Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-08-12 Tuesday
Episode Date: August 12, 2025Democracy Now! Tuesday, August 12, 2025...
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From New York, this is Democracy Now.
I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse.
This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back.
We're taking it back.
In an extraordinary move, President Trump's ordered a federal takeover of the D.C. police department
and the deployment of 800 National Guard to the nation's capital.
Trump declared an emergency in D.C., even though violent crime in the city is at a 30-year low.
Critics have described the move as a raw authoritarian power grab.
We'll speak with the head of the ACLU of D.C.
And Princeton professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a leading scholar on the history of policing in America.
Then from deploying troops at home to deploying them abroad, President Trump secretly signed a directive
of approving the use of military force on foreign soil to target Latin American drug cartels.
We'll speak with Arizona State Professor Alexander Avina.
If there's one thing we know about the war on drugs, is that this is not a war on drugs.
This is actually a war on poor people.
Then to Geneva, to speak with the UN Special Rapporteur Irene Khan on Israel's assassination
of six Palestinian journalists in Gaza, including five from Al Jazeera.
All that and more coming in.
Welcome to Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman.
Palestinian health officials say Israeli attacks have killed at least 89 people across Gaza over the past day, including 31 people, killed while seeking food.
Among the dead are five Palestinians bombed in a tent sheltering displaced civilians in Amuasi,
which Israel's designated a safe zone despite consistently attacking the area.
More than 500 others have been wounded by Israel's latest attacks.
Meanwhile, Israel's blockade of Gaza has led to five more deaths from famine and malnutrition
over the last 24 hours, including two children.
Palestinian health officials say at least 227 people have starvation.
to death due to the siege.
Global condemnation is mounting over the assassination of one of the most prominent journalists
in Gaza, Al-Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, along with four of his colleagues at the network.
UN Secretary General Antonio Gutettish is calling for an independent investigation after the five
journalists were killed in a targeted Israeli strike outside Al-Shefa Hospital in Gaza City.
European Union officials and international press freedom groups have also denounced the assassinations.
A sixth journalist, freelance reporter, Mohamed Al-Haldi, was also killed in the same strike.
On Monday, large crowds of mourners gathered for a funeral procession for Al-Sharif and his colleagues
marching from Al-Shefa to Sheikh Radawan Cemetery in central Gaza.
This is Palestinian journalist Mohamed al-Al-Sikh.
through this crime, the occupation is trying to silence words, distort the facts,
conceal the truth, and conceal its crimes in the Gaza Strip.
However, we, the Palestinian journalists, say it loud and clear.
If 1,000 are killed from the journalistic family instead of one journalist,
the occupation will eventually face someone who will report its aggression
and document its crimes in the Gaza Strip.
The government of Norway, said Monday,
it'll divest its two trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund from 11 Israeli companies
citing the, quote, serious humanitarian crisis, unquote, in Gaza.
The announcement came after the newspaper, Optum Posten,
revealed the fund-held shares of the firm Bet Shemash Engines Limited,
which provides services and fighter jet parts to Israel's military.
President Trump announced Monday he's deploying 8,000,
National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., and federalizing the city's police force for
30 days. Speaking to reporters alongside Attorney General Pambandi and Defense Secretary Pete
Hegeseth, Trump claimed crime is out of control in D.C., despite the fact that violent crime
there is at a 30-year low.
Our Capitol City has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals roving mobs of
wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people.
Trump also said he would clear encampments of unhoused people from D.C.
without providing plans of where they'll be relocated.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called Trump's proposals unsettling and unprecedented, but conceded
Washington, D.C. would observe his orders.
We don't, and I think I speak for all Americans, we don't believe or believe it's legal to use
the American military against American citizens on American soil.
Meanwhile, demonstrators took to the streets to voice their dissent against Trump's
call for troops in the Washington, D.C. area. Here is Kaya Chatterjee, the executive director
of the group, Free D.C. If Trump cared about safety, he would stop kidnapping immigrant neighbors.
Because terrorizing people, terrorizing families is not safety. If Trump cared about our safety,
he would fund Medicaid.
He would fund schools.
He would fund SNAP.
Because people being sick, out of school and hungry, is not safety.
After headlines, we'll speak with the head of the Washington, D.C.,
American Civil Liberties Union, and with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Princeton University
professor.
He is a scholar on the history of policing in the United States.
In California, federal judge is hearing arguments about whether President Trump violated federal law when he deployed the National Guard and Active Duty Marines to suppress the protests in Los Angeles against his mass deportation campaign.
Governor Gavin Newsom is arguing Trump's order violated an 1878 law known as the Posse Comitatis Act, which prevents the president from using the military as a police force against civilians.
According to the Pentagon, 250 National Guard members remain deployed in California.
