operation in the state was coming to an end, the rate of ICE arrests shot up to 74 arrests per day, with a total of 2.672 arrests being recorded. 

The rate of ICE arrests stayed high despite the killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis on January 24.

Few Somalis Arrested

Around the time that the surge was announced, Trump administration officials repeatedly spoke of targeting Somalis in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The metropolitan area boasts the largest Somali community in the country, and most of its members are U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

The ramped-up enforcement in the state dovetailed with a campaign by far-right figures with ties to anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant views against Somalis in the state. 

YouTube videos made by a far-right influencer were reportedly responsible for the White House’s focus on the Twin Cities. The videos alleged widespread fraud by the Somali community, but many of the claims have since been debunked or shown to have been blown out of proportion. 

According to The Intercept’s analysis of ICE data, however, only 112 ICE arrests recorded in Minnesota from December until mid-March were of people listed as having Somali citizenship.

Update: March 31, 2026
This story has been updated to include a response from the White House and a comment from Elora Mukherjee, a faculty fellow with the Deportation Data Project.

The post Two-Thirds of People Arrested by ICE in Minnesota Surge Had No Criminal Records, New Data Reveals appeared first on The Intercept.

Over the weekend, the U.S. and Israel bombarded two universities in Iran, the Isfahan University of Technology and the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran.

These are not, of course, the first attacks on civilian infrastructure in President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s illegal war on Iran; hospitals, desalination facilities, power plants, and an elementary school have all been hit.

The U.S. and Israel claimed that the attacks on the universities were justified, because they said the schools were connected to Iran’s weapons programs.

In response, Iranian authorities said on Sunday that American university facilities in the region would be considered legitimate targets, should the U.S. not condemn the strikes on Iranian educational institutions.

In a statement, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned “all employees, professors and students of American universities in the region to stay at least a kilometer away.”

Iranian students and educators received no such warning. Iran’s university campuses have been closed since the U.S.–Israeli war began last month; the weekend strikes nonetheless severely damaged buildings and reportedly wounded at least four staff members.

Cynical Justification

Leaving aside the fact that nothing in Trump’s war of choice against Iran is justified, the U.S. and Israel’s purported grounds for targeting Iranian universities are hollow and cynical. It is true that both universities had ties to military research. Would American and Israeli leaders consider their own equivalent institutions fair game? Of course not.

By stated U.S. and Israeli rationale, however, were Iran able to launch airstrikes on American soil, direct ties to the U.S. and Israeli military-industrial complex would make valid targets of at least the University of California, Berkeley; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Johns Hopkins University, among dozens of other schools.

Numerous Israeli universities, including Technion and Tel Aviv University, have research institutes dedicated to military technologies. And the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has a military base on campus for training intelligence soldiers.

Asymmetric warfare offers powerful aggressors the privilege of hypocrisy. It has long been pointed out that Israel’s justifications for mass slaughtering civilians — that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure — would in turn justify strikes on civilian areas in Israel. The Israeli government, after all, has facilities and even military installations within and near major cities and towns, not to mention the integration of the military into vast swaths of civilian Israeli life.

This is true almost everywhere that commercial and military technologies become intractably integrated, but that integration is especially robust in Israel.

Indeed, in this grim conjuncture, the idea that any site related to military research and development is a justified target could be used to attack any industrial, educational, and technological hub — which is precisely what the U.S. and Israel are doing in Iran. The U.S. and Israel’s own justifications for the Iranian university strikes de facto legitimize strikes against an MIT or a Technion, but American and Israeli leadership know that Iran and its allies don’t have the firepower to flatten whole campuses.

This is not to say that Iran will not retaliate and attempt to extract a cost from its enemies; this has been the pattern since the U.S. and Israel launched their illegal offensive in late February.

Universities including New York University, Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, and others have lucrative campuses in the Persian Gulf monarchies, primarily in Abu Dhabi and Qatar. These schools have all already moved to online instruction and most international students and faculty have left countries facing retaliatory Iranian strikes.

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These international campuses are not known for housing advanced research labs connected to military and surveillance research, but, as the student-led Gaza solidarity movement made clear, U.S. academia at large is deeply invested in multinational arms manufacturers and U.S. and Israeli military industries. Dozens of American institutions of higher education are deeply involved in the government-funded weapons research that helps make the U.S. military the most potentially destructive force in the world.

“Systematic” Targeting

Let’s not pretend, however, that the ongoing war on Iran follows any sort of valid justificatory reasoning.

According to Helyeh Doutaghi, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tehran who spoke to Al-Jazeera, the university bombings reflect a “consistent and clear pattern, and that is the systemic de-industrialization and underdevelopment” of Iran’s capabilities.

“The targeting is very systematic,” she said, “and very designed to make Iran incapable of defending its sovereignty by relying on its iedingeounous development and indigenous industries.”

Strikes against civilian infrastructure follow the same genocidal logic that saw every university in Gaza razed to rubble within 100 days of October 7, 2023. In a video shared by members of the Israeli military on social media in 2024, a soldier walked through the rubble of Al-Azhar University.

“To those who say, ‘There is no education in Gaza,’” he says, “we bombed them all. Too bad, you’ll not be engineers anymore.”

The point, that is, is the devastation of a place and a people, foreclosing their capacity to rebuild.

The post What Would We All Say If Iran Razed MIT Because of Military-Related Research? appeared first on The Intercept.

The White House and Pentagon won’t tell the American people where the U.S. is at war, and Trump has never gone to Congress for war authorization. But an analysis by The Intercept reveals that Trump has embroiled the U.S. in more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and wars during his five-plus years in the White House. Due to a lack of government transparency, obscure security cooperation, and carveouts baked into the U.S. Code — like the 127e authority enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and the covert action statute that enables the CIA to conduct secret wars — the actual number could be markedly higher.

During his two terms in office, Trump has overseen armed interventions and military operations — including drone strikes, ground raids, proxy wars, 127e programs, and full-scale conflicts — in Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, Venezuela, Yemen, and an unspecified country in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as attacks on civilians in boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. More than 6,500 U.S. Special Operations forces’ “operators and enablers” are currently deployed in more than 80 countries around the world. And during its second term, the Trump administration has also bullied Panama and threatened Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland (perhaps also Iceland), and Mexico.

Under the U.S. Constitution, it’s Congress that has the authority to declare war, not the president, pointed out Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program.

“Congress has not authorized conflicts in this wide array of contexts, and indeed many lawmakers — to say nothing of members of the public — would be surprised to learn that hostilities have taken place in many of these countries,” Ebright said. “Congressional authorization isn’t just a box-checking exercise: It’s a means of ensuring that the solemn decision to go to war is made democratically and accountably, with a clear purpose and goal that the American people can support.”

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Despite the fact that the U.S. has not declared war since 1941, its military has fought near-constant wars from Korea to Vietnam from the 1950s through the 1970s to Afghanistan and Iraq in the 21st century, as the executive branch has come to dominate the government and Congress has abdicated its constitutional duty to declare war.

For years, the Pentagon has even attempted to define war out of existence, claiming that it does not treat 127e and similar authorities as authorizations for the use of military force. In practice, however, Special Operations forces have used these authorities to create and control proxy forces and sometimes engage in combat alongside them. Recent presidents have also consistently claimed broad rights to act in self-defense, not only of U.S. forces but also for partner forces.

The Trump administration has even claimed the full-scale conflict in Iran is something other than what it is. Earlier this month, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby refused to call it a war. “I think we’re in a military action at this point,” he told lawmakers.

Trump routinely refers to the conflict with Iran as a war, but he has also cast it as an “excursion.” Trump has also erroneously claimed that if he doesn’t call the conflict with Iran a “war,” it circumvents Congress’s constitutional authority.

“We have a thing called a war, or as they would rather say, a military operation. It’s for legal reasons,” he said on Friday. “I don’t need any approvals. As a war you’re supposed to get approval from Congress. Something like that.”

EArlier This month, Special Operations Command chief Adm. Frank M. Bradley told the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations that secret-war capabilities were key for the United States.

“This environment places a premium on forces capable of operating persistently inside contested spaces, below the threshold of armed conflict,” he said. “Small footprints are necessary to enable denial strategies, strengthen allied resilience, and contribute to deterrence without triggering escalation, and to counter illicit and malign activity without large-scale military presence.”

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Bradley claimed America’s enemies “blur the lines between competition and conflict,” but this is precisely what America has done for decades, including numerous secret wars during both Trump terms. The United States has waged unconstitutional and clandestine conflicts through a variety of mechanisms. The covert action statute, for example, provides the authority for secret, unattributed, and primarily CIA-led operations that can involve the use of force. It has been used during the forever wars, including under Trump, to conduct drone strikes outside areas of active hostilities. It was apparently employed in the first U.S. strike on Venezuela in late 2025 — a prelude to a war, days later, that led to the kidnapping of that country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, by U.S. Special Operations forces.

