Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-08-08 Friday

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

Democracy Now! Friday, August 8, 2025

From New York, this is Democracy Now. Netanyahu's decision to occupy Gaza, it's like there's nothing left to occupy in the first place. We're already dying, 100,000 deaths every day. Around 100 to 150 people died daily from starvation on top of everything else we're going through. Practically, all of Gaza has been squeezed into the western part of Gaza City, and that's all that's left. Israel's security cabinet has approved a plan to take control of Gaza City, amidst international condemnation. We'll get the latest. Then they poisoned the world, life and death, and the age of forever chemicals.

PFS, PFOA, various members of this man-made family of chemicals is literally in the bodies of people in New Jersey and nationwide having devastating health consequences. The state of New Jersey has just won a $2 billion settlement against chemical giant DuPont over contamination. We'll speak with investigative reporter Mariah Blake about her new book. And finally, as the Trump administration debunk. debates whether to release the Epstein files and the transcript of the nine-hour conversation between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former criminal attorney, and the convicted sex offender and trafficker, Geelaine Maxwell. Where are the voices of the survivors?

We'll speak with Jess Michaels, one of up to a thousand Epstein survivors. All that and more coming out. Welcome to Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Israel's security cabinet has approved plans to take over Gaza City, which would significantly expand Israeli military operations in the Palestinian enclave. Under the plan, Israel will force all Palestinian civilians from Gaza City into displacement camps further south. This comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News he intends to take over all of Gaza. Israeli opposition leader, Yai Yir Lapid, blasted the plan, calling it a disaster.

British Prime Minister Kier Starmor called the decision wrong, adding, quote, it will only lead to more bloodshed. Germany said it would suspend arms exports to Israel until further notice. Meanwhile, U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said Israel's complete takeover of Gaza should be, quote, immediately halted. Palestinians in Gaza reacted to Netanyahu's takeover plans. Netanyahu's decision to occupy Gaza, it's like there's nothing left to occupy in the first place. We're already dying, 100,000 deaths every day. Around 100 to 150 people die daily from starvation. on top of everything else we're going through.

Practically, all of Gaza has been squeezed into the western part of Gaza City, and that's all that's left. Just that, west to Gaza City, at this point for the people, there's no difference anymore, whether he occupies it or not. Meanwhile, the Israeli TV station, Channel 13, is reporting Netanyahu deliberately imposed starvation on Gaza, restricting aid to the besieged enclave, as part of a strategy to force Hamas to surrender.

Internal government transcripts from March show Netanyahu repeatedly ignored calls from senior ministers to move to the second phase of the ceasefire agreement to release the Israeli hostages. Meanwhile, Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Thursday to protest Netanyahu's plans to occupy all of Gaza. We are here demanding the end of war. the war, the immediate return of the hostages, and do the atrocities in Gaza. Attrocities about the children in Gaza and atrocities are against our own soldiers and against our own hostages. This war is a political war. The only person that benefits from this war is Benjamin Netanyahu that's trying to avoid jail.

Al Jazeera reports at least two Palestinians were killed today as they sought aid at a distribution site, run by the shadowy U.S. and Israeli-back Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The latest killings of food seekers at GHF sites came as hungry and displaced Palestinians, scrambled for extremely limited supplies of food aid dropped into Gaza by air. This is Abu Mohammed al-Al-Amar, who rushed to grab food from a pallet of aid that parachuted to the ground in northern Gaza. I got lentil and tomato paste, as you can see, for a family of six. We are dying.

You can see the people. They get something and it's not enough. One pallet for a million people. This is what I got. It ripped open. We want to feed our children. The head of the World Food Program criticized air drops over Gaza as entirely inadequate. WFP executive director Cindy McCain wrote on social media, quote,

we can't airdrop our way out of an unfolding famine, not in Gaza. 500,000 people are starving today. The only way to get food to them at scale is by land, she wrote. Meanwhile, Gaza's interior ministry says falling pallets evade have killed and maim people on the ground, including Ode al-Coran, a Palestinian nurse reportedly crushed to death when a crate fell on him Monday. In Atlanta, Georgia, Palestinian-American medical student, Umayma Muhammad, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, accusing Emory University of unlawfully suspending her over her remarks about Israel and Gaza.

