Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-04-03 Friday

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Democracy Now! Friday, April 3, 2026

From New York, this is Democracy Now. I will fight every day to restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice and each of its components. The partisanship, the weaponization will be gone. America will have one tier of justice for all. President Trump's fired Attorney General Pam Bondi. She's his ninth attorney general confirmed or acting over his two terms. The most of any president in U.S. history. She oversaw the weaponization of the Justice Department, stumbling when it came to the Epstein

files and prosecuting Trump's political enemies. The president's former personal lawyer, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, will replace her, at least for now. We'll talk to constitutional law professor David Cole. Then Trump moves again to unilaterally change voting laws ahead of the midterms. More time, ladies and gentlemen, we've got an unconstitutional order from the president that looks like he's trying to take away ballot by mail. It doesn't make any sense, especially when the courts have repeatedly told him, this is not in your purview, Mr. President. We'll speak to the Arizona Secretary of State who says he'll take the federal government to court.

And finally, Palestinian activist Laka Khordia is free. She spent a year in an ice jail in Texas after taking part in pro-Palestine campus protests at Columbia University. It's been a long year and tough year in ice dungeons. But I'm finally free, Hamdallah. But still, but still my battle is not done yet. La Cacordia will join us in studio. World of having more coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. President Trump's warned Tehran of more attacks to come. after the United States and Israel launched strikes on civilian infrastructure in Iran. On Thursday, the U.S. bombed a major bridge under construction in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran, then attacked it again about an hour later as emergency crews were assisting the wounded. Iran says the double-tap strike on the B-1 suspension bridge killed eight people and wounded nearly 100 others, the head of the construction company, building the bridge, said it had absolutely.

no military use and warned its destruction will worsen traffic for more than a dozen provinces in Iran. If this is helped, please redefine that term for me. They destroy infrastructure to push the country backward and weaken the spirit of our people. Separately, Iran says U.S. Israeli airstrikes have destroyed the Pesture Institute of Iran, a century-old medical research center that's played a key role. and combating infectious diseases in the Middle East. Iran's Red Crescent says U.S. Israeli strikes have hit more than 113,000 civilian sites, including homes and schools, killing more than 2,000 people, including women and children

with at least 21,000 injured. Maria Martinez is the head of the Red Crescent's delegation for Iran. We estimate that at least 3% of the population has been displaced. This represents around 1 million families, 3 million people. Iran has published a list of major bridges across the Persian Gulf region. It said could come under tit-for-tat retaliation following the U.S.-Israeli coalition strike on the B-1 bridge earlier in the day. Iran's targets include bridges in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and the King Fad Causeway linking Saudi Arabia to the island nation of Bahrain. Iran's threat of escalation came as it announced a wave of drone and missile attacks on Gulf nations, including U.S. owned steel plants in the UAE and a weapons factory in Israel.

Iran said one attack targeted a data center of the U.S. software company Oracle in Dubai. officials denied the claim. Iran also said it struck an Amazon Cloud Computing Center in Bahrain. Meanwhile, Kuwait said Iran struck a power and desalination plant earlier today, hours after it struck an oil refinery sparking a number of fires. Separately, Yemen's Houthi said they'd fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel in coordination with Iran and Hezbollah and Lebanon. In Iraq and Iranian-backed militia, claim responsibility for six attacks. U.S. military bases over a 24-hour period. The attacks came as two Iranian drones struck a U.S. diplomatic support facility at Baghdad International Airport Thursday evening.

Israel's military says it struck more than 3,500 targets across Lebanon in the month since it renewed large-scale attacks on Hezbollah while invading parts of southern Lebanon. The Lebanese Health Ministry reports 1,345 people have been killed in overpillar. 4,000 wounded since the start of the war with 125 children among the dead. In Gaza, a Palestinian man died from his injuries Thursday after Israeli soldiers shot him in the outskirts of Han Yunus. The killing came after two Palestinians were killed and several others wounded in Israeli airstrike targeting a gathering of people in Khan Yunus. A relative said the strike killed a father and a toddler.

