Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-08-22 Friday

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Democracy Now! Friday, August 22, 2025

From New York, this is Democracy Now. We got here because the President of the United States is one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history. We got here because he recognizes that he will lose the election. Congress will go back into the hands of the Democratic Party next November. California Governor Gavin Newsom says he's fighting fire with fire, signing legislation to hold special elections for the public to approve a new gerrymandered map. This in response to Texas, where the State House just passed a new congressional map to flip five Democratic House seats at the request of President Trump. We'll get the latest. Then, a Democracy Now broadcast exclusive.

We speak to fired State Department press officer Shahad Gureshi. He wanted to send a message of condolences to the families of Palestinian journalists killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza. I was fired as the press officer for Israeli-Palestine affairs at the U.S. State Department because ideologues are taking the lead both on policy and on press. And this sends a chilling message to both the political appointees. and the civil service. And finally, to Guatemala. We'll hear from the family of a California day laborer. During an immigration raid at a Home Depot last week,

he tried to flee by running across the freeway, but was struck by a car and killed. He died because he was afraid. He died because of these injustices, this persecution. I want him to be remembered as a brave and heart. working man. Also speak with the National Day Labor organizing network. All that and more coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. The United Nations has formally declared a famine in the Gaza Strip, where more than half a million Palestinians face widespread starvation, destitution, and preventable death. The declaration follows 22 months of near constant Israeli bombardment, along with the repeated forced displacement of Palestinians, severe restrictions on access to food, water, and medicine, and the collapse of health sanitation and market systems. The UN's top humanitarian official, Tom Fletcher, spoke from Geneva earlier today.

It is a famine in 2025, a 21st century famine, watched over by drones, and the most advanced military technology in history. It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war. It is a famine on all of our watch. Everyone owns this. The Gaza famine is the world's famine. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would restart indirect negotiations with Ma, saying that returning

the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza, but Netanyahu said he would not halt Israel's military campaign to seize Gaza City while forcibly displacing its nearly one million inhabitants. Israel's unrelenting attacks continued overnight with at least 25 Palestinians killed since the early hours of Friday. Among the dead, at least 12 civilians killed when Israel bombed a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, Sheikh Rodwan neighborhood. And Daryl Balah, 23-year-old Saja Hamad, is recovering from injuries after her dramatic rescue from the rubble of her home following an Israeli airstrike on the New Sadat refugee camp. I didn't feel anything. I was just sleeping in the other room.

And suddenly, I heard nothing. I just found myself under the rubble. Everything fell onto my face. I was screaming, calling for my family. I thought they were dead. did not expect they would still be alive. I thought I would end up alone. An internal Israeli intelligence database indicates at least 83% of Palestinians killed in Israel's assault on Gaza were civilians.

That's according to a joint investigation by The Guardian and the Israeli news cites local call and 972 magazine. They report the proportion of civilians slaughter by Israel has few parallels in modern warfare. Fair. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation Thursday approving a special election in November asking voters whether to waive an independent redistricting process to approve a new partisan congressional map favoring Democrats. Newsom's signature came just hours after lawmakers in Sacramento approved the measures. State Assembly Speaker Democrat Robert Rivas called the proposed map a direct response to a new congressional map approved by Texas's Republican-controlled House this week at the behest of President Trump that's designed to flip five House seats

in the 26 midterm elections. We will not let our political system be hijacked by authoritarianism. And today we give every California the power to say no, to say no to Donald Trump's power grab, and yes, to our people, to our state, and to our democracy. Protests continue in Washington, D.C., opposing President Trump's federal takeover and military occupation of the Capitol. On Thursday, Trump paid a visit to hundreds of National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agents deployed to the district, delivering pizza and hamburgers to them, and praising their crackdown, which the White House says has netted some 600 arrests since early August. Hundreds of immigrants have also been arrested in Washington, D.C. in recent days, as immigrants, and Customs Enforcement agents are now accompanying police officers on traffic stops targeting

delivery workers on mopeds. ICE agents are reportedly using driver's license, registration, and insurance information to determine the immigration status of people stopped by police. Over 200 immigrants have been arrested since Trump's federal takeover of D.C., according to the White House. The shift violates D.C. sanctuary policies. which restrict collaboration between local police and federal immigration agencies. This comes as the Pentagon's recruiting civilian employees to join Trump's crackdown on immigrants, asking them to voluntarily enlist to aid in immigration raids. A federal judge in Miami's ordered the Trump administration to stop transferring immigrants