To see our interview with the California Attorney General, go to Democracy Now.org.
In Pennsylvania, immigration rights advocates are calling for the Moshanan Valley Processing Center to be shut down after another death in ICE custody.
Chao Feng-Gu, a 32-year-old immigrant from China, was pronounced dead last week after he was found hanging by the neck in the jail shower.
He had been held at the center for five days.
Moshanin is operated by the private prison company Geo Group and is the largest.
ICE jail in the northeastern United States. This comes as the number of people detained in
immigration jails has surpassed 60,000, a record high. In Texas, protests and vigils continue in El Paso
demanding the release of Sushil Santiago, a longtime community organizer and recipient of DACA. That's
deferred action for childhood arrivals. Santiago was taken by Border Patrol agents at the El Paso
airport as she was about to board a domestic flight for work in early August.
The agent's detained her for questioning without a warrant or reason, despite her having
work, authorization, and deportation protection under DACA.
She filmed a short video as the two border agents accosted her.
We're going to question you in regards to your documents.
What's the question for?
That's just a little to talk about it.
What's the questioning for?
How do you, how you got the...
I need to have my lawyer here.
Catalina Sochia Santiago is being held at an ice jail in El Paso.
In Atlanta, police say a gunman who harbored conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines
fired 180 shots at the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control during his rampage last Friday,
killing a police officer and terrorizing public health workers who scrambled.
for shelter as bullets riddled for office buildings. The suspect, Patrick Joseph White,
was armed with five guns, including a rifle. Neighbors said he strongly believed vaccines had
hurt him and were hurting other people. On Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. toward the CDC after tweeting he was deeply saddened by the shooting
that broke over a hundred windows. This comes after Kennedy froze,
hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for vaccine research and oversaw the layoffs of more
than 2,000 CDC workers, including public health experts, studying gun violence.
On Sunday, current and former CDC workers who gathered for a protest in Atlanta called for
RFK Jr. to be replaced. This is infectious disease doctor Elizabeth Soda.
And I am enraged that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as how the secretary
As Health Secretary, his lies are costing people their lives.
His dangerous rhetoric is making Americans thicker.
As science-driven decision-making is destroyed.
But it is not too late.
If other Americans join me in my anger to demand RFK Jr's resignation, all is not lost.
An influential U.S. Medical Journal has rejected RFK.
juniors' efforts to retract a large study that found aluminum ingredients and vaccines pose no
health risks for children. That's according to Reuters, which reports despite the findings,
Kennedy continues to promote doubts about vaccine safety and is considering whether to initiate a
review of shots that contain aluminum, which Kennedy blames for autoimmune diseases and allergies.
A federal judge of Manhattan has denied the government's request to unseal grand jury transcripts
from the sex trafficking case of convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator,
Gilane Maxwell.
President Trump had been pushing for the release of the transcripts to deflect from the scrutiny
of his own personal relationship with Epstein.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmeyer said in Monday's ruling, quote,
a member of the public appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute
to public knowledge might conclude that the government's motion for their unsubriced.
ceiling was aimed not at transparency, but at diversion, aimed not at full disclosure, but at an
illusion of such, unquote. The grand jury testimony is a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands
of pages in the Epstein files, which Trump can decide to release at any time.
Meanwhile, NBC News is reporting the minimum security prison camp in Texas, where Maxwell was
recently transferred after speaking to Deputy Attorney General has stepped up security since it's
not designed to house convicted sex offenders. It's not clear how much that new security is
costing the public. Iraq's energy ministry says it's restoring power after power outage hit
central in southern Iraq amidst record heat fueled by the climate crisis. Temperatures in the capital
Baghdad reach 50 degrees Celsius or 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile,
southern Europe is experiencing a deadly heat wave with temperatures in some areas topping 110
degrees Fahrenheit. In Italy, a four-year-old boy died of heat stroke. In Spain, at least one person
has died from burns, while thousands more have been forced to flee fast-moving wildfires.
We are completely helpless and abandoned. Someone, do something for us because we are burning.
We might not be a national park, but we are people. No one does anything.
No one.
President Trump's delayed plans to impose sweeping tariffs on China, just hours before they were set to take effect.
An executive order signed by Trump Monday locks in place until November 10th, a 30% U.S. tariff on Chinese imports,
with Beijing putting a 10% tariff on U.S. imports.
Trump previously threatened tariffs on China as high as 245%.
Congress's budget arm reported Monday, reported,
Publican's massive tax and spending bill, dubbed by Trump, the one beautiful bill, will further
widen the gap between rich and poor.
The Congressional Budget Office found the wealthiest 10% of households are set to take home
an additional $13,600 a year.