The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and has been stretched by successive administrations to cover a broad assortment of terrorist groups — most of which did not exist on September 11 — has been used to justify counterterrorism operations, including ground combat, airstrikes, and support of partner militaries, in at least 22 countries, according to a 2021 report by Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

Under Trump, even this signature post-9/11 workaround for war has been eschewed for something more clandestine. Top Pentagon leadership wanted to keep so-called “advise, assist and accompany” or “AAA” missions — which can be indistinguishable from combat — under wraps during Trump’s first term. This led then-Defense Secretary James Mattis to order U.S. operations in Africa to be kept “off the front page,” a former senior U.S. official told the International Crisis Group.

But the bid to keep Trump’s other African wars secret imploded during a May 2017 AAA mission when Navy SEAL Kyle Milliken was killed and two other Americans were wounded in a raid on an al-Shabab camp in Somalia. The Pentagon initially claimed that Somali forces were out ahead of Milliken — U.S. troops are supposed to remain at the last position of cover and concealment where they remain out of sight and protected — but that fiction fell apart, and the truth emerged that he was, in fact, alongside them.

This was followed by an October 2017 debacle in Tongo Tongo, Niger, where ISIS fighters ambushed American troops, killing four U.S. soldiers and wounding two others. The U.S. initially claimed troops were providing “advice and assistance” to local counterparts. In truth, until bad weather prevented it, the ambushed team was slated to support another group of American and Nigerien commandos attempting to kill or capture an ISIS leader as part of Obsidian Nomad II, another 127e program.

Under 127e, U.S. commandoes — including Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and Marine Raiders — arm, train, and provide intelligence to foreign forces. Unlike traditional foreign assistance programs, which are primarily intended to build local capacity, 127e partners are then dispatched on U.S.-directed missions, targeting U.S. enemies to achieve U.S. aims.

During Trump’s first term, U.S. Special Operations forces conducted at least 23 separate 127e programs across the world. Previous reporting by The Intercept has documented many 127e efforts in Africa and the Middle East, including a partnership with a notoriously abusive unit of the Cameroonian military, also during Trump’s first term, that continued long after its members were connected to mass atrocities. In addition to Cameroon, Niger, and Somalia, the U.S. has conducted 127e programs in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Mali, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, and an undisclosed country in the Indo-Pacific region.

“During the global war on terror, the Department of Defense built out its capacity, and secured legal authorities, to operate ‘by, with, and through’ foreign militaries and paramilitaries,” Ebright said, noting that these authorities had been designed for countering al-Qaeda but had led to led to combat against groups that had not been debated and approved by Congress. “These smaller-scale, unauthorized hostilities through or alongside foreign partners may seem quaint compared to the Iran War and other recent public and persistent hostilities, but for years they deepened the perception that the president may use force whenever and wherever he pleases, even without specific congressional authorization.”

For almost one year, the White House has failed to respond to repeated requests from The Intercept for information about past and current 127e programs.

“While Trump claims to be the president of peace, he is actually the conflict-in-chief, waging many pointless and deadly wars, ensuring generational animosity towards a rogue U.S.,” said Sarah Harrison, an associate general counsel at the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel, International Affairs during Trump’s first term. “His actions are not just unconstitutional and in violation of international law, they make Americans less safe and their wallets less full.”

During his second term, Trump has made overt war across the African continent, conducting airstrikes from Nigeria to Somalia. In the Middle East, Trump has left a trail of civilians dead, from a migrant detention facility in Yemen to an elementary school in Iran.

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America’s punishing war on Iran has ground on for over a month without a clear definition of victory, a plan for the aftermath, or coherent strategy behind bellicose rhetoric and shifting claims, most recently that the U.S. is fighting a regime change war and will possibly seize Iran’s oil.

“We’ve had regime change if you look already because the one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead,” Trump said on Sunday, referring to top ranking officials killed in the war including the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “The next regime is mostly dead.”

Additional U.S. forces are now being sped to the Middle East to augment more than 40,000 troops already stationed in the region. This included dozens of fighter jets, bombers, and other aircraft, as well as two carrier strike groups. (The USS Gerald R. Ford had to since abandon the fight and travel to port, following a fire on the ship.)

More than 2,000 additional Marines arrived in the region over the weekend, and 2,000 more are on their way by ship. A similar number of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division are expected to arrive soon. The influx of troops comes as Trump has threatened to seize Iran’s oilfields.

“To be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the U.S. say: ‘why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people,” he told the Financial Times on Sunday. In a Monday Truth Social post, Trump threatened to commit war crimes by “blowing up and completely obliterating all of [Iran’s] Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!)”

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The Pentagon has already requested $200 billion in supplemental funds to pay for the Iran war, and the ultimate cost is expected to run into the trillions of dollars.

The U.S. is also ramping up conflicts in the Western hemisphere. Since attacking Venezuela and abducting its president in January, the U.S. has reportedly undertaken a regime-change operation in Cuba, attempting to push out President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Trump has also repeatedly spoken of “taking” Cuba. He has also threatened to annex Greenland (and possibly Iceland), turn Canada into a U.S. state, and carry out military strikes in Mexico.

The chief of U.S. Special Operations Command recently referenced the “perceived increase of U.S. support to counter-cartel operations in Mexico” and said his elite troops “remain postured to provide… support to Mexican military and security forces to dismantle narco-terrorist organizations.”  The U.S. claims to be currently at war with at least 24 cartels and criminal gangs it will not name.

Under Operation Southern Spear, the U.S. has conducted an illegal campaign of strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean, destroying 49 vessels and killing more than 160 civilians. The latest strike, on March 25 in the Caribbean, killed four people.

“Trump wants to call DoD’s summary executions on the high seas a war because he thinks that will allow him to kill civilians. And he wants to call the war in Iran a military operation so he doesn’t have to go to Congress for approval,” explained Harrison, who also previously served in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. “It doesn’t matter what imaginary legal constructs Trump comes up with, it won’t protect him or his officials from accountability for these undeniably illegal uses of force.”

The boat strikes recently moved to land as so-called “bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border” on unnamed “designated terrorist organizations.” “The joint effort, named ‘Operation Total Extermination,’ is the start of a military offensive by Ecuador against transnational criminal organizations with the support of the U.S.,” Joseph Humire, the acting assistant secretary of war for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, announced earlier this month. That U.S.–Ecuadorian campaign has already strayed into Colombia after a farm was bombed or hit by “ricochet effect” on March 3, leaving an unexploded 500-pound bomb lying in Colombia’s border region.

Harrison drew attention to the human costs of the raft of conflicts being waged by the Trump administration, remarking on “all the people who are needlessly dying because of one man’s ego and how it makes the U.S. much less safe.”

Successive White Houses and the Pentagon have also kept secret the full list of groups with which the U.S. is in conflict. In 2015, The Intercept asked the Pentagon for “a complete and exhaustive list of the groups and individuals, including affiliates and/or associated forces, against which the U.S. military is authorized to take direct action” — a Pentagon euphemism for attacks. Eleven years later, we’re still waiting for an answer. Asked more recently for a simple count — just the number — of wars, conflicts, interventions, and kinetic operations, the Office of the Secretary of Defense offered no answers. “Your queries have been received and sent to the appropriate department,” a spokesperson told The Intercept weeks ago before ghosting this reporter.

“The proliferation of unauthorized, presidentially initiated conflicts raises profound challenges for our rule of law, democracy, and accountability around matters of war and peace,” said Ebright. “This is true, too, of secret wars that government officials may refer to as ‘light-footprint warfare’ or ‘low-intensity conflict,’ not the least because we’ve repeatedly seen intermittent strikes or raids give way to protracted military engagements and larger-scale operations.”

Bradley — perhaps best known for ordering the double-tap strike that killed two shipwrecked men last fall — recently offered a murky catalogue of “state adversaries, terrorists, and transnational criminal networks” aligned against the United States, including China, Russia, “Iran, its proxy forces, and terrorist organizations,” and other unnamed “state adversaries”; transnational criminal organizations that “continue to attempt to exploit the southern approaches to the United States”; ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates; as well as “terrorists” and “extremist groups” in Africa. The State Department currently counts 94 foreign terrorist organizations around the world, including 13 that were designated back in 1997. Thirty-seven groups, about 40 percent of the list, were added under Trump — 27 during his second term. The most recent addition, the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood, was designated earlier this month. The administration also maintains a secret list of domestic terrorist organizations which it will not disclose.