He was in his neighborhood, walking with his young son, who, was two years old. He was carrying his son and walking in the street when a reconnaissance drone hit them directly with a missile. He and his son were martyred instantly, and their bodies were torn to pieces. In the United Kingdom, two leaders of the Palestine Solidarity Movement have been found guilty of failing to march within a designated area set by police during a massive pro-Palestine demonstration in London last year. Ben Jamal of the Palestinian on Solidarity Campaign and Chris Ninem of the Stop the War Coalition said they would appeal the convictions.

In a statement, Human Rights Watch said the verdict was intended to intimidate and silence dissenting voices to the UK's ongoing support for the Israeli government war crimes. Meanwhile, in France, police on Thursday detained European Parliament member Rima Hassan on suspicion of, quote, apology for terrorism over a social media post about a former member of the Japanese Red Army who participated in attack on an Israeli airport in 1972. Hassan was born stateless in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria as a member of the Leftist France Unbowed Party. She was a leader of a Gaza Freedom flotilla mission that was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters last June as they attempted to deliver food and aid to Gaza. Critics have

condemned her arrest as judicial harassment aimed at silencing her outspoken criticism. President Trump has fired Pam Bondi from her position as U.S. Attorney General amidst reports of Trump's growing frustration with Bondi's failure to prosecute his political enemies. Bondi's the second cabinet member to be fired by Trump since he retook the White House after former Homeland Security Secretary Christy Knoem was ousted in March. Trump said his former criminal defense attorney, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, would serve as acting U.S. Attorney General. Meanwhile, Lee Zeldin, who currently heads the Environmental Protection Agency, is reportedly a top contender to replace Bondi as Attorney General. Bondi was a Trump loyalist who oversaw the Justice Department's disastrous handling of the Epstein files. Her firing comes just months after a heated congressional hearing in which Bondi refused to apologize to Epstein survivors who were present in the room for the DOJ's failure to fully redact their names in the Epstein files. California Congressmember Robert Garcia said in a statement, quote, she will not escape accountability and remains legally obligated to appear before our committee under oath.

Referring to a House Oversight Committee subpoena issued against Bondi last month set for April 14th. On Thursday, Congress member Rokana said Senate Democrats should impede the nomination of a new U.S. Attorney General until all Epstein files without redactions have been released. Democrats must insist that any new Attorney General will release the remaining three million files with no redactions other than protecting the survivors. The new Attorney General must commit to investigating and prosecuting people who are all over these files and raped or abuse these girls. And the new Attorney General must commit to not using the Justice Department for political prosecutions. It is not enough to replace one Trump's sycophobic. with another. We will speak with constitutional law professor David Cole after headlines. The White House is preparing to unveil a record-shattering Pentagon budget request of $1.5 trillion

for the next fiscal year. It's by far the largest year-over-year increase in a presidential military spending request since World War II. It includes funding for F-35 stealth fighter jets, new warships, including Virginia-class submarines, and Trump's Golden Dome missile defense shield, which the White House says will cost $185 billion. Meanwhile, President Trump has said the U.S. cannot afford to pay for social programs like daycare, Medicare, and Medicaid amidst record military spending. Trump spoke during the White House Easter lunch on Wednesday. It's not possible for us to take care of daycare.

Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing. Military protection. We have to guard the country. A new report by Oxfam International finds the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the world's people are hiding more than $2.8 trillion dollars in offshore accounts to avoid

paying taxes. That's more wealth than is owned by the poorest half of humanity, more than four. billion people. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired the Army's chief of staff, General Randy George, along with two other top generals. A Pentagon spokesperson gave no reason for Thursday's abrupt firings. General George has served as a senior assistant to former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin under President Biden. The New York Times reports he'd recently clashed with Hegseth over Hegseth's decision to block the promotion of four army officers to become one-star generals.