Meanwhile, the poorest 10% will lose some $1,200 in annual income and benefits.
Some 4 million people, including a million children, will lose significant amounts of free.
food aid. Meanwhile, President Trump's named a new commissioner to lead the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, replacing the commissioner Trump fired earlier this month after the BLS released a weaker
than expected jobs report. Trump's nominee, E.J. Antony, is chief economist at the Heritage
Foundation, the right-wing think tank behind Project 2025. Antony's frequently questioned the
Bureau's jobs, data, and methods. After Trump was elected, he posted on X, and Tony posted on
X. Doge needs to take a chainsaw to the BLS, unquote. And in Pennsylvania, at least two people
were killed and 10 others injured Monday as a U.S. steel plant outside Pittsburgh exploded.
Witnesses described a massive shockwave that sheared away part of a building while
billowing black smoke forced nearby residents to shelter in place for several hours due to fears
over air quality. It's not the first industrial accident at the plant.
In 2009, a worker was killed in an explosion.
One year later, 14 others were injured and yet another blast.
And those are some of the headlines.
This is DemocracyNow.
DemocracyNow.org, the war and peace report.
I am Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now is Juan Gonzalez in Chicago.
Hi, Juan.
Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.
In an extraordinary move, President Trump has ordered a federal takeover of the D.C.
Police Department and the deployment of 800 National Guard troops to the nation's capital.
Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C., even though violent crime there is at a 30-year low.
Unlike other cities, Washington, D.C. is not part of any state. Under the Home Rule Act,
the President has the authority to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department for 30 days.
Trump also authorized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to work with state governors around the country
to utilize additional National Guard units, if necessary.
Trump threatened to take action in other cities.
This issue directly impacts the functioning of the federal government
and is a threat to America, really?
It's a threat to our country.
We have other cities also that are bad, very bad.
You look at Chicago, how bad it is.
You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is.
We have other cities that are very bad.
New York has a problem.
And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland.
We don't even mention that anymore.
They're so far gone.
We're not going to let it happen.
We're not going to lose our cities over this.
And this will go further.
We're starting very strongly with D.C.
And we're going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say.
Trump's move came days after a former Doge staffer, known as Big Balls, was assaulted during an attempt.
carjacking. On Monday, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser denounced Trump's order to take over
the D.C. police. And while this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can't say
that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we're totally surprised. We know that access
to our democracy is tenuous. That is why you have heard me in many people,
many washingtonians before me advocate for full statehood for the district of columbia we are
american citizens our families go to war we pay taxes and we uphold the responsibilities of
citizenship protesters gathered monday near the white house to condemn trump's move this is kia chatterj
executive director of free dc nothing trump is doing right now is a
about our safety.
If Trump cared about our safety,
he would stop mass firings of federal workers.
Taking away our jobs, our family's jobs, that isn't safety.
If Trump cared about safety, he would stop kidnapping immigrant neighbors.
Because terrorizing people, terrorizing families is not
safety. If Trump
cared about our safety, he would fund
Medicaid. He would fund
schools. He would fund
SNAP. Because people
being sick, out of school, and
hungry, is not
safety.
If Trump cared about D.C.
safety, he would make D.C.'s prosecutor
accountable to the people of D.C.
So that they were listening
to local leaders. These
are the leaders. Our local leaders,
our communities are the one who,
ones who have reduced crime to a 30-year low.
Advocates for unhoused people in Washington, D.C., have also expressed alarm over Trump's threats.
On Sunday, Trump wrote, quote, the homeless have to move out immediately, unquote.
This is 56-year-old Fligate Rippey, who became homeless in Washington, D.C.
after the house she lived in caught fire in March.
Give us a home.
How about that?
How about just giving people that need a home inside?
Then we'd be inside.
You just want to just throw us to the rats.
We begin today's show with two guests.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad is Professor of African-American Studies in Public Affairs at Princeton.
He's a leading scholar on the history of policing, author of The Condemnation of Blackness, Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, joining us from Oak Bluffs in Massachusetts.
And in Washington, D.C., we're joined by Monica Hopkins.
She's executive director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now.
Monica Hopkins, let's begin with you.
Talk about what it means to federalize the D.C. police force to bring in 800 National Guard
who are not trained in law enforcement.
Is that right, but deal with national emergencies or crowd control?
What does this mean?
So this is the first time that we have seen Section 740 of the Home Rule Act actually enacted
to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department.
There are limitations on the president doing this,
which is that he has to do it for an emergency,
for a limited period of time,
and for federal purposes.
And that is a question.
Now, as far as the National Guard,
we have seen that in D.C.
We have seen the deployment of the National Guard in D.C. in 2020 against racial justice protesters.