Muhammad's lawsuit alleges the disciplinary proceedings that led to her suspension began after she appeared on Democracy Now in April of last year and made remarks critical of Emory and its crackdown on protests and support of Palestinian rights. We have repeatedly organized peacefully to put pressure on our institutions, especially at Emery, to stop harassing and doxing students and to stop repressing speech around Palestine and to divest from the Israeli apartheid state. And every single time, Emory shuts us down, every single time they crack down and they punish students every single time they silence our voices. Meanwhile, the University of Maryland

has agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by students who say they were denied their right to free speech during a crackdown on campus protests opposing Israel's siege of Gaza. The city council of Medford, Massachusetts has approved an ordinance divesting the Boston suburb from companies that contribute to human rights violations. On Thursday, Palestinian American, Dina Alami, joined fellow Medford residents who rallied at City Hall in support of the values-aligned local investments ordinance. We passed in ordinance at the Medford City Council that divests from fossil fuels, weapons, manufacturers, prisons, detention centers, and any company that violates human rights.

So this is very personal for me. What we know is that Medford has $12 million invested in a portfolio that includes Chevron, the world's largest fossil fuel emitter, and Lockheed Martin, the world's largest weapons manufacturer. Both are interconnected. Both harm human life, harm our planet. And for me as a Palestinian with family in Gaza, the weapons that we invest in are harming my family. Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn says the FBI has granted his request to track down an arrest more than 50 Democratic state lawmakers who left the state of Texas to block a vote on the GOP's new congressional map, which could allow Republicans to win up to five additional congressional seats in the midterm elections. On Wednesday, Texas legislators were evacuated from a hotel in Chicago after a bomb threat.

Police did not find any bomb. President Trump's calling for a new census that would take the unprecedented step of excluding undocumented immigrants for the first time. As mandated by the Constitution, the census is conducted every 10 years and counts all U.S. residents, regardless of their immigration status since the 14th. Amendment requires, quote, the whole number of persons in each state, unquote, to be included. It's unclear whether Trump will attempt to move up the census from 2030 to an earlier date. The Justice Department is hired a January 6th rioter who is seen on body cam footage encouraging rioters to kill police at the Capitol. Jared Wise is now a senior advisor and

counselor to Ed Martin, the director of the DOJ's so-called weaponization committee, which is established by President Trump to go after his political enemies. The footage obtained by NPR was shown during Wise's trial earlier this year before Trump parted him in the midst of his trial, along with about 1,500 capital riot defendants. You are the Nazi, and you are going to stop them. You can't see it because you're just going to Pins it, right? Pinsent. You're retirement, right? That's what runs your life. You're a tired of it. The sad thing is they're not even going to get their pension because it's going to be wrongful. And shame on me. The Trump administration's forced out more FBI officials who

investigated Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The purge includes Stephen Jensen, the head of the FBI's Washington, D.C. field office, Jensen led a domestic terrorism unit that investigated the January 6th Capitol insurrection. Also fired is Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as acting FBI director at the beginning of the second Trump administration. Driscoll resisted demands. He turned over the names of FBI agents previously assigned to January 6 probes.

and FBI special agent Walter Jardina was fired. He was a member of the team that investigated Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro's work to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. The Trump administration is set to use military bases for its mass deportation operation, tapping Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, to house 1,000 immigrants. I says the jail will begin accepting detainees starting on August 17. and will expand to 5,000 beds. The El Paso Times reports that at full capacity, Fort Bliss would become the largest immigration detention facility in the U.S. The actor Dean Kane, who rose to stardom for portraying Superman in a 1990s TV series,

said Wednesday he will join ICE as the agency struggles to recruit and retain enough people to carry out Trump's mass deportation plans. This week, the Department of Homeland Security removed age limits for new hires. It's also offering $50,000 bonuses in student loan forgiveness to new recruits. And in Los Angeles, activists are calling for a 24-hour boycott next Tuesday of Target, Walmart, McDonald's, and other companies, they say, are complicit in Trump's mass deportation efforts. The boycott follows an ICE raid at a Home Depot parking lot this week. Angelica Salas is the Executive Director of the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights. While we're asking you not to participate and purchase in certain corporations that have been complicit in this enforcement,

we're also asking you to support street vendors and support immigrant businesses that are suffering right now in many of the neighborhoods in which many of these raids have happened. So we're asking you to take action on the 12th, to mobilize in the streets, to, use your economic power, especially our immigrant construction workers, not to purchase at Home Depot on that day and to send a message that we will not accept this terror on our community. A federal judge has ordered Florida to halt construction and notorious ice jail in the remote everglades for at least 14 days citing environmental concerns. Republican Governor Ronda Santos's office said in response, immigrant prisoners would remain at the immigration detention camp

dubbed alligator alcatraz, and that the ruling would have no impact on deportation efforts. After threatening a federal takeover of Washington, D.C., President Trump has ordered federal law enforcement agents to be deployed to D.C. This comes as President Trump claim that crime in the Capitol was, quote, totally out of control, unquote, after a former Doge staffer was assaulted during an attempted carjacking. In recent years, crime rates in D.C. have in fact fallen sharply. CNN is reporting. Vice President J.D. Vance met with top Justice Department officials Wednesday to discuss the Jeffrey Epstein case. The meeting was reportedly set to take place at Vance's Washington, D.C. home, the Naval Observatory, but was moved to the White House