Two of them are black. The other two are women. Meanwhile, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee are pushing for an investigation into a Financial Times report, which found Hegsseth attempted to make a multi-million dollar investment in arms company stocks just weeks before President Trump joined Israel in its attack on Iran.

The Trump administration's deported 12 people to Uganda, marking the first known arrival of immigrants expelled from the U.S. to the African country since striking a so-called third country agreement. Trump has pushed to deport immigrants from the U.S. to countries. They have no ties to as part of his brutal immigration campaign. The Uganda Law Society vowed legal challenges, saying those deported were, quote, effectively dumped in Uganda through an undignified harrowing and dehumanizing process

that's reduced the deportees to little more than chattel for the benefit of private interests on both sides of the Atlantic, unquote. Other African countries have agreed to receive U.S. deportees under Trump, including Eswatini, Ghana, Rwanda, and South Sudan. A Venezuelan man is suing the Trump administration after he says he was illegally detained and deported from the United States to El Salvador's notorious Seqat mega prison last year. The Venezuelan immigrant, who was identified by the pseudonym Johnny Hernandez, is seeking $56 million in damages. Despite having no criminal record in the U.S. or Venezuela, he was arrested by federal immigration agents sent to El Salvador,

where he says he was tortured. Brent Ward, a member of his legal team, said in a statement, quote, the Trump administration knowingly and unlawfully locked up an innocent person for four months in a concentration camp-like prison, where he suffered torture, shooting beatings, and solitary confinement, our clients suffered catastrophic injuries in Seckot, from which he will never fully recover, he said. And environmental groups have sued the Trump administration for removing protections for endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico to allow oil and gas offshore drilling. The unprecedented blanket exemption would leave several Gulf species and ecosystems vulnerable to

including the critically endangered Rice's Whale. The move was approved by a six-member committee chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Bergam. Defense Secretary Pete Higgseth invoked the vote claiming that lifting the Endangered Species Act protections in the Gulf was a matter of national security as the U.S. Israeli war in Iran as disrupted global oil supplies. The Sierra Club said in a statement, quote, the Trump administration's playing God with our most vulnerable wildlife by deciding which endangered species are worth saving and which can be sentenced to extinction to pad, oil, and gas profits.

And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners. viewers across the country and around the world. President Trump has fired Pam Bondi as a U.S. Attorney General amidst reports of his growing frustration with Bondi's failure to prosecute his political enemies and her handling of the

Epstein files. Trump said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will serve as acting U.S. Attorney General. Blanche was President Trump's private attorney. Lee Zeldin, who currently heads the Environmental Protection Agency, is reportedly a top contender to replace Bondi. Blanche becomes Trump's 10th Attorney General, confirmed or acting since he first took office in 2017, more than any other president in history. Bondi's the second high-profile cabinet member to be fired by Trump in recent weeks after former Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Nome was a ousted in March. Bondy was a Trump loyalist who openly heap praise on the president and did away with longstanding DOJ practice to maintain political independence from the White House. Bondi oversaw failed prosecutions of Trump's perceived political enemies, including former FBI

director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, and initiated DOJ investigations into others, including the chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell. Under her watch, thousands of career attorneys were pushed out or left the Department of Justice. The Civil Rights Division and the section that prosecutes public corruption were hollowed out. And Vondi oversaw the effort to obtain sensitive voter data from the states. Her firing comes just months after a heated congressional hearing in which she refused to apologize to Epstein's survivors for the DOJ's failure to fully redact their names and release documents. California Congressmember Robert Garcia said in a statement, quote, she will not

escape accountability and remains legally obligated to appear before our committee under oath, referring to a House Oversight Committee subpoena issued against Bondi last month, to talk about Pam Bondi's tenure at the DOJ and more. We go to Washington, D.C., to speak to David Cole, Professor of Law and Public Policy at the Georgetown University Law Center and former National Legal Director of the ACLU. David, thanks so much for joining us. It is the front page across the paper headline, except for one column of the New York Times. Trump fires Bondi after bumpy tenure.