And what we saw were military-grade helicopters that hovered over D.C. following protesters through the downtown corridor where people eat, go out to concerts, enjoy the nightlife in the city.
And those helicopters broke windows, tore signs off of buildings, and really damaged not only the city, but the protesters.
And the ACLUDC represented one of those protesters.
We received a fair settlement.
However, the power of the president to actually call out the National Guard remains in place.
And Monica Hopkins, what about this continuing trend of President Trump to declare virtually every issue he wants to act on a national emergency or security threat to the country?
How have the courts reacted to his use of these emergency powers so far?
Yeah, so we see sort of across, you know, the country in places like L.A.,
and in various different courts that we cannot deploy the military against American citizens in this way.
The president has made up these blatant pretextual emergencies to justify calling out the National Guard,
calling in law enforcement agencies to essentially take over cities and issues
and blatant disregard for our democracy and our Constitution.
And could you explain a little bit more about the D.C. Home Rule Act, which was signed into law by
President Nixon back in 1973. What does it allow or not allow the federal government to do?
Yeah. So in 1973, essentially Congress used to oversee the day-to-day operations of the District of Columbia. So people can think about what goes on in their own municipality or cities, trash pickup, road maintenance, all of those things. And Congress, who was not the
elected body to take care of those things, decided to give the governance and overseeing of
D.C. to the D.C. residents under what is known as the Home Rule Act. That means that in D.C.
we elect our own city council. We elect our own mayor. We pass our own laws. We raise our own
taxes. Our city council is akin to, if you think about it, a state legislature, our mayor is
akin to a governor in a way, but without the power of states, we still have the congressional
body that oversees the District of Columbia and can intervene in District of Columbia affairs
in ways they can't in any other jurisdiction.
And that means that they can directly legislate on District of Columbia.
They can enact disapproval resolutions when we pass our laws.
Many, many Americans are familiar with that.
When the Congress passed a disapproval resolution when we tried to pass a reformed criminal code.
And then additionally, Congress, even though it is our budget with our tax money,
Congress can put appropriation riders on the federal budget that tell D.C. what we can and cannot spend
to run our city.
On Monday, President Trump threatened violence against protesters saying, if you spit and
And we hit. This is part of what he said.
Entire neighborhoods are now under emergency curfews, just this past weekend gunfire
through, went through. And you saw that, the Navy Yard. I saw it this morning. They saw
that they fought back against, see, they fight back until you knock the hell out of them
because it's the only language they understand. But they fought back against law enforcement
last night and they're not going to be fighting back long because I've instructed them and
told them whatever happens you know they love to spit in the face of the police as the
police are standing up there in uniform they're standing and they're screaming at them
an inch away from their face and then they start spitting in their face and I said you tell
them, you spit and we hit, and they can hit real hard.
Trump talking about protecting law enforcement after he pardoned over 1,200 January 6 rioters.
In the days afterwards, five police officers died. There were over 140 injured by the protesters.
And now you have the latest news, Jared Wise, who was in mid-trial when Trump.
Trump pardoned him, has been hired by the DOJ.
He is seen on video released by NPR saying kill the cops and F the cops, Monica Hopkins.
Yeah.
So in the District of Columbia, this is a serious concern.
We have a federal prosecutor who is not elected by the District of Columbia, is not accountable to the District of Columbia.
Our police force needs to engage in constitutional policing.
And what we have seen work in communities for public safety is when communities can trust the police.
And this administration actually pardoned two police officers who were prosecuted by the Department of Justice and found guilty of murdering
Karan Hilton, this sort of broad call from the president to enact violence against protesters
against the residents of the District of Columbia is deeply, deeply troubling.
I'd like to bring in Halil Gibran Mohammed Professor of African American Studies and
Public Affairs at Princeton University. Professor, your reaction to this
this latest move of President Trump. And also, if you could talk somewhat about why the District of
Columbia is in this special status of essentially a territory within the United States, not even
and why D.C. statehood has been stalled for so long.
Good morning, everyone. So I think that we are seeing a consistent pattern from Donald Trump.
we can start with the calls for the return of the death penalty in 1989 in reference to the rape of a white woman in Central Park, which ultimately led to the conviction of five innocent young black boys.
Donald Trump has never apologized for that moment, placing a full-page ad in the New York Times.
So if we start with the man that we've known as a public for the better part of seven decades,
this is a man who has consistently scapegoated black and brown people to either gain celebrity or political capital.