For weeks, The Intercept has asked if the White House even knows how many wars, conflicts, kinetic operations, and military interventions the U.S. is currently involved in. We have never received a response.

The post Trump’s Secret Wars on the World Keep Expanding appeared first on The Intercept.

The night before we were set to fly out of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, I approached my partner with a confession: For the first time that I can remember, I was afraid of flying with a Latino last name.

It was a new sort of affront I had to steel myself against. Air travel is filled with moments — buying basic economy tickets, being herded through winding security lines like cattle, squishing your limbs into a compact seat — that smoosh you until you feel subhuman, usually along class lines.

In the days leading up to our flight to Las Vegas, however, I saw the indignities of the airport mount as President Donald Trump deployed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into America’s terminals, turning an already-debasing necessity into something more chilling.

Certainly, that’s how I felt after my experience. At JFK, an ICE agent was taking the customary Transportation Security Administration role of checking IDs at security. Everything, though, seemed to be running as normal. When I handed over my passport, however, he asked me a question I hadn’t heard him ask anyone else in front of me — most of whom presented as white: “Do you have a second form of photo ID?”

I can’t be sure what motivated the agent to ask me, and apparently no one else near me, this question, but his request of me was difficult to separate from ICE’s role not only as brutal enforcers of Trump’s deportation regime, but also its use as his personal police force. If one thing has been consistent in ICE’s ever-expanding mission, it’s that the agency is being used by the administration to instill fear.

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Later, it was impossible not to think about what my brief, eventually harmless encounter with the agent might portend. Shortly after Trump deployed ICE agents to airports, his former chief strategist Steve Bannon may have tipped the administration’s hand. Bannon speculated on his “War Room”podcast that the immigration force’s presence at TSA security checkpoints was a “test run” ahead of the November midterms.

Maybe, Bannon seemed to suggest, it was a rehearsal, meant to test how far the administration can stretch our tolerance for agents as part of the landscape of our daily lives without pushback.

If ICE’s invasion of American cities as part of Trump’s broad-based crackdown on immigration and dissent alike was a sledgehammer, what I experienced was more akin to a scalpel. It represents an agency that is understanding the criticisms against its methods and looking for new, more sophisticated ways to terrorize people.

If we can accept the reality that Trump’s personal army is requiring more documentation from us just to board an Airbus, how long until we are forced to tolerate them in our voting booths and beyond?

Training Us to Terror

It was hard not to feel that surgical instillation of terror during my airport visit.

The heightened scrutiny of airport security already makes me feel like a criminal, one who doesn’t even know he committed a crime. In the days leading up to my flight, I prepared for that same kind of interaction, amplified by the presence of someone with a gun and near-unlimited state power. I knew I’d have to get much closer to an ICE agent than I ever had before.

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Instagram videos of JFK suggested lines might be long, but when we arrived on Thursday morning, the terminal was mostly empty and the estimated wait time in my reserve line was only about 15 minutes.

It ended up taking twice as long. As we got closer to the security checkpoint, I realized what the holdup was: A TSA agent was standing behind two ICE agents, training them on how to do her job. As she stood there — working without getting paid, unlike the heavily armed agent sitting in front of her — she walked them through the steps.

I got a closer look at one of the ICE agents. He was white and bald, wearing military fatigues and a tactical vest that announced his employment with ICE.

People in front of me walked through without incident, performing the usual routine: passport, boarding pass, then on to remove their belts and unsheathe their laptops.

When I stepped up to the podium, I wondered if I was about to interact with someone who would be suspicious of me merely for my name and skin color.

I let out an involuntary smile — perhaps as a subconscious signal that I am friendly and low-risk. The ICE agent asked for my passport, which I handed over, as usual, and waited while a machine took my picture. I anticipated moving on quickly.

That’s when he asked me for another form of ID. At that moment, I started to feel my face turn hot, as if I were being accused of something. A U.S. passport is considered one of the most powerful forms of identification in the world. Why did he need a second document?

Though I had already started to grab the wallet in my coat pocket, he followed up with, “You know, like a driver’s license?” I handed over the plastic driver’s license — not a REAL ID, which is why I brought my passport — and waited for his verdict.

He looked back and forth between my documents and the monitor and then OKed me to walk forward.

My partner, who is white, walked through behind me without incident.

Later, as I was sitting in my seat toward the plane’s rear, I began to gain a greater perspective on what I had just undergone. That interaction — the kind that I had worried about for a few hours before waking up and schlepping to the airport — was designed to happen to people like me. It represented a moment of friction, designed to jolt me at first, but then get me used to the fact that people with weapons will now ask more of me just to do the same thing I had done a few weeks before, when I flew to Puerto Rico without any ICE agents at the TSA checkpoint.

Free passage would be harder, the stakes of any interaction would be higher. The fear that I was feeling in that moment had been designed, as if in a lab, to train me to accept a violent overreach that would’ve seemed absurd mere weeks ago.

It’s easy to see how this creep might affect people — Latinos and other immigrants who have citizenship — at their polling places. It will bring a little terror. And then instill a little normalcy.

The post ICE at Airports Trains Us to Accept Being Terrorized in Our Daily Lives appeared first on The Intercept.

The U.S.–Israel war on Iran was supposed to end quickly in either an “unconditional surrender” or regime change. Weeks into the conflict, none of it has happened. There appears to be little cause for celebration in Washington, notwithstanding Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s daily jingoistic proclamations.

There is, of course, even less cause for celebration among the population living under nightly aerial assault in Iran. Pro-war Iranians in the diaspora, too, seem to have tamped down their initial exhilaration over the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

It appears that neither the U.S. nor Israel had any plan if the Iranian nezam, or regime, decided to punch back after being subjected to a massive surprise attack on February 28. Those counterpunches have led to the deaths of U.S. service members, Israeli civilians, and migrant workers living in the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf.

Then there is the economic cost. Oil and gas production and transit are frozen in the Gulf, thanks to Iran’s missile strikes that hit regional energy infrastructure and its closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The markets, accordingly, are in disarray.

“Everyone,” Mike Tyson once said, “has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Iran’s leaders seem to think they have the upper hand right now — they have rejected a ceasefire offer from the U.S. outright — but Donald Trump might have more tricks up his sleeve.

The U.S. is moving troops into the Persian Gulf, potentially with a limited ground invasion looming. Trump, reports suggest, is most likely to go after a small island where Iran keeps an oil terminal for its tankers, or one of the islands closer to the actual Strait, which he would like to see open to all sea traffic.

For now, talks might not be in the offing, despite Trump’s proclamations — most recently that, despite the “fake news,” talks are ongoing and going well. Even by seizing Kharg Island or any other Iranian territory, however, Trump will not make the Iranians buckle. Short of a full-fledged regime change invasion, taking an Iranian outpost in the Persian Gulf may shift the balance of power, but not topple the government. Talks will still be necessary to end the war.

So, the assumption at this point is that the regime will survive — and the ones who really pay for that will be the Iranian people.

Who to Talk To

There is a generous view about Trump’s intentions: that there actually was a realistic plan, one that wasn’t about forcing capitulation or actual regime change. Though some Iranians, especially the former crown prince Reza Pahlavi and his supporters, had certainly hoped for a war of regime change, it’s plausible that Trump was merely seeking a regime adjustment, as he secured in Venezuela.

Even that plan, though, has fallen apart more than once. As Trump himself has said, when Khamenei and his family were targeted for assassination by Israel in the opening salvo of the war, some of the people that the U.S. had identified as potential Delcy Rodríguez types were also killed.

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It all makes one wonder whether the close coordination between Israel and the U.S. didn’t extend to letting the Israelis know that Trump would be satisfied with a Venezuela outcome. Or, if the Israelis did know, then whether they intentionally undermined those plans.

If that’s what happened, it would also explain the later Israeli assassination of Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who appeared to be Iran’s top official in the physical absence of the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.

Killing Larijani would have helped to forestall any deal that Trump might make with the regime. Larijani, a conservative but known as a pragmatist who, as parliament speaker, had supported the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the U.S., could be someone that Trump may have been able to leverage as a partner in a peace deal. Like the other potential interlocutors Trump had in mind, however, he ended up very dead.

Now the person being openly talked about in Washington as someone to talk to is perhaps the last pragmatic conservative in the top leadership, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a former commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps like Larijani. Trump has hinted this is who he is speaking to but hasn’t name-checked him, for fear, he said, that Qalibaf too would end up somehow targeted by the Israelis. (This perplexing mouse-and-cat game recalls Bill Clinton’s quip after a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996: “Who’s the fucking superpower here?”)