Can you talk about her legacy? at the Justice Department, what Pam Bondi represented, what she failed to do for President Trump and for the nation. So I think she'll go down in history as one of the worst attorneys general we've ever had. And that's because she basically turned the Justice Department on its head. The Justice Department is supposed to be independent of the president. And the reason for that is that they're the folks. who can take a U.S. citizen or any other person living in this country and lock them up.

They're the people who can prosecute you. They're the people who can seek the death penalty. And so when you have a government agency that has that kind of power, it's critical that it be acting in the name of the law and in the name of justice and not in the name of partisan politics and doing the master's bidding. She came in and did the master's bidding, and she did it poorly. She prosecuted his enemies, and those prosecutions have failed. Sometimes because judges have thrown them out.

Other times, because grand juries of American citizens have said there's nothing here, her effort to prosecute members of Congress for simply informing members of the military that they have a duty not to follow illegal orders was rejected by a grand jury of citizens. As you said, she ran out thousands of people from the Justice Department. It is a decimated department. She oversaw legal opinions that authorized the summary execution of people alleged to be bringing drugs into this country by boat. She oversaw Justice Department lawyers who federal courts across this country have accused of lying to the courts, of engaging in contemptuous conduct, of slow walking

and obstructing orders of courts. She decimated the civil rights. She decimated the civil rights division, lifting consent decrees that were designed to protect us, the people of America, from police abuse, and botched in every way possible the Epstein, the disclosure of the Epstein files. Saying she has a client list on her desk, never turned over. Turning over of files of binders that she says were the Epstein files, there was nothing new there. And then when compelled

by Congress to turn over the files, failing to redact the names of victims and redacting the names of perpetrators. She has been really an embarrassment to the nation, an embarrassment to the department.

But I think the blame really, you know, the blame rests with her, because when you're in that role, you are supposed to be able to say no to the president. That is a critical role of the Attorney General. She was never able to say no to the president. But a lot of the things she did, you know, you can blame her, but ultimate blame goes to the President of the United States. It's he who is pressing for the prosecution of people like Comey and James Comey and Letitia James merely because they were his opponents. Is he who is, he who is pressing for the prosecution of, of people like Comey and James, is he

who is urging them to engage in bogus grand jury investigations that are trying to set up ways to undermine the midterms. It is he who ordered them to stop the prosecution of New York Mayor Eric Adams for corruption. So I blame the both of them equally, and I don't think it's going to get any better with anyone who follows in her footsteps. Juan, we can't hear you. Juan's asking question. Go ahead. Yes, David, you mentioned the Epstein files.

I wanted to ask you about this whole issue of the subpoena that was an issue to Pam Bondi to appear before the House Oversight Committee on April 14th. Nancy Mace, the Republican from South Carolina, who forced a vote on that subpoena, told actually, Xios, quote, my subpoena still stands. I did it by name, not as the sitting attorney general. What's your sense of whether this will actually occur and her being brought before the committee even after she's been fired? Well, the committees can call anybody they want before them to testify. And the fact that she has now been run out of office does not mean that she is free of the obligation that every American citizen has. to respond to a subpoena and answer questions under oath. So no, if the committee chooses to demand that she come before them, the fact that she is no longer the Attorney General does not

protect her. They may also, if they're interested in what the Justice Department is going to do in the future, then she's not going to be very helpful. But if they're interested in what were the decision she made that led to so much distrust of the department to get to the bottom of that, she's the right person to be forced to answer those questions. David, I just have a quick question on this issue. Is it possible that Trump fired her now because that would mean she would no longer have access to the documents at the Justice Department and that he specifically is concerned? about this?