And now as president the second time, he is enacting an authoritarian agenda,
in which case the militarization of law enforcement and the deployment.
of law enforcement assets to either coerce or control scapegoated populations, as we saw in Los Angeles
recently, is consistent. And this is, in particular, an escalation. Because while he tested the waters
in deploying the Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles, now we see the takeover, as Monica
has already described, of a local police department. And while he has, as we've discussed,
that right to do so, at least for a limited period, it's not clear that he's going, not going to
stop. He's calling for the same in New York. He's calling for the same in Chicago. And I just want to
remind everyone that the Trump administration elected in 2016 came in writing on a lie about
American carnage in American cities. This was also a period of dramatically declined crime rates and
violent crime rates in particular across U.S. cities. So there is nothing here that is factual in
terms of the pretext for the calls here. What is consistent is Donald Trump's use of racist rhetoric,
racist ideas, and the use of policing to enact a domestic policy agenda.
Khalil Jabran Mohammed, can you also talk about the fact that the DOJ recently lifted
the consent decrees over the police departments that have histories of brutality.
So on the one hand, you have that.
On the other hand, of course, he is naming from Oakland to Baltimore, from L.A. to Chicago to New York,
historically communities with large black and brown communities.
That's right.
Listen, we are way past any notion here that these are legitimate concerns.
You've already pointed out that the 1600 insurrectionists, many of whom posed an absolute direct threat to law enforcement, 140 injured, as you mentioned, means that there's no neutral ground upon which we could have a factual discussion.
And then we might lead to different interpretations, but we're not even dealing with facts here.
And it's really, really important that you point out the removal of consent decrees, particularly for many.
which the former Department of Justice under the Biden administration and Merrick Garland in particular
identified a pattern and practice of wide-scale discrimination and anti-con or in this case unconstitutional
policing. Donald Trump doesn't care about any rule of law. What he cares about is flexing the
power of the executive branch of government against named and so-called enemies. And as long as he can
get away with it without congressional oversight and a claim of a popular mandate, which of course
is not entirely true from the election. But nevertheless, he is using the pretext of public opinion
who elected him to get away with this. And it is a slide towards a fascism. All of this is
textbook around the world. And we ought to be deeply concerned about the future of all of us
with respect to the capacity of this particular president to use and threaten a coercive
state violence against his so-called enemies.
I want to ask you also about the inclusion of the homeless in this latest press conference
that the president had on Sunday when en route from the White House to his golf course in
Virginia, he wrote on Truth Social, the Homeless have to go out.
immediately and that we will give you places to stay but far from the capital?
Well, again, I think a global perspective is very helpful here. We've seen the same president
threatened to turn Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East. That is a massive population
experiencing ethnic cleansing and genocide. The definition of houselessness or homelessness
doesn't even apply at the scale of a humanitarian crisis.
So in the United States, the same policies are essentially shovel ready for this person,
for this president, meaning that the criminalization of people who are victims of an unequal
society, of the criminalization of poverty by often local officials who have not found
the resources to support the health care and housing needs of,
homeless populations. So then to essentially threaten to turn those populations into criminal
populations, that is, to treat them as if their poverty is a crime, is consistent, again, with the
policies of this administration when it comes to people, both in the U.S. and in Gaza and in other
parts of the world. In fact, what percentage, I don't know if you know, of the unhoused, are
veterans? I don't know in D.C., but Monica may. It's a, it's,
significant. But yes, we know, I mean, it's, it would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous and
absurd. But again, this is a president, we should remind folks, who ran by mocking veterans
in this country, who claims the mantle of being the toughest commander in chief, but who
consistently disrespects those who have served in this country. And in this case, as you mentioned,
Amy, who may in fact be experiencing houselessness in a disproportionate way in this country.
Alil Jubran, Muhammad, we thank you so much for being with us, Professor of African American Studies and Public Affairs at Princeton.
Author of the book, The Condonation of Blackness, Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America,
speaking to us from the historically black community of Oak Bluffs and Martha's Vineyard,
coming up from deploying troops at home to deploying them abroad.
Trump has secretly signed a directive approving the use of military force on foreign soil.
He says it's to target Latin American drug cartels.
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DemocracyNow.org. This is Democracy Now,
democracy now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman
with Juan Gonzalez. We turn from deploying troops at home to
deploying them abroad. The New York Times reveal President Trump
secretly signed a directive approving the Pentagon's use of
military force on foreign soil. He says to target Latin American
drug cartels. According to the Times, the order
provides the Pentagon authority to direct military
operations at sea and on foreign soil against cartels designated by the Trump administration
to be terrorist organizations.
Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke about targeting drug cartels during an interview
with the Catholic News outlet, EWTN.
It allows us to now target what they're operating and to use other elements of American
power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, whatever, to target these groups
if we have an opportunity to do it, we have to start treating them as armed terrorist.
organizations, not simply drug-dealing organizations.
Drug-dealing is the kind of terrorism they're doing, and it's not the only.
Mexican president, Claudia Shanbaum, lashed out at Trump's move, saying the United States
is going to come to Mexico with the military.