amidst intense media coverage. CNN's reporting directly contradicts Vice President Vance's denial that officials had huddled behind closed doors to discuss Epstein. The gathering reportedly included, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Cash Patel, Deputy FBI Director Dan Vangino, who discussed the need to craft a unified response to the Epstein scandal in emerging details of Trump's longstanding friendship with the dead serial sex trafficker. We'll have more on that story later in the broadcast. We'll hear the voice of an Epstein survivor. President Trump has signed an executive order broadening the ways people can invest in the most common type of U.S. retirement accounts.

Under Trump's order, 401K retirement plans can now include private equity, real estate, cryptocurrency, and other alternative investments. Prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, including the Trump meme coin, surged as Trump signed the order. Blackstone CEO and Trump backer, Steve Schwartzman, once told investors it was a, quote, dream of the private equity industry to draw upon 401K retirement accounts. The U.S. Air Force said Thursday, it'll bar transgender service members. with up to 18 years of experience from applying for early retirement and will instead force them out of the military with only lump sum separation payments.

Shannon Minter of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights told Reuters, quote, this is just betrayal of a direct commitment made to these service members, unquote. Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs said Wednesday it's canceling collective bargaining agreements for most of its 377,000 unionized workers citing national security reasons. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Israel's security cabinet has approved plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take over Gaza City, spurring international condemnation as world leaders warn of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of a full-scale Israeli military occupation. In response to Israel's intensifying military campaign, German Chancellor Frederick Mears,

announced today Germany will suspend the export of military weapons to Israel that could be used in Gaza. The move stopped short of a full arms embargo but marks a significant shift in Germany's position. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Kirstarmer called the decision wrong, adding, quote, it will only lead to more bloodshed. UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, urge for the plans to be immediately halted and that the move, quote, runs contrary to the ruling of the International Court of Justice that Israel must bring its occupation to an end as soon as possible and to the right of Palestinians to self-determination, unquote. Israeli opposition leader Yayyir Lapid also condemned the decision to seize Gaza city saying on

social media, this is a disaster, which will lead to many more disasters, a disaster for generations to come, he said. Ahead of the late-night Security Council meeting, Netanyahu told Fox News, he, quote, intends to take over all of Gaza. Netanyahu spoke to Fox News, Bill Hemmer, and Jerusalem Thursday. Will Israel take control of all of Gaza? We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza and to pass it to civilian governance.

That is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel. That's what we want to do. We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the, awful terror of Qaeda. Netanyahu claimed Israel would not seek to govern Gaza, but rather turn the territory over to unnamed Arab forces. Palestinians in Gaza reacted to Netanyahu's calls to take over the besieged strip. Netanyahu's decision to occupy Gaza, it's like there's nothing left to occupy in the first place. We're already dying, 100,000 deaths every day. Around 100 to 150 people died daily from starvation on top of everything else we're going through.

Practically, all of Gaza has been squeezed into the western part of Gaza City, and that's all that's left. Just that. West to Gaza City, at this point, for the people, there's no difference anymore, whether he occupies it or not. This comes as the Israeli TV station, Channel 13, revealed Netanyahu deliberately imposed starvation in Gaza, restricting aid to the besieged enclave, As part of a strategy to force Hamas to surrender, internal government transcripts from March show Netanyahu repeatedly ignored calls from senior ministers to move to the second phase of the ceasefire agreement to release the Israeli hostages. For more, we're joined by Mouin Rabani, Middle East analyst, co-editor of Jadalia, and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict on Humanitarian Studies, also a non-resident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. Mouin Rabani is a contributor to the book, Deluge, Gaza and Israel, from crisis to cataclysm. Mouin, welcome back to democracy now.

First respond to the Security Council's endorsement of Netanyahu saying he's taking over Gaza City. And then respond to the international outcry that has ensued, including a voice we haven't heard condemning Israel before, and that's Germany. Yes. It wasn't the Security Council, it was Israel's Security Cabinet that took this decision to seek to seize physical control of the entirety of Gaza City. And I think it needs to be seen as the first phase of a larger plan enunciated by the Israeli Prime Minister, Bini Minnetoniyahou. In the clip you just showed, where the objective is to take control, physical control, of the entirety of the Gaza Strip, in the context of unachievable objectives, basically ensuring there isn't even so much as a water pistol left in the Gaza Strip.