I don't know. I mean, it's hard to know. There's lots of things he could be concerned about. I wouldn't be surprised if he's concerned about the Epstein files. He should be concerned about the Epstein files. It's one of the things that Republicans and his base are concerned about that he is doing and so that he's potentially implicated in. So it's possible, but it's not a tactic that would, in fact, protect.

any of the information in the Justice Department from the purview of the committee. They can call before them, you know, Todd Blanche if they want to. They can call Pam Bondi if they want to. They can subpoena whatever documents they want to. So, you know, I don't think he's going to be able to obfuscate with respect to the Epstein investigation. And David, they'll try, but I don't think he'll succeed. David, I want to ask you about another aspect of Pambandhi's legacy. Her efforts to seize state voter data in May of 2025, the DOJ began sending letters to nearly 40 states, demanding sensitive information, including driver's licenses and Social Security numbers of every registered voter.

Twelve states have compiled, but what's your sense of this aspect of her work at justice? Well, this is another example of the politicization of justice. They are using the Justice Department, both with respect to these demands and with respect to the investigations in Georgia of the 2020 election, to try to depress voter turnout during the midterms because they know they're not going to go well for them, and to set the groundwork for potentially trying to intervene in. in one way or another. The Justice Department is supposed to, above all, protect our rights, including, most importantly in a democracy, the right to vote. And what you see this Justice Department doing under Pam Bondi is seeking to make it harder for people to vote, not make it easier for people to vote, to deny people the right to vote, not to protect people's right to vote. Sometimes it's done in the name of claims about election fraud, but there have been virtually no evidence of election fraud. This is a kind of talking point on the Republican side

that is used to justify making it hard for people to vote. But why don't they want people to vote? Because they don't want to hear what the people have to say. But I think they will hear what the people have to say in the midterms, and it will not be pretty for the, for the, for the, uh, for the president. Back in 2025, more than 200 former Justice Department employees accused the Trump administration of the destruction of the civil rights department division. The former employees alleged that Bondi and, uh, Harmeek Dylan, the assistant attorney general, killed important cases, protecting people from sexual harassment.

police brutality and voting inequities. Can you talk about the significance of what has happened to the voting rights division? So the voting rights division is, again, its job is to protect the civil, well, the voting rights division, part of the civil rights division, but the civil rights division as a whole is a critical part of the Justice Department. And its job is to protect the, the civil rights of all Americans, the right against race discrimination, the right against police abuse, the right against sexual harassment and sexual assault, the right to vote. All of those, the right against housing discrimination.

Those are what the Justice Department is supposed to be protecting the people of America from. This Justice Department has essentially run out the folks who do that work, and have instead turned it into yet another political arm of the White House, going after what they call woke policies and DEI policies that don't violate anybody's rights. So, you know, it's Republicans and Democrats often have disagreements about where you should put your emphasis with respect to defending civil rights. But this department has simply obliterated the, the, the basic proposition that the Justice Department is there to protect us from wrongdoing and instead turned it into a department that the president can use to further his own wrongdoing.

David, I wanted to ask you, this is not the first Attorney General that Trump has fired. Talk about his record with previous Attorney General. Bill Barr during his first term and why he keeps getting rid of people who's advice he doesn't like? Well, you know, that's the thing. I mean, yes, he's fired previous attorney generals because they have dared to stand up to him. They have dared to say no. And these are not, you know, knee-jerk liberals. Jeff Sessions, very, very conservative man, Bill Barr, very, very conservative man, but they said no at various times to him, which is the job of the Attorney General of the United States, and for that, they lost their jobs. The remarkable thing about Pam Bondi is, as far