It’s unclear at this stage if Qalibaf has the mandate to negotiate a deal with Trump — or whether the Iranian leadership even wants a deal yet. Instead, the Iranians may prefer to continue bleeding the enemy — and the world economy — while creating chaos in the region, all to establish a deterrence against future attacks.

That possibility is only made more likely because ultra-hardliners in Iran are ascendant — no thanks to Israeli assassinations of anyone who might be likely to deal or want a deal.

Larijani, after all, was replaced as Iran’s top security official not by a fellow pragmatist, but by an arch-conservative hardliner and former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr. And the former head of the IRGC, Mohammad Pakpour, who was killed in the strike on Khamenei’s compound on February 28, has been replaced Ahmad Vahidi, arguably more hardline as compared to his two immediate (and assassinated) predecessors.

Bad to Worse for Iranians

With reformers, moderates, and proponents of engagement with the West sidelined and irrelevant to decision-making, it seems pretty obvious that whatever plan B the Trump administration is cooking up, the options range from bad to worse, both for America and the Iranian people.

Iran’s leadership believes it’s in the driver’s seat at this stage in the war. Its most powerful tool has been economic: the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is driving Trump and others in the administration mad. Hegseth said the Strait would be open if Iran hadn’t closed it, and Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio said the Strait will be open if Iran opens it. Indeed.

Short of complete regime change, however, opening the Strait by force will be an extremely difficult challenge.

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Trump’s bad-to-worse choices are to make a deal that will be viewed by many as a loss for American credibility and a win for Iran — or to double down with a ground invasion that not only will result in American casualties, but also might fail to even secure leverage to open the Strait. An Iraq-style invasion with tens of thousands of troops and a prolonged war might result in the U.S. being able to impose a supplicant leader, but it is hard to imagine that Trump would make the decision to make such a move.

As for the Iranian people, the Islamic Republic will be more repressive than even before and will mercilessly put down any revolt by its citizens. Iranians will suffer first in the aftermath of a war that has killed innocent civilians and destroyed infrastructure and cultural heritage sites. Then they will have to live under a system that will be suspicious of any dissenter or opposition activist as an agent of Israel or the CIA.

Iran’s Islamic system post-war will be more radical and more militarized in a less centralized form; Khamenei’s death will become a cold comfort to Iranians inside and outside the country.

Trump’s own misunderstanding of Iran, Iranians, and especially the leadership in Iran has brought him to this bad-to-worse choice. If he chooses his least bad option, however, the elephant in the room will be Netanyahu. What he will decide to do if a ceasefire and a deal leaves the Iranian regime in place able to project power?

Israel’s attempts to block an early end to the war and its continued campaign to destroy as much Iranian civilian infrastructure as possible has shown that Netanyahu cares as little for the Iranian people as Trump and his supporters do, including Iranians who celebrate the war as bombs fall on their compatriots.

Maybe Trump will decide to go completely rogue and continue his war of total destruction, irrespective of what the end game is. That, sadly, would be yet another way the Iranian people will be paying the bill.

The post The Regime Survives, Trump Has to Deal, and Iranians Are the Biggest Losers appeared first on The Intercept.

The measure, sponsored by a young DNC member from Florida, could put party leaders on the spot about the pro-Israel lobbying group’s outsized role in Democratic primaries.

A lobbying behemoth that for decades courted lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, AIPAC has become an increasingly toxic brand in the Democratic Party.

In recent years, Israeli leaders and their backers in Washington have become more closely aligned with Republican politicians. At the same time, however, AIPAC’s super PAC has focused tens of millions in spending on Democratic primary races.

Allison Minnerly, the committee member sponsoring the resolution, said it is time for the party to formally distance itself from the group.

“At a time when Democratic voters might really not have felt represented or seen when it came to Gaza or seeing their party support Palestinian rights or stand against military conflict, this could be one step toward bringing those voters back into the party,” she said.

Neither AIPAC nor the DNC immediately responded to requests for comment.

Minnerly’s resolution follows on the heels of another measure she sponsored last August calling for an arms embargo on Israel. That resolution was defeated, but not before it sparked a high-profile debate on the party’s relationship with Israel.

Democrats have soured on Israel while becoming more sympathetic toward Palestinians, surveys show.

That has not stopped AIPAC, through a super PAC called the United Democracy Project and other campaign arms, from plowing cash into Democratic primaries to elect pro-Israel candidates. Most recently it spent at least $22 million on Democratic primaries in Illinois, where its preferred candidates won two of four contested races.

“Given the recent primaries in Illinois, but also what we’ve seen across the country, I think it’s important that we specify that AIPAC as a growing force in our primaries needs to be specifically addressed when we talk about dark money,” Minnerly said.

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Minnerly’s resolution notes that AIPAC has expended massive amounts on political campaigns, then adds that “corporate money PACs have concentrated spending in primary races to oppose candidates who have advocated for Palestinian human rights, ceasefire efforts, or changes to U.S. foreign policy, raising concerns about the role of large outside spending in shaping Democratic Party positions.”

It later adds, “Democratic elections should reflect grassroots participation and the will of voters, rather than the disproportionate influence of wealthy donors or special interests.”

While the resolution’s is couched as a condemnation of dark money spending, it could nevertheless open a tense debate over AIPAC’s role in the primaries that some party leaders would rather avoid.

Ahead of the debate over the Israel arms embargo resolution last year, Minnerly was pressured to withdraw her proposal. DNC Chair Ken Martin put forward a competing resolution.

The ultimate product of that debate was the creation of a working group that has yet to produce any public findings. Critics have derided the group as a stalling mechanism.

This time around, Minnerly fears that the timing of the DNC resolution committee meeting could curtail debate of the measure. Her measure is set for discussion on the morning of April 9, as many DNC members will still be arriving for the meeting in New Orleans.

As high-ranking Democrats distance themselves from AIPAC, the group is hiring a new director of political operations and trying to defend itself against the critiques.

Michael Sacks, a Democratic megadonor who helped bankroll two secretive dark-money groups affiliated with AIPAC in the Illinois primaries, alleged that the group’s critics are trying to “chase” Jewish people out of the party in a Chicago Tribune op-ed on Tuesday.

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“Let’s be clear: The campaign against AIPAC is not a policy discussion,” he wrote. “It’s a thinly disguised effort to make support for Israel politically toxic in the Democratic Party, to chase Jews and their allies out of our big tent coalition.”

AIPAC shared the op-ed on social media.

Jim Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute, said the criticisms of AIPAC and its dark-money affiliates were about the group’s “hardball” tactics.

“Having been a witness to AIPAC handling of campaigns going back to the 1970s and ’80s,” he said, “it takes a certain degree of chutzpah to play victim, when in fact what they have done is victimize candidates and incumbents who didn’t fall in line behind their positions.”

The post DNC Resolution to Reject AIPAC Funding Puts Democratic Leaders in the Hot Seat appeared first on The Intercept.

In Denver, Sunrise is endorsing Melat Kiros, an anti-war candidate and attorney who was fired for refusing to take down her post on the genocide in Palestine, the group shared exclusively with The Intercept. Kiros is challenging longtime Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. 

“Voters today, they want to see their candidates and their representatives refusing AIPAC money and refusing [military industrial complex] influence,” said Kiros. “They’re seeing how much it has dragged us into these endless wars, and how much it is dragging our taxpayer dollars into funding this violence as well.”

Kiros is among a growing list of insurgent candidates — including William Lawrence in Michigan and Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, also both Sunrise-endorsed — who are taking Democrats to task on their complicity in the endless wars in the Middle East.

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Sunrise’s endorsement is part of a broader strategy shift in which the activist group, founded in 2017 to fight climate change in particular, pivots to fighting authoritarianism more broadly. 

“There’s just no winning on climate unless we address how absolutely broken our political system is,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement. Focusing on corporate PAC money and the wars it fuels abroad is an essential part of the organization’s broader mission, she added. “The path towards winning climate legislation lies towards having a functional democracy, and that includes having a democracy that doesn’t prioritize endless wars abroad over the very real constraints of people right here.”

Shiney-Ajay said Sunrise Movement organizers are “really excited” about Kiros, 28, because of her moral clarity. “She is really clear about standing up for working people,” she said. “And she’s very clear about not taking corporate PAC money.”

Historically, foreign policy issues have not been top of mind for Democratic primary voters, said Don Haider-Markel, a political science professor at the University of Kansas. But as the Trump administration wages its unpopular war on Iran, he said, “candidates that are able to mesh together affordability and war, and opposition to support for Israel, I think, are gonna be the ones that might be able to break through.”

This argument requires nuance, as most Democrats — at least publicly — oppose the Trump administration’s war with Iran, often citing affordability as a concern. 