And it's really a recipe for permanent occupation, annexation in all but name, until Israel's international partners agree to that. And I think we have to recall what Israel's strategy has been from the outset. which is the expulsion of the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip outside the territory and retaining this territory under permanent Israeli control. That's really what's going on here. As far as these statements of criticism and condemnation are concerned, I think we have now reached, in fact, we long ago reached the point

where words are entirely meaningless. In the context of a genocide, if all you can do, to criticize and condemn, while continuing, as in the case of Britain, intelligence overflights over the Gaza Strip that directly benefit the Israeli military, or now even in the case of Germany, banning the export of weapons that can be used in the Gaza Strip, and good luck figuring out which can and which can't. These are basically political theater, performative acts. Yes, they do signal a shift in the position of this.

or that government, but they still fall very, very far short of meaningful, concrete measures that can persuade or force the Israeli government to change course. I should correct myself. I didn't. Germany didn't exactly condemn what Israel is doing, but they did for the first time, saying they were stopping weapons to Israel that could be used in Gaza. Correct. Yes, I was referring specifically to Germany, and the condemnation has come from some other

quarters. But, you know, we have to recall now that Israel has been very clear that it intends to force the evacuation of the entire population that remains in Gaza City southwards, then to take full control of that area in order to seek to eliminate the remaining Hamas fighters that are based there. You know, just earlier this year, Israel implemented a very similar plan known as Gideon's chariots. And that was supposed to produce precisely the result Israel now says it is seeking to achieve. It's been two years now where Israel has been unable to achieve its declared military objectives. And this should also lead us to question what are its real objectives. Is it simply to seek to militarily defeat Hamas? Or is it to destroy the Gaza

strip, to reduce it to rubble, as we've seen from these recent images that have emerged, and perhaps it's time to start taking Israel at its word when it says that its objective is to, in its words, implement Trump's vision of expelling the entire population of the Gaza strip. Maybe that is exactly what they're seeking to do, and maybe responses to Israel's statements and actions should be based on that. Israelis also took to the streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Thursday to protest Netanyahu's plans to occupy all of Gaza. We are here demanding the end of the war, the immediate return of the hostages and to the atrocities in Gaza. Attrocities about the children in Gaza and atrocities against our own soldiers and against our own hostages.

This war is a political war. the only person that benefits from this war is Benjamin Netanyahu that's trying to avoid jail. So that was Amidur, Mouin Rabani. The response within Israel at this point, do you see it changing? And then I want to ask you about what Netanyahu is talking about when he talks about these unnamed Arab forces, he's hoping will take over Gaza. Yes, so two points. If you look at the internal Israeli debate about this issue, on the one hand, there are objections to this plan from the military leadership, which have now been essentially overridden by the government. And that is based on the military's estimation, you know, that it is not capable of a prolonged war, a prolonged insurgency.

It's designed for short, sharp, decisive wars. it lacks sufficient manpower and material for the task that has been assigned to it. And on the other hand, you have those from some of the Israeli opposition parties and sectors of Israeli public opinion basically stating that Israel has a choice. It can either continue this indefinite genocidal military campaign or it needs to reach an agreement with the Palestinians that puts an end to this war and results in an exchange of captives because that will be the only way

that Israel can successfully retrieve its remaining captives from the Gaza Strip. What I find telling in this debate is that no one is saying we shouldn't do this because of international sanctions that could result. In other words, Israel is acting in the full confidence that whatever it does,

it will enjoy, if not to support, at least the consent of its key sponsors and allies in the West. Regarding this other point, there's a fundamental contradiction here. On the one hand, Israel refuses any form of Palestinian administration in the Gaza Strip. Not Hamas administration. It equally rejects any Palestinian Authority administration or any other Palestinian governance. While at the same time, it is seeking to recruit essentially an Arab expeditionary force,

to take control of the Gaza Strip. But no Arab state has volunteered, even Israel's closest Arab allies have refused to participate in this scheme because from their point of view, they're only willing to participate in any initiative that is embedded with an credible

and irreversible political initiative that leads to the end of the occupation and Palestinian sovereignty in the Gaza Strip. And given that Israel's project, is precisely to prevent that from happening. I don't see it getting off the ground. The economists wrote a piece this week, how much of Gaza is left standing. It says, quote, the broader demographic toll is hard to grasp. The studies imply an estimated life expectancy has fallen by more than 35 years to roughly half the pre-war figure. In percentage terms,