as we can tell, she never said no. She never said no. And notwithstanding, never saying no, she lost her job, not because she dared to stand up to him, but because she didn't deliver on what are really undeliverable promises. You know, you're not going to be able to prosecute James Comey or Letitia James or Jerome Powell. Those are, those cases are going nowhere. And the fact that President Trump doesn't like them because they did their job is not a crime. And, and, and, will not support a criminal prosecution. So she was asked to do the impossible by the president. She failed to do the impossible. And so he has fired her and he'll bring in somebody else and ask them to do the impossible. And either they will say no and he'll fire them or they will fail

because it's impossible and he will fire them. But he has basically asked the Justice Department to do things it cannot do. As we wrap up, I mean, perhaps the most, most significant image of Pam Bondi's term as Attorney General's, her unfurling of that banner of President Trump over the Department of Justice. But I wanted to ask you a quick question about a critical piece you just wrote, headlined the lie of preventive war, where you write, never is Donald Trump's willful blindness to legal limits been more evident than in his decision to start a war with Iran. Explain. Well, the basic, and this too.

I mean, when you look at our military actions, those actions require Justice Department to approve them as lawful. There is no way you can justify as lawful what we are doing in Iran, what we did in Venezuela, what we did to the over 100 people that we have submitted, narrowly executed on the high seas. And the Justice Department has either looked the other way or written memos saying that that's lawful. But with respect to Iran, Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States. The UN Charter absolutely prohibits one country from aggressively attacking another country using force against another country unless that country has attacked us,

and Iran had not attacked us, or the UN has authorized that intervention. The UN did not authorize that intervention. It was a blatantly illegal on that ground. It was also blatantly illegal under the Constitution, because the Constitution says that the Congress, not the President, has the authority to authorize military actions. And yet the President took these actions, you know, he famously told the New York Times, you know, it's just his own sense of morality that

limits him, nothing else. And as we've seen, that's not a meaningful limit. Well, David Cole, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Professor in Law and Public Policy at the Georgetown University Law Center, former ACLU National Legal Director, will link to your article, The Lie of Preventive War. This is Democracy Now. Coming up next, President Trump's trying again to unilaterally change voting laws ahead of the midterms, this time targeting mail-in voting, even though that's just what he did in Florida in the last weeks. We'll be joined by the Arizona Secretary of State.

Adrian Fontez, stay with us. In 1649 to St. George's Hill, a ragged band I called the diggers came to show, the people's will they defied the landlord. They divide the laws They were the dispossessed The claiming what was this We come in peace They said to sing and soul

We come to work the land In common hand To make the waste ground grow This earth divided We will make whole So it shall be a common treasury For all The sin of property

We do disdain No man has any right to buy and sell the earth for private gain by theft and murder. But I took the land. Now everywhere the walls rise up at their commands. The world turned upside down by Billy Bragg. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren peace report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Democrats and voting advocacy groups have filed three separate lawsuits against.

President Trump's sweeping new executive order to limit mail in an absentee voting ahead of this year's midterm elections. Trump's order directs the Department of Homeland Security to create a state citizenship list. It also directs the U.S. Postal Service to mail ballots only to verified, quote-unquote, voters. Voting rights experts have decried the executive order as an unconstitutional attempt by Trump to seize control of election administration from the states and Congress. Plaintiffs in a lawsuit said, quote, attempts to end voting by mail are part of the Trump administration's larger strategy to undermine elections and subvert the will of the people, unquote. Trump's attack on mail and voting comes just days after he defended his decision to recently vote by mail in Florida. You know what? Because I'm president of the United States,

and because of the fact that I'm president of the United States, I did a mail and ballot for elections that took place in Florida because I felt I should be here instead of being in the beautiful sunshine. That's right. And I, yeah. And I decided that I was going to vote by mail-in ballot because I couldn't be there because I had a lot of different things. We're joined now by Arizona's Democratic Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, who's blasted Trump's executive order as, quote, disgusting overreach from the federal government, unquote. Arizona's among several states the Trump administration's superiors. in order to access sensitive voter data. The state was also at the center of Trump's false claims of election fraud in 2020.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, welcome back to Democracy Now. Why do you describe the president's actions as disgusting? And explain Arizona's mail-in-vote system. Well, thank you for having me first. And I call it disgusting because it is. First and foremost, Article 1, Section 4, reserves the power to establish the time, place, and manner of elections to the states alone and gives Congress a role. Now, the president has previously issued an executive order that he got