“This war is costing at least $1 billion every day,” said DeGette, Kiros’ opponent, in a public statement about her support for a War Powers resolution to block the administration’s violence. “That is billions of dollars that could go towards affordable health care and housing. I refuse to support this war.”

DeGette’s statement “rings hollow,” Kiros told The Intercept. “Democrats like DeGette had the opportunity to cut the military budget by 10 percent for that very reason — especially during Covid, when we needed that money for health care — and still voted no,” she said. 

Kiros blames the “military–industrial complex” and actors like AIPAC for pushing lawmakers to support defense contractor spending and wars that line their pockets.

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“There are corporations that are actively profiting from the war,” she said. “And I think it also has to do with the impact and the influence that we have seen from AIPAC and from Israel.” 

Kiros has criticized DeGette for receiving over $5 million from corporate PACs. The incumbent’s top contributor is the law and lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which is founded and chaired by former AIPAC vice president and board member Norman Brownstein, according to OpenSecrets. “At the end of the day, the people who get you into office are the ones you are going to be accountable to,” said Kiros. 

Nicole Shea Niebler, a Sunrise Movement organizer in Denver, recently confronted DeGette at a meet and greet for declining to support Block The Bombs, a bill that would limit offensive weapons transfers to Israel. Niebler said voters are right to be worried about candidates who take money from the groups pushing for war with Iran. 

“If you’re not willing to say no, what else are you willing to do that is not in the interest of your constituents?” she said.

Niebler sees her organization’s broader shift toward supporting anti-war candidates like Kiros as a moment of “clarity” for the organization, calling the U.S. military “the true number one danger to our environment.”

Sunrise is hoping to reverse its luck in recent races, where two of prominent endorsed anti-war candidates, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam in North Carolina and activist Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois lost their primaries.

Allam, in particular, centered anti-Iran war messaging in her advertisements. “I will never take a dime from defense contractors or the pro-Israel lobby,” Allam said in an ad days ahead of the election earlier this month. “I have opposed these forever wars my entire career.”

Abughazaleh and Allam both lost by relatively narrow margins, which Shiney-Ajay said she doesn’t see as a broader defeat for their cause. 

“We’re up against a really steep battle and … millions and millions of dollars being poured in, and that is causing us to lose several races,” she said. “I do think there’s something happening where the narrative is that AIPAC money is poisonous, that corporate PAC money is poisonous, and that wasn’t true a few years ago.”

It’s challenging to parse out how successful the anti-war messaging was, because there were so many other factors in the races, Haider-Markel noted. “These challenger candidates also tend to be significantly younger and significantly more liberal than the incumbents they’re challenging. So all of those wrapped together,” he said. “It’s hard to distinguish which one actually played a role in some of these early defeats.”

In Denver, Kiros said she sees the anti-war and anti-military–industrial complex movement as a perpetual battle, one that will be fought in this election and others to come.

“The anti-war movement is one that has had to have this fight cyclically,” she said. “And so for me, it’s about understanding the military–industrial complex … and how we have allowed the military–industrial complex to influence our foreign policy, and to not just wait until it’s convenient, and it’s popular among the American people to be anti-war as it is right now.”

The post Sunrise Movement Pushes Anti-War Candidates, Endorsing Melat Kiros in Denver appeared first on The Intercept.

Donald Trump’s second term has been broadly defined by an overwhelming sense of chaos. Every week the U.S. finds itself in a new crisis of the president’s making. The war in Iran and the broader Middle East is stretching into its fourth week, as the administration prepares to send thousands of troops to the region for a possible ground invasion. The U.S. oil blockade on Cuba has plunged the country deeper into a humanitarian crisis. The Department of Homeland Security sent ICE to airports across the country on Monday to allegedly assist TSA agents who have gone without pay due to a partial government shutdown over congressional efforts to apply the most minimal of reforms to ICE. Meanwhile, Trump’s sons are backing a new drone company vying for a Pentagon contract as the president and his family have amassed about $4 billion in wealth this term, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

“It’s a constant stream of violence, corruption, spectacle,” Nikhil Pal Singh tells The Intercept Briefing. “They smash, grab, move on. But I think now they’ve actually broken something.” The professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and the author of several books, including “Race and America’s Long War” joins host Akela Lacy in a conversation about protests and movement-building in the latest Trump era.

Trump “said the real enemy — the real threat — was within. He reversed the Bush priority, which said, we fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them at home. And instead said, no, we actually have to bring the fight home. And he brought the fight home,” says Singh. “The idea there then also is that Americans themselves — that is us — we need to be governed violently first and foremost.”

“What we saw in Minneapolis and in Chicago and other places is almost like a really spontaneous emergence of that civic energy where people are basically like, ‘No, this is not OK in my city,’” says Singh. With the upcoming nationwide No Kings protests on Saturday, Lacy brings up the challenges of protesting under the second iteration of the Trump administration, and whether it’s fair to question the efficacy of protests at a time when they’re being met with paramilitary forces.

“We’ve lived through a period where the protests against the war in Gaza were pretty brutally suppressed by the Democratic Party and by the very institutions that the Trump administration is trying to destroy,” notes Singh. For there to be long-term meaningful change during this increasingly hostile environment to dissent or opposition, big alliances are needed, including with parts of the Trump coalition, he says. “Those kinds of cross-class alliances that cross the parties that are oriented around what we might call left economic populist politics and anti-war politics are going to have to be built.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript 

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept. 

Jessica Washington: And I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at the Intercept and co-host of the Intercept Briefing with Akela. 

AL: I don’t know about you, Jessie, but I honestly feel like I’ve had constant whiplash the past few months. Maybe it would be helpful for our listeners if we start with just breaking down exactly where we are right now in the world. I’ll do a quick recap. 

We are, as many people know, in a full-blown war with Iran after being told for years that that would effectively mean the beginning of the end. The U.S. has killed more than 150 people in boat strikes around the world and successfully kidnapped the Venezuelan president and his wife. Trump has consolidated the nation’s largest paramilitary police force and unleashed it on U.S. cities and now airports. The number of people being detained by ICE is at an all-time high. Federal agents have killed two protesters, and more than a dozen other people have died this year alone at the hands of ICE.

At the same time, prices are soaring. The Treasury just declared the U.S. insolvent, in case you missed that, which I certainly did. The government is still partially shut down, and Trump and his allies are still withholding documents from the public on Jeffrey Epstein.

And in case anyone forgot, we’re knee-deep in a midterm cycle that’s seen unprecedented levels of dark money and efforts by corporate lobbies to influence elections. So how are you feeling about all of this? How are you processing all of this? 

JW: Yeah, it’s a lot to process as a journalist and a person in the country.

The way that I’m thinking about this is really in the context of protests, and whether or not we’re going to see a real resistance to the Trump administration emerge. Obviously, what we’ve seen in Minneapolis has been a real resistance to their efforts from everyday people. What I’m thinking about now is just how can we exist in this society and push back against some of these really awful things, when there’s so much repression of protests and of activism in general, and of journalism? 

AL: The conventional wisdom for moments like this is that this is when the opposition should theoretically be at its strongest. Is that the case right now? What is the opposition right now, and how are regular people responding to this, and is it having any effect? 

JW: Yeah, we can talk about poll numbers. Certainly Donald Trump is historically unpopular, so we are seeing people react in that way. But I think we have to take into account the real ways in which the Trump administration, but also the Biden administration — and if we’re going to talk about college protests — university administrators really clamped down on college campus protesters, on protest in general. And we’ve seen the indictment of protesters in the Cop City case; we’ve seen the indictment of protesters in the case in Chicago, where we saw Kat Abughazaleh indicted. So there’s a real risk to protest.

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I mean, we interviewed Momodou Taal on this very podcast, a Cornell student who had to flee the country in order to escape being detained by the Trump administration because of his actions on college campuses. So there’s real fear.

I think there’s also real movement organizing. We’ve seen it in Minneapolis, we’ve seen it in even deep-red places like Hagerstown, Maryland, which I’m interested in talking a little more about.

There’s certainly still activity, but there’s a lot of fear and a lot of that fear is understandable.

AL: Jessie, you mentioned the Cop City case, and I think those indictments were obviously an effort to intimidate those protestors. I will just note that a judge dismissed most of the charges against them, but the Georgia attorney general is trying to appeal that dismissal. So the intimidation tactic continues, whether or not the charges were dismissed.

JW: No, I think that’s a really good point that a lot of the early intimidation we’ve seen of protesters has been unsuccessful in terms of actually getting them detained and locked up. We’ve also seen many of the students who were detained by the Trump administration for protesting have since been released or have fled the country and are no longer within the administration’s grasp. But nonetheless, it still has this chilling effect on protest on college campuses, but obviously across the country when people have to worry about whether or not they’re going to end up in prison for trying to protect their neighbors, I think that becomes a really difficult decision for a lot of people. 