to the remote, poorly constructed immigration jail on an airfield in the Florida Everglades swamp, dubbed by Republicans Alligator Alcatraz. Thursday's ruling finds Florida and the federal government acted illegally by omitting an environmental review before building an opening alligator Alcatraz. Trump officials will now have to dismantle much of the detention camp to remove, quote, all generators, gas, sewage and other waste and waste receptacles that were installed due to environmental violations. This has raised concerns of how the jail could remain operational with hundreds of immigrants still inside. The decision came as part of a federal lawsuit filed by environmentalists and the Mukisug tribe. Trump's State Department's reviewing the records of more than 55 million immigrants who hold valid U.S. visas threatening to revoke protections, if any violations, are found deemed deportable by the Trump administration. This includes what Trump officials declare engaging in any form of, quote, unquote, terrorist activity.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration said it would expand its rigged. screening and vetting of social media posts of immigrant visa applicants to search for so-called anti-American views and activity. References to anti-Americanism can be found in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which at the time of its enactment primarily focused on targeting suspected communists. Russia's foreign ministry, said Thursday, a European proposal to deploy troops in a future post-war Ukraine would amount to foreign intervention as therefore unacceptable to Moscow. The statement casts further doubt on President Trump's bid to bring Ukrainian president

Vladimir Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin together for peace talks. On Thursday, Zelensky said Russia had already telegraphed its intentions to continue its war in Ukraine through large-scale drone and missile strikes, including a cruise missile attack on a U.S. owned electronics factory in Western Ukraine Thursday that left 15 people injured. The Russians knew perfectly well where they were aiming. It was a missile strike. We believe it was a deliberate strike precisely on American property here in Ukraine. A very telling strike, like this whole massive attack,

at the very time when the world waits for a clear answer from the Russians, an answer regarding negotiations to end the, the war. Police in Italy say they've arrested a Ukrainian man suspected of coordinating the sabotage of three Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022. The undersea explosions cause severe damage infrastructure built to carry natural gas from Russia to Western Europe. The United States initially blamed the sabotage on Russia. German federal prosecutors have identified the suspect only as 49-year-old Serhi K. He's allegedly part of a small team of Ukrainians who use a rented yacht, satellite navigation, sonar, and seabed maps to plant timer-controlled

explosives on pipelines on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The Trump administration can proceed with plans to cancel nearly $800 million in national institutes of health research grants tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The courts narrow five to four ruling overturns a lower. court order that blocked the Trump administration's abrupt constellation of some 1,700 grants focused on heart disease, HIV, AIDS, Alzheimer, substance abuse, and mental health. The New York Times reports the Trump administration is ignoring a congressional directive to

fully fund PEPFAR, an HIV AIDS treatment and prevention program credited with saving 26 million lives since President George W. Bush signed it into law in 2003. The Times reports the Office of Management and Budget, led by Russell's vote, has apportioned less than half of the $6 billion appropriated by Congress to PEPFAR for this fiscal year. Meanwhile, a union representing federal workers said Thursday the Trump administration's permanently fired 600 workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adding to mass layoffs proposed by Health Secretary Robert of Kennedy Jr. The Department of Education's counseled a grant providing millions of dollars for a California

sex education program after educators refused to remove all references to gender identity, trans and non-binary people from its curriculum. The program seeks to help prevent unwanted childhood pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Separately, the Education Department this week, quietly rescinded guidance directing schools to accommodate students learning English as a second language. This follows President Trump's executive order seeking to establish English as the official language of the United States. A federal judge ruled Thursday, Trump's former personal attorney, Alina Haba, has been unlawfully serving as the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.

Haba had been serving as interim U.S. attorney until her appointment expired in July. After a panel of judges selected veteran New Jersey prosecuted Desiree Grace to replace her, Trump's Justice Department promptly fired Grace and reinstalled HAVA as her replacement. A New York Appeals Court has voided nearly half a billion dollar civil fraud judgment against Donald Trump, two of his sons in the Trump Organization. Thursday split decision by a panel of five New York appellate judges ruled the financial penalty to be an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment. But the court did uphold part of the judgment that temporarily restricts Donald Trump and his sons Eric and Donald Jr. from doing business

in New York. State Attorney General, Leticia James, promised an appeal, adding in a statement, quote, it should not be lost to history. Yet another court has ruled that the president violated the law and that our case has merit, she said. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is facing fresh scrutiny after one of his former advisors attempted to pay off a reporter from the city following a campaign event Wednesday. Winnie Greco handed reporter Katie Honan a stack of cash and a red envelope stuffed inside an open bag of potato chips. The envelope contained at least one $100 bill and several 20s. Greco resigned last year while under FBI investigation and had been volunteering in Adams' re-election campaign for mayor.