This drop is bigger than the one recorded during China's greatly forward in absolute terms. It's similar to the one in the Rwanda genocide. Your thoughts, Mouin? Well, it's more proof, if proof were indeed needed almost two years after this began, that what we're dealing here is not a military campaign in which civilians are inadvertently being killed as a result of what's called collateral damage, but that it is, in fact, the civilian population, which is the premeditated and intended target

of this very wide-scale killing spree that Israel has been engaged in. And that is precisely why every major human rights organization, whether Palestinian, international, and now even Israeli, has concluded that we are dealing here with a genocide. And most recently, in the context, of the intensifying famine in the Gaza Strip, we now also have a report from doctors without borders saying that basically this scheme that has been established by the United States

and Israel, known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, is in fact an orchestrated campaign to weaponize urgently needed humanitarian supplies and that this mechanism is effectively acting as a death squad. I know you recently spoke. with the whistleblower, Anthony Aguilar, about this, so I won't comment further. But people can go to our interview with Anthony Aguilar at DemocracyNow.org. Maureen Rabani, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Middle East analyst, co-editor of Jadalia, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict, a non-resident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.

Coming up next, we go to a new book. book. They poisoned the world. Life and death and the age of forever chemicals. We'll speak with the investigative journalist, Mariah Blake. Stay with us. Skin glows in the dark, shines in the light. It's the color that holds me. My brown is the shade. That's just for me. I'm never not missing anything but me. Because I love you And I can't miss anything But you

And you're stuck on me And all this time I'm inside you Our time Together we grow We stretch and we show As tough as it goes And it won't rub off

Oh, view. It's my brown skin by Elado Negro here in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. Officials in New Jersey have won what they say is the largest environmental settlement ever achieved by a single state. When chemical giant DuPont and its affiliates agreed to pay $2 billion to clean up four industrial sites contaminated with forever chemicals or PIFAs, which are widely used in industrial and consumer products, even though they're linked to cancer and birth defects. It's the third Phaas-related settlement New Jersey has reached in less than three years. This is Maya Van Rossum of the Delaware River Keeper Network, which is part of the litigation.

We have PFAS contamination of the fish that live in the Delaware River. It's so insidious. And, of course, PFAS, PFOA, various members of this man-made family of chemicals, is literally in the bodies of people in New Jersey and nationwide having devastating health consequences. I think that this case really is going to send a message loud and clear that's going to reverberate across the nation. Studies show how PFS contamination is now so ubiquitous. that forever chemicals have been found in rainwater and the blood of almost all humans. This comes as the Trump administration has shuttered the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development, which help test for PFAS.

And we're going to talk about just what PFAS are with our next guest, Mariah Blake, investigative journalist and author of the new book. They poisoned the world, life and death in the age of forever. chemicals. It's on Ralph Nader's list of books to read this summer. Her guest essay for the New York Times is headline, This is How to Win an Environmental Fight, Meet the Unlikely Warriors on the front lines of a major environmental battle. In her book, Mariah Blake reveals how the U.S. government's top secret Manhattan project that developed the atomic bomb that was dropped 80 years ago this week on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was also responsible for the development of PFAS. A lot to go through here. Mariah, welcome back to democracy now. First start off by

telling us what PFAS are and then talk about the victory in New Jersey and then we'll talk about this historic week, 80th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs on Japan, and how to how that links to PFS. Start with what they are. Okay. So PFS, also known as Forever Chemicals, are a large family of substances that have some pretty remarkable properties.

They're extremely resistant to heat, stains, water, grease, electrical currents. They stand up to chemicals that are so corrosive. They burn through most other materials. And this has made them extremely useful, So they helped usher in the era of space travel and high-speed computing. They've transformed thousands of everyday items from cookware to dental floss to kitty litter. On the other hand, they are probably the most insidious pollutants in all of human history. So we are talking about a class of chemicals that do not break down in the environment.

And in fact, they persist for hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years. those that have been studied are highly toxic, even in the most minuscule doses, and they are literally polluting the entire planet, including human blood and ecosystems in the remotest parts of the world. And Mariah, I just want to say that P-FAS actually stands for per and polyfluoroalkial substances. That's the P-F-A-S. Keep going. That is correct. That is correct. So, yeah, I think the clearest example of their ubiquity comes from the study you mentioned of rainwater around the world.

So a group of prominent European scientists in 2022 looked at the levels of just the two best studied PFAS in rainwater around the world. And they found everywhere in the world, including the remotest regions, places like the Tibetan plateau, the levels were high enough to endanger human health and the environment. So the levels were higher than the EPA's safety standards for those chemicals in drinking water. The same is true of breast milk in many countries. So not only are these chemicals ubiquitous, they're ubiquitous at levels that, you know, there are potentially harmful to our health. Explain what happened this week in New Jersey. So this week, New Jersey, which is really, New Jersey is where PFAS were initially invented and mass produced.