AL: Specifically on this question of protest or how communities are responding to the increasing state violence that we’re seeing, you’ve been doing some reporting on a rapid response ICE watch group in a red county in Maryland. Is that right? 

JW: Yes. I have been covering the potential development of an ICE facility in technically Williamsport, Maryland, but the closest, largest city would be Hagerstown. But what’s been really fascinating about this story — the ins-and-outs of how this warehouse is going to become habitable for human beings is a large part of what I’m focused on. But we’ve seen in this county, which is Washington County, where the warehouse ICE facility would exist — it’s this deep red county where they’re trying to build this ICE warehouse, and you’ve actually seen massive resistance. 

So first, I would really point to this Hagerstown Rapid Response group. There’s this group that emerged really in the wake of what they watched in Minneapolis. They saw the successful ICE observers and ICE watches that were going on in communities in the Twin Cities, and they wanted to build something similar to that. So they developed the Hagerstown Rapid Response. 

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But over the course of developing their group, they realized that there was this ICE detention facility that was going to be potentially built in their community. So they really organized these pinpoint protests against the county commissioners where they live. So they’ve held weekly protests outside of the county commissioner’s office, but they’ve also worked to surveil the warehouse. They have drones they have used to get images to send out to the press, to the public, to really raise public awareness about this issue.

So we are seeing people in communities, even in conservative communities, really coming together and finding ways to protest and organize against ICE and against the Trump administration. 

AL: We touch on all of this and more with our guest today, Nikhil Pal Singh, a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and the author of several books, including “Race and America’s Long War.”

Nikhil, welcome to The Intercept Briefing 

Nikhil Pal Singh: Thanks for having me. 

AL: Trump’s second term has been broadly defined by this overwhelming sense of chaos. As we speak, the war in Iran and the broader Middle East stretches into its fourth week. The U.S. oil blockade on Cuba has plunged the country deeper into a humanitarian crisis. The Department of Homeland Security sent ICE to airports across the country on Monday to — it’s unclear exactly how — assist TSA agents who have gone without pay due to a partial government shutdown over congressional efforts to apply even the most minimal of reforms to ICE. 

Meanwhile, Trump is minting a new coin with his face on it, continuing to renovate the White House, and his sons are backing a new drone company vying for a Pentagon contract as the president and his family have amassed about $4 billion in wealth this term, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It’s a lot to keep up with. You’ve written that the question facing the American public today is less about whether what we’re seeing is unprecedented and more about what purpose the chaos serves, and how we respond to it. But what effect has this constant whiplash had on the public and its ability to organize or to respond?

NS: It’s a good question, and it’s where I began the piece that I wrote. You didn’t even mention “Operation Total Extermination” in Latin America and Ecuador, which Nick Turse wrote about this week. And of course, the signs that insiders have been trading on information in Trump’s tweets, making directional trades against them in the oil market and in the futures markets.

AL: Right. 

NS: It’s a constant stream of violence, corruption, spectacle. The term that the Trump administration likes to use, and Pete Hegseth’s favorite term, is “kinetic action”: We’re moving fast and breaking things all the time and showing and asserting our dominance over every situation. Those of us who try to comment upon this, report on it, analyze it, are always trailing behind it, trying to keep up, trying to make sense of the next thing — it does induce a state of whiplash. It does induce a state of paralysis by design.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do is to try to think about: How do we create a broader framework to understand what’s happening? Not a framework that tries to say this all makes sense, or it has some rationality, because there is a substantive irrationality to all of this, but I do think there is a method in their madness. And that method is really about keeping us off balance.

It’s about allowing them to continue to raid the Treasury. It’s about destabilizing the institutions that create a sense of organization, order, coherence within our society that then allows them to have more room to maneuver, at least within the short term. It’s hard to say what the long term’s going to look like, because everything they do has a short-term calculus associated with it.

I think the long term looks quite grim for them and for us, especially if we can’t get a handle on this. I think that’s part of what we need to try to understand. We need to almost not take a step back, but balance ourselves against the impulse to constantly be shaken and reactive in relationship to everything that they do and the next thing that they do and the next thing that they do.

I will say, as a last point in this opening, that I think in the Iran war they might really have met their match. That smash and grab, which has essentially been the mode right? “We’ll seize Maduro. We’ll send an ICE team into Minneapolis.” Of course, they met their match in Minneapolis too, and we can come back to that.

AL: Yeah, we will. 

NS: But they smash, grab, move on. But I think now they’ve actually broken something. That is going to have long-term consequences for many, many, many of us, and political consequences for them that they’re not going to be so easily left behind. 

AL: This is a great segue into what I wanted to ask you about.

So for our listeners, we’re talking about this essay you wrote for Equator magazine in January, really central to which is the idea of “Homeland Empire” that you write about. This notion — which is linked with your last point about the long-term ripple effects in Iran and beyond that we can’t necessarily account for yet — this notion that you cannot understand Trump’s project if you separate the realms of the domestic and the foreign.

That what we’ve heard for years about the U.S. turning its global wars back on its own citizens is happening now. That it’s more than a disturbing phenomenon. It’s a symptom of this broader rot at the core of U.S. institutions, which Trump is an outgrowth of. 

You write, “Trump’s real innovation has been to marry the archaic geopolitics of a settler empire to the modern legal frameworks devised by his liberal predecessors. What distinguishes his latest regime is its effort to reimagine and remake the borders of American state power, collapsing the foreign and the domestic in a single domain of impunity: Call it ‘Homeland Empire.’”

What is the utility of that specific framing, and what does it tell us that we don’t already know or understand about Trump?

NS: I do think that the concept of the “homeland,” which really comes into focus in the global war on terror. And there’s a great book by Richard Beck called “Homeland,” which has been really important for me. It’s suggested that national security and the security complex needed to be in some ways reshored.

You have the development of the Department of Homeland Security, which is a massive government reorganization, creating a whole new government department that you might even think of as being on par with the creation of the Department of Defense after World War II. So there’s the beginning of a reorientation institutionally in terms of policy. Of course, [George W.] Bush frames it in a very telling way. He says, we have to be able to fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them here. That’s still within the old model, even though the model is shifting. 

It’s the old model which tells us Americans are going to be safe as long as we keep our power projection and fighting the enemies and the bad guys all around us. That idea that there are threats everywhere, and that the United States has this global mandate and remit to fight them — that really does go back to the end of World War II and the Cold War. So there’s a long arc of that thinking. But what begins to shift in the global war on terror, and partly because of the attacks of 9/11, is this sense that the homeland is actually under a real threat. That it actually can be attacked. It can be destabilized.

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Now, that doesn’t just come out of 9/11. If you think about the period since the end of the Cold War, the search for new enemies dissipates. If you’re as old as I am, you remember when they were promising a huge peace dividend. Of course, the wars in the Middle East immediately begin to ratchet up. But the other thing that begins to ratchet up is the war on crime and the war on migrants. If you track the government spending — that precedes the origins of the Department of Homeland Security — on the prison complex and on the border–control complex, those are also going through the roof. They’re being imagined, again, in terms of this primary sense that Americans are being rendered insecure by street criminals, by migrants coming across the border, and now also by terrorists who might infiltrate. 

If you remember back to the war on terror period when Bush was fighting in Iraq, some Republican congressmen then were already running ads saying terrorists and migrants were essentially the same thing — that brown people coming across the border wanting to do us harm. So the idea that the terrorists, the migrant, the criminal represent this new nemesis that is actually now much more proximate, that has been building up for a long period of time. It’s been helping to produce spending streams, funding streams, institutions. And Trump has cemented it into a single ideological complex.

One of the things Trump was very, very clear about, even though he promised that he was going to be a peace president and wind down the wars and the forever wars, not be involved in overextension of American power overseas, et cetera, et cetera, which he numerously described as foolish, reckless — even though he did support the Iraq War, let’s not forget that.

He also said the real enemy — the real threat — was within. He reversed the Bush priority, which said, we fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them at home. And instead said, no, we actually have to bring the fight home. And he brought the fight home. He began to imagine bringing the fight home through the framework of a mass deportation campaign through the idea of making what was already a paramilitary organization in a sense — Customs and Border Protection, but more or less confined to the border — bringing that into the interior of the country. Adding huge amounts of funding to DHS to build up an immigration police with paramilitary characteristics.