Her attorney claimed the attempted bribe was a Chinese cultural gesture in which money is used to express gratitude. The newspaper, The City, immediately reported the incident to authorities. Another one of Adam's longtime allies, Ingrid Lewis Martin, has been indicted on a second wave of bribery charges accused of accepting over $75,000 in bribes in a scheme ranging from 2022 to 24, while she served as chief advisor to Adams. Last year, Lewis Martin and her son were also indicted on separate charges of bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy.

And in breaking news, federal agents are raiding the Maryland home of John Bolton, who served as national security advisor during Trump's first term, before resigning and becoming an outspoken critic of the president. Citing an unnamed source, the Associated Press, reported the search as part of an investigation involving the handling of classified documents. Ahead of this morning's raid, FBI director Cash Patel posted a cryptic message on the social media site X, writing, quote, no one is above the law, FBI agents on mission, unquote. And those are some of the headlines.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation Thursday approving a special election in November that will ask voters to approve a new partisan congressional map favoring Democrats. Lawmakers in Sacramento approve the measures a day after Texas's Republican-controlled House passed a new congressional district map designed to flip five Democratic-held U.S. House seats in the 26 midterm elections. This rare instance of mid-decade redistricting came at the behest of President Trump. California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke Thursday.

We got here because the President of the United States is struggling. We got here because the President of the States is one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history. We got here because he recognizes that he will lose the election. Congress will go back into the hands of the Democratic Party next to. November. We got here because of his failed policies. Those are being exposed hour by hour, reinforced today by Walmart announcing they'll be

raising prices because of the tax increases, because of the tariffs. Reminded every day by a slowing economy, growing mistrust, distrust all across this nation. Across the board, he is failing. He recognized that.

And that's why he made a phone call to Greg Abbott asking for five seats. Can't win by plane by. traditional sets of rules. He applies by no rules. I remind you all the time, it's not the rule of law, it's the rule of dawn. And we're standing up to that. We're joined now by two guests. Trey Martinez Fisher is a Democratic Texas state representative from San Antonio. His piece for the San Antonio Express News is headlined to preserve democracy, Texas Democrats must fight fire with fire. Earlier this month, he and other Texas Democratic lawmakers fled the state in an attempt to block passage of the new gerrymandered congressional maps.

He's joining us from Austin. And in Haydenville, Massachusetts, David Daley is with us, a senior fellow at Fair Vote, author of several books on voting, including anti-democratic inside the rights 50-year plot to control American elections and unrigged how Americans are battling back to save democracy. Let's go first to Austin to speak with Trey Martinez Fisher. Explain what has taken place, what is taking place as we speak in the Texas legislature, why you fled the state to break quorum, but the fact that now the vote, one of the votes, has taken place to pass the GOP favored gerrymandered map. No, well, thank you for the question. Well, first it was one of the just historic,

bait and switch. As you know, in Texas, we had a horrific flood where many people lost their lives. Many lives were just upended. And the idea was we were going to come to a special session to aid the flood relief victims to try to make things whole. And in just really with the snap of a finger, the governor announces his intention to have a mid-decade redistricting to bring five new Republican seats in Congress, which really threw everybody off. We knew, from the start that we did not have the votes to stop that. And moreover, we didn't think the country was paying attention to what was happening in Texas.

So my fellow Democrats and I, we decided to elevate this conversation, fight in the national arena, leave the state of Texas for over two weeks, you know, find refuge in Illinois under the leadership and watch of Governor Pritzker. And we used our two weeks to rally the country to wake people up and to let people know,

that Donald Trump does not want to have an election fair and square, that he wants to be the commander in cheat. He wants to cheat on America, cheat on democracy, steal these congressional seats, and I'm just thankful that other leaders woke up, saw what was going on, and said, okay, if Trump is going to throw out the rulebook, then we will fight fire with fire, and I think that's what you see in California. Did California have to do with you coming back to Texas, even though you knew that meant that they would pass the gerrymandered map? I think what it meant is, again, you know, had we stayed in Austin and we fought this in the

middle of the night, it might have made the local news. We know this is now international news. We know that people are starting to ask questions about mid-decade redistricting and gerrymandering and all of the stuff that is happening. And quite frankly, if you ask California leaders, they needed time to educate their voters, to educate their lawmakers. They needed a discuss to be on the national stage. And I think as you saw very recently that a poll in the state of California showed 57% of Californians agree with Governor Newsom's plan to draw five new congressional seats in California. That doesn't happen by osmosis. That happens by engagement and people coming together and this country rallying because, look, I never underestimate the power