New Jersey settled with DuPont and other companies for $2 billion. This is in response to PFS contamination. So the companies have agreed to paid $2 billion in compensation, and there's also a cleanup fund. And this is, as I understand it, the largest settlement paid to any state in the history of litigation. And so let's go back in time. You know, just a few days ago, August 6, you had the bells ring out as they do every year in Hiroshima. As they remember what happened this year, it's 80 years ago, August 6, 1945.

On Saturday, that's the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb. The U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Talk about what PIFAs, what these forever chemicals have to do with the secret Manhattan project that developed the atomic bomb. So this is one of the things I found most surprising in my reporting. This class of chemicals that are now ubiquitous in the environment and consumer goods was actually developed by the U.S. government as part of the Manhattan Project. And the reason the government needed them is for uranium enrichment.

uranium enrichment involved a highly corrosive chemical called uranium hexafluoride, and almost nothing could contain it. And so they needed substances that could stand up to this chemical, and they determined that the only ones that could were ones that combined carbon and fluorine, which together formed the strongest bond in chemistry. And that is what PFAS are. So they developed them during the Manhattan Project, and they were put into mass production during the Manhattan Project at a factory in New Jersey, a DuPont factory, in fact. And it was clear from the beginning that these were dangerous chemicals, so the plants where they were produced commonly had fires and explosions.

Workers who worked in these plants were constantly being hospitalized with breathing problems and chemical burns. And in fact, Manhattan Project inspectors warn their supervisors that the fear of injury was causing unrest at these plants and that people in other parts of the DePont facility had come to fear and assignment to the fluorocarbone or PFAS production as an exile to Devil's Island. But it wasn't just workers who were affected. So around 1943, farmers downwind of this plant in New Jersey began to complain that their peach crops were burning up, that their cows were so crippled they couldn't stand. They had to graze by crawling on their bellies. And in some cases, farmers were also falling ill after eating

the produce that they picked. Now, the farmers' complaints really alarmed Manhattan Project officials. They worried that the farmers would sue and that it would compromise the secrecy of the Manhattan Project, but also that it would open the government and its contractors up to liability. So in 1943, they launched the secret medical research program that researched the health effects of various Manhattan Project special materials, including uranium and plutonium. In fact, as part of this program, Manhattan Project scientists injected unknowing cancer patients with plutonium. But they also researched the health and environmental effects of PFS. And Manhattan Project Scientist had determined, as early as 1947, that these chemicals were highly toxic and that they were

accumulating in human blood. So one of the things that makes these chemicals so harmful is that they build up in human blood and they stay there for a long time. Now, this program continued after the under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission, and by 1970 scientists within this program had determined that PFAS were accumulating in the blood of people all over this country. So if you can talk about, because, I mean, this book exposes so much, the title of your book is They Poisoned the World, Life and Death and the Age of Forever Chemicals. Can you talk about who they are, talk about the role of the U.S. government, and also the corporate cover-up of known dangers. One of your points is that you show how Dupon establish the principle.

All new chemicals are safe until proven otherwise, Mariah. So after the war, a company called 3M acquired a... license for technology to produce PFS, and it hired Manhattan Project chemists to develop them for use in conversion production and, you know, for manufacturing purposes and also for use in consumer goods. So one of the first PFAS-based products was Scotch Guard, the fabric protector, which is ubiquitous. Yeah, so, and then DuPont also began producing them, and these two companies also began studying the health effects very early on. So as early as 1960, they knew these chemicals were toxic.

As early as 1970, they knew they were accumulating in the blood of people all over the United States. They subsequently examined thousands of blood samples from people all over the world, including remote rural China. The only samples they could find that didn't contain these chemicals were collected from Korean war vets before 1952. So decades ago, these companies knew that these chemicals were ubiquitous in human blood. Now, the findings about their presence in human blood alarmed insiders in DuPont and 3M, and they began intensively studying the health effects of these chemicals. They quickly discovered, well, A, they discovered that they didn't break down in the environment, and that is one of the things that makes these chemicals uniquely harmful.

But they also discovered that they had a devastating effect on lab animals. So in one case, 3M tested these chemicals on monkeys, which were chosen because they're more biologically similar to humans than lab rats. The study had to be aborted because all of the monkeys died. When they started examining the effects on their workers, they found, you know, similarly alarming finding. So they, as early as the 1970s and 80s, they were linking these chemicals to leukemia, kidney cancer, immune suppression, organ damage, dramatic drops in testosterone. Even more alarming, they had begun to connect these chemicals to birth defects. So in the 1970s, 3M conducted a study that found that a certain PFAS caused birth defects. in the eyes of rats who were exposed in utero.