We cooperate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion.
That's ruled out.
Absolutely ruled out.
President Shanebaum spoke at a news conference Monday.
I was informed there would be an order, but it has nothing to do with the country of Mexico.
It has to do with their country, not our country.
For more, we're joined by Alexander Avina.
He has extensively researched and written about capitalism, the U.S.-backed War on Drugs and State Violence,
Associate Professor of Latin American History at Arizona State University, author of the award-winning
book, Specters of Revolution, Peasant Gorillas in the Cold War Mexican Countryside.
Welcome, Democracy Now, Professor.
If you can start off by talking about the significance of this secret directive that Trump has signed for Mexico and beyond.
Good morning. Thank you for having me.
This is, I think, a really dangerous directive that threatens to generate and unleash violence throughout any of the Latin American countries that Trump administration may target under this broadly.
defined, you know, struggle against terrorism that they are now using to describe their fight
against Latin American drug cartels. You know, part of one of the things that we should start
with is to think about how the war on drugs is never really about drugs. It's a war against
the way it's unfolded in Latin America in the last five, six decades. It's actually a war
against poor people. So they may, the Trump administration may say that the targets are, you know,
six different transnational drug trafficking organizations from Mexico, two from Central America,
and one, shadowy one from Venezuela. But what's going to, the people who are going to suffer
from any sort of unilateral U.S. military action in Latin America are everyday civilians and
communities because it's really difficult to discern in many instances who is a narco and who
is not a narco for a variety of different reasons. And also we need to think about how the U.S.
historically has used the war on drugs as another way to advance U.S. imperial geopolitical
designs in the Western Hemisphere, using it to attack governments that they deemed to be a threat
to U.S. national security while at the same time working with unsavory governments who are actually
involved in drug trafficking, but because they're anti-communist and authoritarian, the U.S.
is willing to work with them. And we have ample examples from history that should play this out.
And yes, Professor, I wanted to follow up with that in terms of this whole idea of the
this being new for the U.S. military being involved in Latin America.
Of course, there were reports that the Delta Force commandos were involved with the Colombian
military in the killing of Pablo Escobar in 1993.
Of course, the CIA's direct involvement in the killing of Che Guevara, the U.S.
military providing air support for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
there are so many of these examples already have of the U.S. military directly intervening in Latin American countries.
So this isn't really anything new, is it?
What I found most interesting was this doubling of the reward for the capture of Nicolas Maduro,
who's already been indicted for drug trafficking here in the United States,
even though there's very scant evidence of that in his own home country.
country?
No, you're entirely correct, Juan.
I think this is the immediate context of this directive, the way I see it, is the recent
announcement that the bounty on Nicolas Maduro had been raised to $50 million because
he's alleged by the US government to be the head of this shadowy drug cartel organization
called the Cartel de Los Soles or the Cartel of the Sons.
And let's recall that there's been regime change efforts and operations against Venezuela going
back to the Obama administration when he designated Venezuela to be a national security threat
during the first Trump administration, they ratcheted up economic sanctions and waged a level
of economic warfare that has produced a great depression, a U.S-style great depression on
different orders of magnitude according to reporting of Jeff Stein from the Washington Post.
In 2020, we had, I think that was the first time that Nicolas Maduro was charged to be involved
in drug trafficking efforts into the United States.
So this is, I mean, even we don't have, we can go, we don't have time to go back
all the way to post-World War II and all the different times during the Cold War that
the U.S. used, again, the war on drugs to support pliant authoritarian right-wing allies
while going after revolutionary governments.
There's numerous instances.
But I think in this, the immediate context in this situation is that this is part, I think
it's directed mostly in Venezuela.
I think it's part of an attempt to continue regime change operations.
And this is, again,
Venezuela offers a really interesting case study because the very anti, the very counter narcotic
efforts that the U.S. is waging against Venezuela attacks and affects everyday people in
Venezuela and then generates the very processes that the Trump administration tries to fight
at the U.S.-Mexico border, namely mass displacement in people robbed of the right to stay
home, who then flee their country because of this economic warfare and then try to make it
into the United States.
So that's one of the insidate things about the war on drugs is one, it's never going to end because it's not about drugs. And two, it generates the very processes that it says it's fighting against. And in this situation, we have a combination of the war on drugs, the global war on terror and the war on migrants.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you briefly also about how Mexico's president, Claudia Schengbaum, has been dealing with not only the militarization of the border, but now these threats of possible U.S. intervention to address.
against the cartels within her own country?
It's really difficult to be a neighbor of the United States
because also what this issue brings up is the U.S.
is historical and current claim that it can violate
the national sovereignty of any Latin American Caribbean nation
when it sees fit on whatever premise or justification
that it wants to use.