of the American people when it comes to preserving and protecting our democracy. Representative Martinez-Fisher, you're serving your 12th. term in the Texas House of Representatives. You're the former chair of the House Democratic Caucus and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. Talk about how partisan gerrymandering relates to racial gerrymandering. Thank you very much for the question, because that is the heart of the matter here. You know, Republicans and Donald Trump and Governor Abbott will tell you, well, this is nothing new here. This is just, we're looking for partisan performance, and that is entirely legal. Well, yes, you can draw maps for partisan performance, but you can't do it on the backs

of the minority community. Here's what the maps in Texas do and how minority rights are taken away. Number one, you take districts in Texas congressional districts like, you know, the one represented by Representative Al Green. That district is a performing district right now. It elects African-Americans, even though it doesn't have a majority of African-Americans in that district. Under this plan, what has happened now, you see a concentration of voters more than what is necessary for that map to perform being placed in this congressional district 18, and now all of a sudden you've just packed that district and you've diluted the voice of the African-American community. Let's take another example in San Antonio where I'm from. You took a district that had a

60% Hispanic citizen voting age population, and you reduce that now to barely 50%, knowing full well by looking at election data that Hispanics will never, ever, ever have the opportunity to elect a Canada of their choice. And I find that very confusing because the narrative, at least in Texas, is that Hispanics are trending Republican. If they're trending Republican, why do you shrink the number so low that you know Hispanic's voice will never be heard? and to do this, the way it's done in Texas is they cut precincts, and that's a little bit into the weeds, but you look at this map and over 400 precincts were cut. You can't cut a precinct by accident.

You are laser-focused, looking for people you want to keep, getting rid of those, you don't, and that's how you rig an election, and that's how you decide an outcome before the first vote is cast. Let me ask you something. Could this backfire on the Republicans? Because you take very safe Republican districts, and you have to absorb more Democrats to take away the power of the Democratic districts. But could this possibly backfire? I think it could backfire. And I think that's why you saw the Republican legislative leader in California say that he's not a fan of mid-decade redistricting.

I think he even said when you fight fire with fire, you end up burning the whole place down. I do believe that Republicans are at risk, but I think that that is a risk worth taking for President Trump because the other side of the coin is maybe a Democratic House of Representatives that gets to ask questions of the executive branch that has subpoena power, that has investigative power, probably a lot of risk for the president, and he'd rather give up his own Republicans in Congress just to protect his backside. And that will show you, you know, what the stakes are and what he will do to win the state. election. I want to bring David Daly into this conversation. David Daley, who wrote the book, undemocratic, anti-democratic, inside the rights 50-year plot to control American elections,

senior fellow at fair vote. Talk about this redistricting war. We're seeing what's happening in Texas, what's happened in now California. But this doesn't stop with these two states. That's exactly right, Amy. We are in the midst of a gerrymandering Armageddon, and it's going to start in Texas, spread to California, but it's not going to stop there. And that's really the challenge the Democrats face right now, because it's entirely possible that the Texas and California gerrymanders will cancel each other out. Now, both of these two redistrictings in the middle of the decade would be the most extreme manipulation of electoral maps. in modern American history. But it's not going to stop there.

This is about to spread to Republican-controlled maps in Ohio, in Indiana, in Missouri, in Florida, where Ron DeSantis has said he's looking at as many as five additional districts. I don't think he can get that many, but certainly two or three more in Florida. If Republicans want to keep going, they could go to Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire. The problem for Democrats is that they have essentially maxed out the places where they can gain additional seats. In New York, Governor Hockel talking tough, talking about declaring war, but this is a war that she can't enter until 2028 because of the state's constitutional prohibitions on mid-decade redistricting. In Illinois, Governor Pritzker already signed a pretty gerrymandered 14 Democrat 3 Republican map back in 2020.

be very difficult to squeeze out another Democratic seat there in Maryland and Oregon. I don't think there's a lot left on this map for Democrats to claim. Republicans have got a lot more targets out there. This isn't going to stop. And it could get even worse next year if the U.S. Supreme Court, as we imagine, eliminates protections on majority minority seats, shreds the remaining pieces of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and allows southern states like South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi to go after majority black seats. This is the Calais case from Louisiana that the court will hear on October 15th.

There's lots and lots of danger ahead here. If Democrats think it's going to be easy to take back the House in 2026, Republicans are doing everything they can to boost their chances before. a vote is cast. I want to go back to this issue, David Daley, of political gerrymandering, which is allowed, partisan gerrymandering, and racial gerrymandering, which is not allowed. And if you can explain more fully the role of the Supreme Court and particularly the chief justice, John Roberts. Yes. And I think that that really is the particular bitterness of this situation is that we don't have to be here. We are here in many ways because John Roberts and the U.S. Supreme Court closed the federal courts to partisan gerrymandering claims back in 2019.