We’ve seen the results of that over the last year. The idea is that it’s only the illegals who are being governed violently or the only the criminals. They’re always careful to say that, but that’s actually not how it’s played out at all. The idea there then also is that Americans themselves — that is us — we need to be governed violently first and foremost. 

AL: Right. The end result is the expansion of state power and state violence.

NS: Right. 

AL: So this brings us to Minneapolis. We’re seeing this massive escalation of state violence at home and abroad, while the public is also weathering increasingly difficult economic hardship, which is being exacerbated again by the war in Iran.

That is the same issue that many people argued posed such an obstacle to former President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign, and what brought us a second Trump term, right? 

NS: Yeah. 

AL: This economic hardship issue, this is the time that you would expect the height of mobilization by the opposition. While we’ve seen massive public opposition to ICE raids. We have “No Kings” protests; there’s another one planned for this weekend. But we’ve also seen the state deploy intense violence in response to that opposition, obviously killing two protesters in Minneapolis. 

Do you think that the state’s response has effectively crushed whatever opposition has come up? Whether the answer to that is yes or no, where does the opposition go in this increasingly hostile environment? 

NS: I think it’s a good question, and it’s definitely one that I’ve been mulling over. We would all like to see the streets filled with people again like 2020. I do think Americans have proved more attuned to violence at home and violence against their own neighbors and in their own neighborhoods. I think that’s been amazing and inspiring. 

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It really gives the lie to what the Trump administration professes when JD Vance says something like, anybody would be uncomfortable, having someone next door to them who speaks another language. It’s actually not true. Actually Americans, even in small towns, even in rural spaces, have grown accustomed to living alongside people who are very different and figuring out how to either live and let live, or sometimes even more affirmatively, to cooperate, to play soccer together, to be in civic organizations, to go to church.

I’m not saying the United States isn’t still a segregated country, or that there isn’t racial animus or distrust or any of those things. But I think we really underestimate the degree of ordinary comity among people.

Obviously what we saw in Minneapolis and in Chicago and other places is almost like a really spontaneous emergence of that civic energy where people are basically like, “No, this is not OK in my city.” These might even be people who have sensitivities and anxieties about unauthorized migration, which is a legitimate issue to debate. But the violence and impunity and lack of due process and disruption is offensive to people. We’ve seen the results of that in public polling data. We see it in the ways in which people act on the streets. 

I think wars overseas are more difficult for people in the United States. They feel more distant. The propaganda is so thick. You’ve been told for decades that Iran is some alien power that is irrational and in search of a nuclear bomb that might be eventually fired at like New York or something. It’s absolutely worthless propaganda, but it does its work. It’s very, very tied into the protection and safety of Israel, which is the most heavily propagandized topic in the U.S. foreign policy realm. People don’t really know what to think. And it doesn’t seem to affect them in the immediate sense — especially when you’re bombing from the sky and using remote warfare.

But now they’re really at a crossroads. They are amassing troops in the region. If American troops start going into combat situations and getting killed, you’re going to see people start to pay a lot more attention as gas prices rise, as the cost of everything increases.

Trump is going to be bedeviled with all the problems that Biden faced because people are going to feel that very profoundly. People who, as you say, are living paycheck to paycheck who are struggling to make rent, for whom a $1 increase in the price of gas when they have to commute two hours each day is actually a huge amount of money on a weekly basis. Trump owns that.

So they’re extremely reckless people, and I have to think that politically they will pay a huge price. They already are. As long as we — that is, those of us who are opposed to this — are able to exercise our civil and political rights both in the streets and at the ballot box. That obviously is going to be a real question. Is repression going to ramp up? Is there going to be chicanery around the elections? I think we can expect both of those things. Then we’re going to see where the balance of forces are. But I don’t think we should interpret the current quietness around the anti-war stuff necessarily as evidence that civic energies and oppositions has been beaten.

AL: To that point, these No Kings protests are taking place around the country on Saturday. Co-founder of the group, Indivisible, which organizes the protest, Leah Greenberg, told The Guardian, “Every No Kings is going to be about the issues that are driving people most at that moment and it’s also going to be about the collective ways in which they begin to harm our democracy.” 

I want to talk a little bit more about the challenges. We touched on this a little bit, but I want to go a little bit deeper in the challenges of protesting under the second iteration of the Trump administration, and whether it’s fair for us as journalists and analysts to question the efficacy of protests at a time when they’re being met with paramilitary forces. I’ve seen some questions about the specific demands of the No Kings protests or lack thereof. I’m curious, what do you make of that? 

NS: I tend to be a little bit on the side of, let a thousand flowers bloom. Anybody who wants to organize something and signal their opposition, that’s great. But I do think the opposition has to be sharpened and has to become more pointed around what the issues are.

I think, by necessity, the anti-ICE protests have become that way. There’s obviously synergies between these different things. People find their ways into different kinds of organization and different senses of action that may not always be strictly compatible with each other.

Again, the anti-war stuff is very specific. We’ve lived through a period where the protests against the war in Gaza were pretty brutally suppressed by the Democratic Party and by the very institutions that the Trump administration is trying to destroy. So the ways universities responded, the ways nonprofits and civic organizations often remained very silent on Gaza, the way the Democratic Party was obviously complicit fully with the genocide in Gaza — all of these things have left a mark on some of the most militant people who were out there in front and who were right, and who were correct in the positions that they were taking after October 7 about the Israeli response and the disproportionality of it, and the mass killing of civilians and the way in which it had the potential to unleash a regional war. And of course, Israel started this regional war three years ago.

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That’s a huge problem for some of these big-tent protest projects, which are very tied into the Democratic Party — a Democratic Party that in some ways we are now engaged in a huge battle over. Israel has split the Democratic Party. We have one side, which is the side I would say that I’m on, that really thinks that there has to be an extremely hard red line around future funding for Israel, around AIPAC and the use of PAC money that is flowing into candidates and races on behalf of Israeli interests. 

This is very divisive because of the way in which it pricks this whole set of arguments about whether it’s antisemitic and so forth, and it’s a real dilemma. But I think we have to be able to win this battle in the Democratic Party. Otherwise, we’re going to find ourselves in just another situation where even if the Democratic Party is back in power, it is still like the controlled opposition.

[Break]

AL: I wanted to touch on the same thing basically that happened with Gaza protests, we can map that back onto BLM protests in 2020, which is that Democrats were nominally supportive of this. But when it came down to brass tacks, they were still sending police to crush these protests. Then when it was time to actually pass legislation, at least at the federal level, there was basically like a do-nothing bill that Democrats calculated would pacify this movement for the long term. 

Now we’ve seen that so much of that momentum was basically co-opted or diluted and that all the things that people were calling for in terms of police reform, the evidence that none of that happened, is the paramilitary police that we’re seeing respond to all these protests today.

NS: For sure. 

AL: People still have a bit of that taste in their mouth of OK, even when Democrats were in control or even when these protests seem to be taking off, what was the legislative payoff? I’m curious today, whether we need to be thinking differently about what we are going to count as a positive result of a protest or as an effective protest, whereas we could argue that community resistance in Minneapolis and backlash to the agents killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti led to in some ways DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Officer Greg Bovino losing their jobs, while there’s still been very little change to DHS policy. So I wonder how we value those outcomes — those cosmetic outcomes versus long-term legislative change and knowing that the Democratic Party that we have is the one that we have? Does that alter the calculus with these protests or should it? 

NS: When you think back to BLM, you could say they helped Biden win 2020, even as then, it not only translated into the very anemic policy wins, but then also there was a belated or delayed backlash, which exploited some of the weaknesses of the movement itself, of course. The ways in which it had already had some of these problems internal to it around leadership, around nonprofit funding, around internal corruption and so forth, and the sidelining of grassroots protests — that really going back to Ferguson — really emerged out of direct community action and need based upon the experience of being under police occupation. 

We have to be able to learn from these cycles. I don’t think the lesson necessarily is that protest is ineffective or irrelevant. Protests are going to happen. We live in what my dear old friend who passed away last year, Joshua Clover, called the “age of riots.” People are under stress. A lot of this emerges very spontaneously. There’s obviously a viral environment that allows people to gather in outrage — the outrage is palpable throughout the society. It crosses left and right. 

Public opinion is what they like to call thermostatic. It can change and switch very quickly. We haven’t really been able to figure out on the left how to harness that and develop that for a more ambitious and large scale transformation. To harness it for a larger-scale transformation, we really have to be able to start thinking across different kinds of divides. That would be my view. 