For historically, Mexico has had a tense,
fraught relationship with the United States
because the United States' unwillingness
to recognize the national sovereignty
and the self-determination of it.
its southern border. That's why the U.S. has invaded Mexico on several times and taken half of
its national territory in the 19th century. So President Claudia Schaembaum has to walk a tightrope.
On the one hand, has to constantly and consistently defend the national sovereignty of our country.
But drug trafficking and drug production is a real issue. So how do you, she's, how do you collaborate
in a cooperative, productive way with a neighbor who for the last three, four years has been saying,
you know, we want to invade Mexico or engage in different types of military.
activities against drug trafficking organizations based in Mexico.
So she's in a really difficult situation.
Her predecessor, Andres Manuel López Obrador, famously expelled the DEA from Mexico.
But military-to-military relationships and contacts never ended.
We have special forces units within the U.S. military who continue to train their
counterparts in the Mexican military, you know, plans and programs that have continued
under President Shamebaum.
So she's walking a tightrope.
And it's really, she also has to do with the military.
tariff issues. So I would not want to be in her position. But I think what she comes back to is
consistently defending the national sovereignty of Mexico, as she should, as I think is the
appropriate way forward. Alexander Vino, want to thank you for being with us,
Associate Professor Latin American History at Arizona State University extensively researched the
U.S.-backed so-called war on drugs and state violence. Speaking to us from Phoenix, Arizona,
please stay after the show. We'd like to do a post show in Spanish, and we will post it on
Line at DemocracyNow.org. Next up, the UN Special Roper Tour on Freedom of Expression,
Irene Khan, on Israel's assassination of six Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
Five from Al Jazeera. Stay with us.
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The healers by the late great Randy Weston, to see our interview with him and his performance, you can go to Democracy Now.org.
This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.
Org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Global condemnation is mounting over Israel's assassination
of one of the most prominent journalists in Gaza, the Al Jazeera correspondent, Anas al-Sharif,
along with four of his colleagues at the network and another freelance journalists.
UN Secretary General Antonio Gutted is just calling for an independent investigation after the five
journalists were killed in a targeted Israeli strike outside Al-Shefa hospital in a tent,
clearly marked in Gaza City.
European Union officials and international press freedom groups have also denounced the
assassinations.
The sixth journalist freelance report of Muhammad al-Kaldi was also killed in the same strike.
Minutes before the strike, Al-Sharif posted to X, quote,
If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins.
It's people's voices, silence.
Their faces erased and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide.
you chose not to stop, unquote.
On Monday, crowds of mourners gathered for a funeral procession for Al-Sharif and his colleagues,
marching from Al-Shifa to Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in central Gaza,
carrying the journalist's bodies wrapped in white sheets,
a dark blue flak press jacket, and a Palestinian flag,
were placed on al-Sherif's remains.
People embraced as they decried Israel's relentless targeting of journalists in Gaza.
Meanwhile, at rallies and vigils worldwide, people are demanding accountability for the attack on journalists, including in Tunisia, Belfast, Dublin, Berlin, London, Oslo, Stockholm, and Washington, D.C.
For more, we go to Geneva, Switzerland, where we're joined by Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression.
She served as Secretary General of Amnesty International from 2001 to 2009.
Irene Hahn, welcome back to democracy now.
In late July, you publicly denounced Israel's threats against Anas al-Sharith.
Can you talk about what you understood at that time?
And then this young reporter, 28 years old, response to your press statement.
Yes, well, Annas actually contacted me and Al Jazeera contacted me to tell me of this impending threat.
on his head. They had seen it before. He's not the first one, as you know. There are
anything between 26 to 30 journalists who have been targeted in this campaign of
assassination. And Annes wanted me to go public. He wanted others to go public to stop what Israel
was doing. But at the same time, he thanked me for my support and then he said nothing would
stop him from speaking the truth. And in a way, he signed his own death warrant by that
because, as you know, he and the others,
Zazirah's entire team in northern Gaza,
were killed, murdered,
just as Israel ramps up its military action on the city, Gaza City.
So there is a clear pattern here of killing journalists
to clear the path to silence voices,
to stop the international global opinion from being informed
of the genocide in Gaza.
And Irene Hahn, the number of journalists, so more than 200 have been killed in Gaza,
that's more than all the journalists killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Afghanistan War combined.
Your sense of the Israeli impunity here and being able to basically kill the core of journalists that are still able to report from Gaza?
You have to take into account that Israel has refused to give access to international media.
So these are all local Gazan journalists who are putting their lives on the line to keep the world informed.
Many of them, you named some 200, many of them, of course, have been killed in the intensity of the battle.