This is a case from North Carolina called Rucho v. Common Cause. And what John Roberts said is that gerrymandering is just politics as usual, right? What we're seeing in Texas is the most extreme manipulation of maps and modern American history, that's just politics as usual, says the Chief Justice. And he said this at a time when federal courts, judges appointed by presidents of both parties, were looking at maps drawn by both parties, by Democrats in Maryland, by Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and North Carolina. And they said, we have all the tools we need to go ahead and fix this. Roberts not only said no, but he closed the federal courts forever to these claims. So what he did was he unleashed, he incentivized the kinds of gerryman

Sanders, we saw back in 2021. He allowed for what is happening right now. He left voters completely naked in the face of these partisan power grabs. The Supreme Court really failed the country here. And I think it's worth pointing out that if Republicans had not stolen that seat given that Democrats were able to appoint back in 2016, that this entire thing turns out much. differently right now. That case comes out differently. What has happened at the U.S. Supreme Court has accelerated and incentivized this entire anti-voter summer that we are seeing right now. I want to go to another issue, David. President Trump said Monday, he'll soon sign an executive order to ban voting by mail, calling the longstanding practice of fraud. Writing on social media,

Trump also said he planned to target, quote, highly inaccurate, very expensive and seriously controversial voting machines, unquote. Trump's pledge came just days after he made these comments to Fox News following his Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. You know, Vladimir Putin said something. One of the most interesting things, he said your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting. So you have President Trump saying that Putin told that.

that his election is rigged because they have mail-in voting. Can you talk about the significance of banning mail-in ballots in this country? Donald Trump cannot ban mail-in ballots. Our elections are regulated by the states. Donald Trump does not have this power. He cannot get that done. And I think the silence that you are seeing from Republican officials and states make that clear. Mail-in-balloting is the way elections in many, many states, especially out West, are conducted.

Donald Trump has voted by mail most of his life. Republicans have been very good over the years at generating mail-in ballots. This is a distraction. This is an effort by the president to do what he does here, right? he likes to suggest that elections are not corrupt when he wins. And the ones he loses have all sorts of problems. This is an attempt ahead of the election to try to so doubt among his followers that it will be free and fair. We do not have a problem with voter fraud in this country, with mail-in-ballot fraud.

Whenever they make these arguments, they are unable to find. actually any examples at all that they can point to here. The bigger challenge, I think, is that what we are seeing in Washington, D.C. right now, could play out around the country in Democratic cities on Election Day in 2026, right? If what we are seeing in Washington is a dry run for what we could see in Philadelphia or Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit, National Guard and ice troops masked on the streets trying to intimidate voters. That to me is something very concerning and that we ought to be thinking about right now. Daily, about things we should be talking about. Now the issue is gerrymandering. The issue is mail and ballots. But issues that

you've focused on, like ranked choice voting that led to the Democratic candidate in the mayor election this years are on Mamdani. The popular election. vote. Where do these stand today? There is, I think, greater awareness than ever that what we need on redistricting especially is a national solution to a national problem, right? If we're going to keep going state by state, what happens is, you know, Texas does something lousy like this, and it reverberates. It has consequences across the entire country because Texas's map, does not stay in Texas. Republicans have a three-seat advantage in Congress,

and so if you grab an additional five seats there, it has a ripple effect. What we need is a national solution, and I think the very best one would be a much more proportional house along the lines of the Fair Representation Act that Jamie Raskin and Don Beyer have proposed. You can learn much more about this at fairvote.org, but really the solution here would be to go to larger,

multi-member districts that can't be gerrymandered because the district lines no longer choose winners and losers, and to use ranked choice voting within those districts, you would then see that every district in America becomes a swing district. Right now in this country, only 37 of 435 congressional seats were competitive in the 2024 election. That's no way to run a democracy. When you look around the world, we would call nations where more than 90 percent of elections are non-competitive, something much different than a healthy functioning democracy. And we're going to do more on national popular vote as well as a rank choice voting in the coming months. But I want to end with Texas Democratic State Representative Trey Martinez-Fisher.