The modalities of certain kinds of identity politics have not served us well, ultimately. The hierarchies of oppression have not served us well, especially when they’re advanced by people who are not actually interested in economic redistribution or anti-war politics. It’s quite easy and we’ve all encountered this, someone who will talk about priorities of anti-racism or anti-sexism or homophobia or whatever else. But actually basically just has mainstream Democratic Party politics at this point. So the Democratic Party succeeded in harnessing and appropriating protest energies that legitimately came out of the experience of people who are being racially brutalized. But people being racially brutalized — and this is something that, someone like even [Martin Luther] King, understood very well at the end of his life — need a big alliance to be able to make any real change in this country. 

That big alliance is actually going to involve an alliance with poor white people, many of which who have been part of the Trump coalition, and have been hailed by a certain Trumpian politics. I’m not saying all poor white people. But those coalitions, those kinds of cross class alliances that cross the parties that are oriented around what we might call left economic populist politics and anti-war politics are going to have to be built. 

In my view, there’s really not much hope for us without building those without some root through mass politics that allows us to change the dispensations of the political reality we live under, which, for all the ways in which people talk about polarization, there’s a lot of bipartisan consensus between the Republicans and the Democrats around war, around economic policy, around taxes around monopolies, around feeding donor interests and around a willingness on both sides to use a culture war polarization discourse to keep their own base close while not really doing much for them. Unless we can really demystify that and really think about solidarity and alliances even with people we don’t necessarily agree with on everything or even like very much. 

AL: This is something we’ve been talking about in our newsroom as well, like this bipartisan consensus on these issues, even when it’s coming from the conservative movement, like with people like Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or even Megyn Kelly particularly criticizing the war in Iran and Israel’s influence. Sure, you can say that’s interesting, but I think the more instructive approach to thinking about something like that is OK, what do we take from this? Are people doing that because it’s politically expedient for them or because they’re trying to appeal to their base, or because they’re actually looking for a way to advance some counter policy at the national level? I feel like every other day I see news about the fact that these Republicans are breaking, but it’s like OK, does that actually matter? 

NS: I want to be really, really, really clear about this. I think it’s a really important point to be clear about. 

AL: Yeah. 

NS: Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Kelly, Candace Owens. I’ll leave Marjorie Taylor Greene on the side. I’m not sure, something about the sincerity of her conversion convinces me a little bit more for whatever reason.

AL: Interesting. OK. Yeah. 

NS: These are odious people. These are reactionaries. These are people who actually would want to advance many of the same policies that Trump is advancing, particularly around deportation and mass incarceration. But who knows? President Tucker Carlson might preside over the final war against Iran.

Trump was anti-war until he was pro-war. Once these guys get hold of the machinery of state, which is what interests them, they’re absolutely interested in prosecuting a vision of the country that does not include people like us. That is deeply and profoundly hostile to democracy. That’s deeply and profoundly hostile to the poor. That’s deeply and profoundly hostile to immigrants and people of color. That’s deeply and profoundly hostile to women. There’s no question in my mind that that’s true and that we shouldn’t be paying much attention to their antagonisms towards Trump and the splits within MAGA, except in so far as those become tactically useful.

What I’m talking about when I say, public opinion is thermostatic, people who voted for Trump, who are working class and poor and stressed, don’t necessarily have an absolutely ideologically sealed and impenetrable view of the world, that those are the people that have to be admitted as possible parts of a bigger coalition. 

My model there would be Zohran Mamdani going out into Queens, the day after Trump was elected, and talking to people who voted for Trump and trying to figure out why and trying to say that he could offer something different. That to me is really different than saying that the Megyn Kellys of the world, these cynical influencers, are people that like we should take any sucker from.

AL: That we need in our coalition. 

NS: Or that we need in our coalition. No, I think and I’m absolutely not saying that we don’t continue to draw really hard red lines around certain things. You’re not allowed to be racist, you’re not allowed to be sexist. Like these are not acceptable positions. 

I don’t want to get back into an argument about whatever cancel culture and all of that, but that has been not useful ultimately, for our side, like we have to be able to be people who can allow an internal differences in dialogue, even over issues that are really contentious and painful to people and allow people to move forward and grow. That’s how you develop solidarity. That’s how you build it. 

AL: I’ve spoken to people on the left who think that it’s a good idea to go on Tucker Carlson’s show because he reaches all of these people and I think we have to be able to differentiate between having an inclusive tent and allow for growth and allow for change. The difference between that and enabling people who will betray you when it’s convenient for them. And I think that’s difficult in some ways. I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule, but I do think it’s frustrating to me that I see so many people like, “You gotta hand it to these people for coming out against the Iran war.” Do we? I don’t know that we really have to do that. 

NS: It’s a super tough question, and I don’t think anybody has a single clear program for how to deal with it. I remember back to when people on the left were condemning Bernie Sanders for going on Joe Rogan. I remember thinking at that time Bernie should go on Joe Rogan. 

Joe Rogan has some terrible attitudes and some terrible views and some very misinformed conceptions of the world. Maybe in an ordinary sense too, as a reactionary, the reactionary guys I like grew up with in New Jersey who I played soccer with or whatever. Just normal reactionary opinions that you encounter, if you talk to ordinary people. He’s like that and that’s why he’s popular. So should Bernie go on there and talk to him? I thought so, and a lot of people really condemned Bernie back then. I think that was when we were in a much more stringent cancel culture mode. 

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Now would I say the same thing about Tucker Carlson? No, because I think Tucker Carlson has serious political ambitions and is actually like a master manipulator of media. That’s my call, that’s how I would judge it. Somebody else might judge it differently.

I don’t think it’s super easy. I feel like we have to believe in the possibility of building bigger coalitions through dialogue, through change, through struggle sometimes. Yet I think the questions you’re asking and the way that we will pose these questions in public, we should be very clear about what we think.

AL: I’ll close with this question. I’m going to quote your wonderful essay one more time. For Equator, you write that the future is really up to the leadership of the opposition that Trump has turned America toward, “the vulgar, predatory, racist, great-power conflicts of old. He does not transcend history, but affirms what [Stephen] Miller calls its ‘iron laws.’ Reversing this will require something more than a return to normalcy, particularly as the American security state tends to be accretive – recent history suggests that it only metastasises. A more profound and comprehensive democratic renewal and reconstruction is needed.”

What does that mean? What does the democratic renewal and reconstruction entail? Who is involved and what are they doing? 

NS: I think we’ve been talking about it. It’s clearly going to have to be at multiple scales. There’s a civic scale to all of this, a local scale to all of this, that I’m seeing in New York City where I live, and extremely, heartened by it. It also has its limits.

There’s a national electoral scale. Our government, which accesses billions and billions of dollars of our tax money to do all kinds of terrible things with it. We have to be able to transform and change that. A lot of people I know have given up on electoral politics altogether, but I don’t see any way to not work also at that scale.

So to me it’s always we’re all always thinking about something like a dual power struggle, like a struggle within civil society and civil society organizations, and a struggle to actually affect the dispensations of our government. For me, primarily right now, that is the struggle inside the Democratic Party to change what it is to make it a true opposition party in the current moment, to make it a party that will really actually try, actually, not try, but succeed in constructing a real majority for the kinds of policies that we would support, which would involve shrinking the defense budget, which would involve something like Medicare for all, which would involve investments in the ordinary things people need to live and work in this country, including various kinds of social insurance, including transportation, including energy.

There were some elements of this in the Biden program. I think it’s really clear how those went off the rails, particularly in the foreign policy arena. The foreign policy arena often does derail domestic reform in the United States. That’s why we need to think of these things together. 

So I have an analysis, for what it’s worth. I don’t really have a program because we’re so far — it feels like we’re so far — from being able to affect the change that we need. That leads a lot of people to say “Well, let’s do the best we can. Let’s win this race or that race and maybe eke out another bare majority.” But I think every time we do that — and I think those of us who have lived long enough through enough political cycles see this — every time we do that, we’re left with something that’s just a little bit shittier.

AL: [Laughs]

NS: Now with Trump, I think we see that the bottom is potentially going to drop out here, Americans are going to be poorer after this war. They’re going to be more stressed, they’re going to have fewer resources, they’re going to be more afraid. The challenge then is going to be even greater politically because the ability of politicians to exploit these kinds of stresses and anxieties is obviously immense, particularly in this media ecosystem that is now essentially owned by billionaires and manipulated through algorithms. We really face a serious challenge. We have a lot of decentralized power, but we haven’t really been able to figure out how to get hold of some of the real levers of power in this country. 

AL: The evergreen story of the left. 

NS: Yes. 

AL: Nikhil, we’re going to leave it there. Thank you for joining us. This was a wonderful discussion. 

NS: Thanks for having me, Akela. I really appreciate it.

AL: That does it for this episode. 

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

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Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.

The post Protesting the Smash-and-Grab Presidency With Nikhil Pal Singh appeared first on The Intercept.