Many of them have been killed while asleep in their own apartments.
But these cases, the cases of Anas, Anas now and his colleagues and a number of other cases of targeted killing is really murder.
It is not killing in the context of war.
It is a deliberate strategy to stop independent voices reporting.
So it's as much a threat to independent journalism as it is to the journalists themselves,
as well as a blatant attempt by the Israelis to stop the world witnessing.
they are doing.
And these killings also came as the Israeli government announced they're unleashing a new
operation in the area of Gaza.
Who will be left to document this operation now?
Well, absolutely.
And that is why Annas got in touch with me, because he realized what was happening.
You know from his message on LinkedIn and from his message that he has sent to me and to
others, it was very, very clear.
He has been there on the ground since October 2023.
he could see the pattern, he could see what was happening, he knew they were coming for him.
And that is why it's an incumbent on all of us now, not to just condemn, but actually to act
before independent media is totally obliterated from Gaza.
Irene Khan, I want to ask what you're calling for and the significance of Netanyahu holding
this news conference on Sunday and saying he has now said that the,
Israeli military can bring in journalists, but they're most concerned about protecting their
safety. A few hours later is when Israel assassinated these six journalists. Now, it is the
first time NPR reports since October 23 that Israel so quickly took responsibility for their
assassination. You know, compare it to Shereen Abuakla, May 11, 2022, when Israel said it is not
clear, and then, you know, so many studies were done, but it became very clear.
Talk about what you are calling for at this point.
Yes. Well, it's not actually an admission of taking responsibility because there's no
accountability in it. It's actually a brazen attempt to show the world that the Israeli
army can work as it wishes, regardless of international humanitarian law that protects
journalists as civilians. Now, what I'm calling for,
is, of course, independent investigation, truly independent investigation, but I'm also calling
for protection of journalists on the ground and for access to international journalists.
Israel always covers these assassinations and murders with allegations and smear campaigns.
The journalists are simply agents of Hamas or members of Hamas, and that kind of gives
Israel a veil of impunity. It's important for international journalists to be
on the ground so they can actually investigate and expose this false story and the string of
assassinations that Israel is carrying out. And I think we need to remember the message Israel's
action is sending to the rest of the world because there are other spots, other conflict areas,
where also others are learning that you need to be just brazen and go ahead and kill journalists
and you can get away with it. Quickly, Irene Khan, we're speaking to you in Geneva, Switzerland.
Geneva, the Geneva Conventions.
Can you talk about how the convention specifically protect journalists?
Well, the convention gives journalists civilian status,
which means that, like all other civilians,
they should not be targeted during the war.
The problem is the journalists are not just civilians.
They're the kind of civilians that have to go to the front line
and not run away somewhere else.
They are not like women and children
who can move and seek shelter elsewhere.
They have to be where the fighting is.
And that exposes them.
They're much more like humanitarian workers.
And journalists need to be recognized as humanitarian workers.
I believe there needs to be additional protection
given to them because it shows how vulnerable they are
on the one hand to attacks.
And on the other hand, how important their work is,
to the rest of the world, to any peace process, to any attempt to have accountability and justice
for the victims.
And we only have about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you that last month, the union
representing reporters at the French press agency, AFP, warned that the agency staff
are in danger of starving to death.
And they issued an open letter condemning what Israel is doing in terms of denying
food, not to the population in general, but also to journalists as well. Your response?
Well, absolutely. These journalists are local journalists, as I said. So they have faced all the
problems that the population is facing. They've had their own families killed. They have to hunt
for food, even as they hunt for news. So they've been put in a terrible situation, and that's why
Israel has to open the gates, not under military protection, but allow journalists independently
to come and investigate. It has to stop the starvation, the blockade. It has to allow humanitarian
assistance to come in. And it has to agree to a ceasefire. And, of course, stop the genocide.
I want to end with the words of Anas al-Sharif himself, anticipating his own murder by Israeli forces.
He wrote a pre-prepared message that was posted on his ex-account after his death. Al Jazeera read part of his message.
on air.
If these words reach you,
know that Israel has succeeded
in killing me and silencing my voice.
I have lived through pain
in all its details,
tasted suffering and loss many times.
Yet I never once hesitated
to convey the truth as it is
without distortion or falsification
so that God may bear witness
against those who stayed silent
and accepted our killing.
He ends,
Do not forget Gaza,
and do not forget
me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.
The words of Anas al-Sharif posted after he was killed by the Israeli military, along with
five other journalists.
Five of them were with Al Jazeera.
Irene Kahn, want to thank you so much for being with us, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom
of Opinion and Expression, speaking to us from Geneva, Switzerland.
To see our interview with the managing editor of Al Jazeera,
to Democracy Now.org.
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