House Democrats will sue to block the gerrymandered map once it's. signed. But won't this process take too long to matter right now? You know, I'm not so sure. Like, you know, again, filing for office in Texas begins in November. There's lots of work to be done by the Secretary of State, local election officials. And so I think when this map finds itself in court, I don't think time is on the side of President Trump and Governor Abbott. And I think a federal panel, you know, might step in and tap the brakes on this. Now, understand, we are still fighting over maps that were passed in 2021. Maps, I would argue, that Republicans said were perfectly fine and weren't racially

gerrymandered. So we have an ongoing fight under the current districts. Now we're going to bring a new map and add an additional fight on top of that. I think that might be too much to bear for election officials. And so if the brakes are tapped, maybe we'll end up running in the current districts, which I think will be very competitive. And so then all of this work will be for not. But I don't think we sit on the sidelines. We do not have that luxury. We have to fight with every tool that we have from quorum breaks to legislative floor fights to fighting at the courthouse. Because I do believe while we may lose the votes in the Capitol, we are all equal in federal court.

And this latest news, the longtime Democratic Congress member, Lloyd Doggett, says if the gerrymandered maps are approved, he will not run again. He would be running against the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Greg Kassar. Trey Martinez Fisher, Democratic, Texas State Representative for San Antonio, thank you so much for joining us from Texas Capitol of Austin, and David Daley, author of Anti-Democratic Inside the Rights 50-year plot to Control American Elections, Senior Fellow at Fair Vote. Coming up, a Democracy Now broadcast exclusive. We'll talk to the State Department press officer who was just fired. He'd been pushing for sharing condolades. with the families of the dead Gaza journalists killed in an Israeli airstrikes.

Stay with us. I had a drink of no drink of no to do. Oh, yes, I really did. The flames that lit, they were blue, as they recalled the red. And I had a glass of no can do. This is what I said. You are the fine. The condo by the folk musician Michael Hurley, performing at our

Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Earlier this week, the top State Department press officer on Israeli-Palestinian affair, Shahed Gureshi, was fired from his position without explanation. The firing comes after several internal debates at the State Department regarding how to characterize U.S. positions on Israel's war in Gaza, according to internal State Department records reviewed by the Washington Post. In the most recent dispute before his firing, Goreshi had drafted a line for a press release

in response to the controversial Israeli plan to relocate hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The proposed line read, quote, we do not support forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, unquote. Despite similar language being used by both President Trump and Middle East envoy

Steve Whitkoff earlier this year, it was struck from the statement by State Department leadership. Another recent dispute followed the targeted killing of the well-known Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif of Al-Jazeera and five other journalists in a press tent in Gaza. Gadeshi recommended a line that said, quote, we mourn the loss of journalists and express condolences to their families, unquote.

That line was also rejected. According to the Washington Post, a key figure in the internal disputes was David Milstein, a top advisor to the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. In one direct disagreement, Milstein had pushed for the State Department to refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria, a biblical name for the area that's widely used within Israel. But West Bank is the internationally recognized name in the previously approved State Department language.

Gerasia managed to cut the line. We go now to Washington, D.C., where we're joined by Shahed Goreshi in his first broadcast interview. Welcome to Democracy Now. Explain what took place, what you were told, and what about these controversies that led up to your firing. Thanks, Amy. I have been a press officer at the State Department since September. I'm covering Israeli-Palestine affairs since January. I had a good relationship with the civil servants there. I had a good relationship with even the political appointees there. You don't get this role on a a whim. However, I believe that basic U.S. interests and human decency were important in my role.

And last week, I think three events from Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday built up to aggravate the radical ideologues at the State Department and in Embassy Jerusalem to lead to my firing. Sunday was the terrible killing and murder of Anas and his colleagues. And Monday was the line about forced displacement, essentially ethnic cleansing. And Tuesday, I cut the line on regarding Judean Samaria. These built up, and despite the goodwill that I had in the bureau, it looks like that senior officials like Milstein in embassy Jerusalem and people from the secretary's office at the State Department both combined to get me fired by the end of the week.

So explain exactly what they said when you wanted to express condolences to these families of civilians, of journalists that died in an Israeli air strike, Israel immediately claimed responsibility for the for the killing of Anas and his colleagues. Well, they immediately said we can't provide condolences because

Israel has claimed we don't know. We don't know exactly what happened here and Israel has claimed that he was a member of Hamas. I have an issue with relying on Israelis for every intelligence and

comments. So we should be able to pause and evaluate things. If they had said, hey, we're going to wait 48 hours and confirm, that could be one thing. But immediately deferring to the Israelis is highly problematic. And of course, Israel never provided evidence of this. And they never claimed that the five other journalists were members of Hamas. So talk about who Milstein is, one of your key opponents, the senior advisor to Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Look, he's someone who's influential and close with Ambassador Huckabee. He will communicate and have a lot of influence in the building. He's well known for pushing his agenda within the building.