And DuPont decided that it would start to monitor the pregnancies of workers in its Teflon factories. Teflon is made with PFAS to see if their children also developed birth defects. And in fact, two of seven women who gave birth during the course of the program gave birth to children with facial deformities, very similar to those found in rats. but rather than inform workers or regulators or the public, DuPont simply canceled the study and continued exposing workers to these chemicals and continued releasing these chemicals into the environment, even though there were very simple steps the company could have taken

to filter them out of the air and wastewater that was coming out of their plants. Finally, you wrote a piece in the New York Times. This is how to win an environmental fight, meet the unlikely warriors on the front lines of a major environmental battle. And this last minute we have left, who are these warriors? So there's an unlikely network of activists all over this country, farmers, factory workers, suburban moms, whose lives have been personally affected by PFAS contamination. And they have been aggressively lobbying for action, and they have been remarkably effective. So largely as a result of their activism, hundreds of laws restricting these chemicals have either passed state legislatures or pending in state legislatures. And many of these laws, not only they ban the entire class of chemicals and consumer products.

So this is revolutionary because traditionally the way we regulate. regulate chemicals in this country is one by one. But these state-level laws are banning the entire class of chemicals. We also have a tsunami of litigation driven largely by individuals. And the combination of these two factors, the state-level legislation, there's a ban in the works in the EU as well, and this huge volume of litigation against PFS manufacturers is prompting large swaths the economy to voluntarily move away from PFAS. So 3M, the world's largest manufacturer of these chemicals, has announced that it will quit producing them by the end of this year. And dozens of major retail chains like Apple, McDonald's, Amazon, Target, have done the same.

So they have announced that they will reduce or eliminate PFAS in their products and packaging. So there is a hopeful dimension to the story. Mariah Blake, I want to thank you so much for being with us and for writing this book. Mariah Blake is author of They Poisoned the World, Life and Death, and the Age of Forever Chemicals. Coming up, we speak with a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein. Where are the survivors when it comes to the whole debate around the release of the Epstein files? We'll talk to Jess Michaels back in 20 seconds. So, show, show, show, show, show, show.

Femme of Malie, the family African, fames of the world, I will salute all the day. Femme of Malie, the woman, the family African, Fom Dumand, Women of the World, by the late blind singing duo Amadou and Mariam, in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. We end today's show looking at attempts by the Trump administration to quell an uproar by Trump's MAGA base over the government's refusal to release files related to the dead serial sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein. CNN's reporting, Vice President J.D. Vance met with top Justice Department. officials Wednesday to discuss the Epstein case. The meeting was reportedly set to take place

at his Washington, D.C. home, but was moved to the White House amidst intense media coverage. The gathering reportedly included Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Cash Patel, among others, of course, with J.D. Vance. We discussed the need to craft a unified response to the Epstein scandal and emerging details of Trump's longstanding friendship with the dead serial sex trafficker. CNN's reporting directly contradicts Vance's denial that officials huddled behind closed doors for this discussion. Meanwhile, the family of Jeffrey Epstein's survivor of Virginia Joufrey has called on President Trump not to consider clemency for the serial sex traffickers co-conspirator, the convicted sex felon, Geelaine Maxwell. She was the first

Joufrey was the first survivor to come out publicly against Epstein. She died in Australia in April, reportedly by suicide. In a statement, Jouffre's family members said they were alarmed by these comments of Donald Trump in July when Trump said Epstein stole Joufrey away from his Mar-a-Lago club. And that was the reason that he threw Epstein out. I think she worked at the spot. I think so. I think that was one of the people.

He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever. In response, Drew Frey's siblings and their spouses wrote, quote, it was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say he was aware that Virginia had been stolen from Mar-a-Lago. It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Gielaine Maxwell's criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later, that his good friend Jeffrey likes women on the younger side, no doubt about it. unquote. We in the public are asking for answers. Survivors deserve this, the family of Virginia Joufrey wrote. Well, Geelaine Maxwell was moved from Florida to a minimum security prison

camp in Texas just days after she met with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who formerly served as Trump's personal criminal defense attorney, Maxwell's serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse and traffic underage girls. Trump is not ruled out pardoning Maxwell. For more, we go to Jess Michaels, a survivor of a 1991 sexual assault by Jeffrey Epstein. She's an advocate for sexual assault survivors, the founder and CEO of Three Joanns, a public benefit corporation. Jess, thanks so much for joining us. I think the key question right now is we hear about these private huddles. We know about Todd Blanche, getting the nine-hour response of Ghilane, of Gilane Maxwell, who is a convicted perjurer as well.