And I think that's highly problematic because we have these very impressive and hardworking civil servants in the building who are going through a process every single day, whether it be policy memos, press statements to put the facts out there. And even if

it's obviously there's we have a President Trump's administration it's his prerogative, but the facts matter so that the agenda is in line with reality. However folks like Mill State and as allies, which are a very small group and the grand scheme of things in the building,

don't care about guardrails. In fact, the guardrails is what aggravates them. So even when you say, go ahead. The debate around calling the West Bank Judean Samaria goes to the House Speaker, Mike Huckabee, who made this visit to an Israeli settlement in the West Bank after an unannounced trip to Israel. Johnson used his visit to declare, quote, The mountains of Judea and Samaria are the rightful property of the Jewish people.

How did you win this fight, not to say Judea and Samaria in an official State Department's press release? It's a good question. I want to emphasize that even though I have an influential role as a press officer, every single time something goes out, it requires input from the entire building. I can't go and release a statement

unilaterally. So when it comes to Judean Samaria, we have these, just for it gives them background for the audience, on days that the State Department holds daily press briefings, which the current schedule has tended to be Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have these packets of press guidance. It's pages of possible reporter questions and sample responses, and then before they go to the podium to brief reporters, the press officers will take turns by by bureau to brief the spokesperson. Now, I was clearing, which means basically going through the approval process, I was clearing my packet that morning.

Now, what's interesting is that embassy Jerusalem, even though they're influential and normally should be in my dock, they let David Milstein lead. He doesn't always have either time or whatever it is to go into my docs every day. So I had to get the surprise once every, let's say, two to three weeks. you would jump in and edit my doc. So he did his classic surprise morning edits where he goes through and adds all these edits that don't have precedent necessarily.

And so some are approved. I usually go to other colleagues in the building and say, hey, these edits came in late in the process. Let's go through each one. And I'll say that even though I was the one who flagged my concern about Judean Samaria, first, I was not the only one in the building that shared that concern. So let me ask you about that.

How much dissent is there within the State Department when it comes to Israel, Palestine? I mean, today's top headline is that the U.N. has now declared famine in Gaza. Look, people are, people read the headlines. They're perfectly aware. I want to emphasize that in a general sense, civil servants there are doing their job. They know their role. They recognize the administration they're under and the prerogative. But at the same time, people are aware that, especially in the press

context, you know, policy is one thing. And there are obviously major, major concerns there, but just on the press side, being empathetic, a bit more empathetic, at least showing concern is just a basic press advice. And so people are concerned about, the aggressive language. And now when someone like Milstein and the secretary's office clamped down and fire someone like me, that puts a chilling effect on people who might give that advice that we need to call this out or be more empathetic or try to deliver things with a bit more human decency. So there's a real, real chilling effect throughout the building, especially after I'm gone.

what are your plans now do you plan to speak out on Israel-Palestine and your response to the state department telling the Washington Post the department has zero tolerance for employees who commit misconduct by leaking your response so on my future plans I am going to speak out my intentions not to be out there forever I don't need extended attention or anything so if people if it's helpful. I think it's extremely important to speak out, but my intention isn't about me. I think it's about how radical our policy is becoming, not just on policy, but language as well. So I think that's important to flag, and I will do that for the time being, and I will figure out my future plans moving forward. Now, those lines are baseless, and reporters have their

own ways of confirming details. So I, you know, that's up to the Washington Post. However, in terms of, there's another line that they mentioned about being the agenda of the policy of the president. Let me just say that I, if I was an activist within the building, I would have been fired long earlier than August. I was, I was a believer in the process and the guard whales and a believer in human decency, and that eventually did get me fired, but I may have lasted this long because of the goodwill it had in the building, but at the end of the day, those quotes from the State Department don't make any sense. Shahad Gureshi, I want to thank you so much for being with us, former top press officer for

Israeli-Palestinia Affairs at the State Department fired by the State Department. Coming up, we learn about an immigrant day laborer who died after a Home Depot raid as he ran into traffic. We'll hear from his family in Guatemala, and we'll talk to day labor activists. Stay with us. Yellow Passing the Trapo Over the mess There's Cudando that

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Ice by La Santa Cecilia in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. We end today's show in California where community organizers demanding justice for 52-year-old Carlos Roberto Montoya, a father and grandfather from Guatemala who was struck and killed on the freeway as he tried to escape federal ice agents during a raid at a Home Depot in Monrovia last week. Montoya had lived in the U.S. for about three years. He was a day laborer who worked to support his wife, four daughters, and grandchildren in Guatemala. On Thursday, Democracy Now, producer Marianas Tadasena,

reached Montoya's oldest daughter, Anna Victoria, and his wife of 35 years, Anna Maria Vasquez, who spoke to Democracy Now from their home in Guatemala, sitting in front of an altar with flowers, candles, and two photos of Carlos Roberto Montoya. The last call I had. with my dad was Wednesday at 11 at night the day before he died and he told me things are rough here it is getting harder here I just need to make a little bit more money so that I can go back to Guatemala he was planning on coming back but he was struggling with making enough money to make his dream come true of having his own business his own business so that he could support us

here. We want people to remember my dad in the same way we will remember him as a loving, respectful, brave man. He died because he was afraid. He died because of these injustices, this persecution. I want him to be remembered as a brave and hardworking man. Sadly, he didn't have enough time to fulfill his dreams. And we are left with a double sorrow. We are left with the void of not having him anymore, of not having his love, his advice. And we are left here with the anguish of not knowing how we will get by.

He was the main provider for us, for his grandchildren. This photo is from when he was waiting for work. He would chat with his friends and they would take photos of each other to pass the time. And the other photo up there is of him at work. He was afraid of heights, but he had to do it. He needed the money. The people who know him, they know he was a light. Everywhere he went, he would bring his grandchildren.

From the oldest to the youngest, he loved them all the same. Carlos Roberto Montoya's wife, Anna Maria Vasquez, and his eldest daughter, Anna Victoria, speaking to Democracy Nass Maria Tadasena from their home in Guatemala. Carlos Roberto Montoya's death comes as federal immigration raids have increasingly targeted immigrant workers and day laborers with activists condemning companies like Home Depot over their complicity. Montoya is at least the second immigrant that we know of, who's been killed during a raid in recent months.

57-year-old Jaime Alanis died after he fell from a roof of a greenhouse during a ice raid at a California farm last month. In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Homeland Security officials said Montoya had not been chased by any federal agent during the raid. Activists dispute those claims. For more, we're joined by Pablo Avarado, a co-executive director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, joining us from Pasadena, California. Pablo, welcome back to Democracy Now. Explain what you understand exactly happened.

Good morning, Amy. Thank you for having him in your program again. First of all, I want to let the family of the family of the family. Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdez, the day laborers, the migrant community, is mourning the death of Roberto Carlos. And we send our love, our solidarity, and our deepest condolences to them. When I arrived there, I saw officers of the California Highway Patrol. interviewing people doing an investigation of what had happened this morning, that particular morning. There were different narratives by the day labor saying that he was indeed

chased by these individuals into the freeway and there were others who were saying that he was not being chased. So we don't really know the truth about what happened that day. We have asked, in fact, our legal director, and I'm not going to mention names on national TV, but our legal director has been in direct contact with the office of Governor Newsom and the office of the Attorney General Banta. The office of Mr. Banta told us that they weren't aware of an investigation and that they couldn't even give us the name within the California Highway Patrol so that we can talk to them about how that investigation is going. In the case of the

office of Governor Newsom, they told us that the fact that he ran into the freeway made things a little more difficult. We asked why and the answer was well because he was fleeing from, he was running away from ice. But when we pushed back and we said, well, who was it the DRA? Was it the DEA? Was it the FBI, the U.S. Marshals? Who was it? Was it bounty hunters or simply racist vigilantes?

They didn't know who had actually carried out the raid that day. So at this point, Amy, we don't really know what happened, and that's why we are demanding that both the office of the governor and the office of the Attorney General carries out a full investigation and potentially a criminal investigation, if it was indeed a fact that Roberto Carlos was being chased by an individual into the highway. The community, the family, needs to know the truth, and we need to, most of all, bring justice. Pablo, we only have a minute. What about the responsibility of Home Depot where so many of these raids are taking place? And what's the status of the court order by a federal judge temporarily blocking the Trump administration from conducting sweeping immigration raids and racially profiling people in Los Angeles? us? Well, first, first I like to respond to the question about the TRO. They're not respecting any

TRO because these people feel that they are above the law. So there's no TRO that's protecting our communities. The temporary restraining order, yes. There's nothing, even though the judge has issued one, they're not respecting it. And Hon Dipot has remained silent throughout this process. And there are things that they can do. First of all, you know, they have... We have 28 degrees. We have 180-degree cameras at Hon-Dipod.

They could start by releasing that footage that they have, if their cameras were on. And we're demanding that they condemn this rate. We're going to do an interview in Spanish. We'll post it also at DemocracyNow.org. Pablo Avarado, co-executive director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, Endelon. And that does it for our show. A very happy birthday to Julie Crosby. I'm Amy Goodman.

This is DemocracyNow. DemocracyNow.org. Thank you.