Is he also speaking to survivors, this very serious question of where voices like yours are? Can you talk about what this all has meant for the survivors? It's believed the survivors of Maxwell and Epstein might number as much as 1,000, you include it. Well, firstly, Amy, thank you so much for having me on and thank you for asking for the survivor's perspective on what's happening because you are and this White House is not. When you ask me how we feel about that meeting that they had about the Epstein situation, in quotes, what it didn't include was any survivor voices, any victim voices. And that's something that is very frustrating for all of us to hear.

I also had heard you mention earlier, you know, where are survivors in this? And I want to point out, the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Galane Maxwell have been speaking up for almost two decades. That's two decades, including the 2006 case against him. But before that, authorities were alerted in 1990. 1994, 1996, by Maria Farmer, who's now leading a class action suit against the government, the FBI, and I believe it's the Florida Attorney General's office for not following protocols for being alerted of sex trafficking. So victims have been doing the right thing. Where it's fallen apart is any accountability and justice. And that's really frustrating. What's incredibly beautiful about this moment is that this is that this is, issue is crossing party lines. There is no one out there that is okay with child sex trafficking. As you point out, Maria and her sister, Annie Farmer, Annie Farmer testified at Guillain Maxwell's trial. And what is also amazing here is that she has been moved after speaking to Todd Blanche,

Trump's former attorney, criminal defense attorney, to a, from Florida to a, from Florida to a Texas minimum security prison camp. I don't know if any sex felon has ever been at a minimum security prison camp. Because again, important to point out, and you work with so many of these survivors, she's not only accused with conspiring to bring women and girls to Epstein, but she herself abused women. Yes. Yes. She participated. And so when I hear a call for her to be considered a victim of this. I am appalled. I'm sick to my stomach that anyone would say a grown woman molesting children is a victim in any way.

And we could go on. That's a whole other interview and discussion on what is a victim. but it is appalling that there is so little justice for this issue. So on one hand, we have this wonderful public support of finally believing that survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, Galane, Maxwell have been harmed. And they're behind. America is behind the victims. 100%. That's what I'm seeing in my comments. That's what I'm seeing on social media. That's what I'm getting in emails and DMs in an overwhelming degree. And the reason they're responding, this way is because they are seeing now, maybe for the first time, the horrific lack of justice

for sexual assault survivors when there is so much evidence. Because it's not just all of the videotapes and the audio tapes. It is victim impact statements. All of our victim impact statements are in those files. And we are all saying the same thing. Release them. Protect our identities. But release them. Release them now. And guess who else doesn't want those? doesn't want those files released. Galane Maxwell does not want those files released. Why? Because it's going to prove how much she was involved.

There are victim statements about her. And what do you make of President Trump refusing to rule out a pardon? You almost have the sense of moving to a minimum security prison camp and possibly what, house arrest, and then a pardon. Each one is a trial balloon to see how. the public responds. But what's so interesting about this is that MAGA has divided over this, President Trump's base. Yes, yes. Do you know what I find really fascinating about this whole thing is the miscalculation on his part? I have been speaking up as an advocate for four years.

And in my comments, four years ago, when I shared that I was an Epstein survivor, I would see right-leaning up to MAGA, serious MAGA saying, You know what, Donald Trump is on top of this. Donald Trump is the one that's helping the FBI get the evidence on him. They really believed that he was law and order. And I think that's the big disconnect right now, is they're finding out that he's not following through with who they thought he was. And they, and, and it's really backfiring.

I think it's also backfiring for him because we're not, I'm not the 22 year old girl that was raped in 1991. the children that were abused by Maxwell and Epstein are no longer children. We are women. And I think he is greatly misunderstanding the strength and resolve of women that have been systemically and over time completely ignored. You never hear the words Epstein victim or Epstein survivor. out of this White House. I have yet to hear those two words. It's always about we are going to get the bad guys. Here's the first big phase one dump of information from Pambandi in February. But we never

hear. We're going to get the victims justice. We care about how the victims feel right now. We're going to try to move this along in a way that gets the victims and those survivors that have been working so hard to speak up, justice. That's not happening. So it is a level of injury that is painful. We just have 30 seconds, but I don't want to end before you talk about trauma, before you talk about PTSD or, as you call it, PTSD post-traumatic stress injury of the survivors at this point. What I think people assume is that we are just struggling emotionally. And what they laugh what the what the what happens for me i should i'm i'm speaking for me now is that the the pain is physical it's it's it's it's fatigue it's stomach aches it's it's uh heart palpitations

it's headaches it's insomnia it's anxiety it's an inability to just calm my nerves down so it has physical repercussions that i think people are not aware of just michaels i want to thank you so much for speaking out. 1991 Epstein rape survivor. She was 22 at the time. Now she's head of an organization called Three Joans. That does it for our program. I'm Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report.