shot down on. The rule of law now in the country is he doesn't have a role in administering our elections. And yet he tried again. This is a lawless president, and that's why this is a disgusting overreach. He's already been told by the courts this is not his business. And yet he's trying to do it again. One of the other reasons that I called it that is because this is clearly an attempt for the president to pick his own voters. He doesn't really care about the real voice of American voters, which would mean that he would expand the franchise. He would ask more and more ways to find more voters to be voting, qualified as they are, but to make sure that everybody had access, to make sure that all voters had convenient ways of casting their ballots.

that the governed could give their consent to the government. That's the rule that we have been established by. So, but for both of those reasons, I think it's disgusting. Now, mail in voting in Arizona is what's kind of classified as a no-excuse absentee system. You don't need an excuse to vote by mail. It was created by Republicans in the early 1990s. It has been promoted by them and kept them in power here in Arizona for quite some time. And it's convenient. And what It's also very important. Let me give you an example. My own 80-something-year-old mom does not need to stand in line and be kind of pressured to fill out a two-page long ballot in some elections with up to 85 different elections on that two-page ballot, which we have seen in Maricopa County, Arizona.

She doesn't have to feel rushed. She can do it at the convenience of her home, at her kitchen table, on her couch, look up the propositions, you know, do research on the judges. Our no-excuse option T system, our mailing voting system in Arizona is robust. It is secure. And not only in 2016, but in 2024, it elected Donald Trump as president. So what we have here is, I think, some confusion on the part of the president about what's effective, what's secure. And really, I think the maliciousness behind this has been shown bare on its face. He's trying to pick his own voters.

And Secretary of State Fontes, you mentioned that the mail-in voting system in Arizona dates back to the 1990s. Had there ever been complaints previously about the system before the Trump era? Well, the one complaint we had about the system was that it used to be where the registrar or voter, the county recorders, would mail a postcard to every voter, every single election, and the voters would. say yes, I want a ballot by mail and send it back. Then they would send the ballot. So that ended up getting stopped and we had what was called a permanent early vote list. So you would sign on to it and that increased the vote by mail numbers year in and year out without exception until these election conspiracy theories and lies about vote by mail started. The list is no longer permanent because of the prior governor and legislature made it so that it's now called an active early vote list,

and it's easier to get dropped off that list, although you're still registered and you can still vote. So the complaints have only really started under when Donald Trump was the president, and he spread his lies either before an election, just in case he lost, he'd have an excuse or after an election because he felt like he should have won unanimously or some nonsense like that. I'm not even sure about how that works. Now, earlier this year, you introduced statewide legislation, the Voters First Act. What does that do? And how are you trying to safeguard the integrity of the 2026 midterms in Arizona? Well, the Voters First Act had 10 different components in it. And unfortunately, under the Republican leadership in the legislature, it no longer, I think, is going to see the light of day.

But it really made a whole bunch of different spaces in our elections. much more secure. It gave us funding for the Eric system. It made vote centers a part of the law, which means any voter in any county can vote anywhere in their county, no longer allowing for precinct-based voting only, which has shown to increase provisional ballots, which isn't always great. And it did a variety of other things that helped access, it helped convenience, it helped voters, and it put a good chunk of money into the election budgets for our counties. because Arizona is a bottom upstate, the counties really do a lot of the work. I'm more of like a commissioner in a major sports league.

We establish the rules. We certify the officials. We certify the equipment. It's the counties that do a lot of the work. So we were trying to bolster what they could do and really make it better for the voters because that's really kind of where the rubber meets the road. Adrian Fontes, the latest news, Pam Bondi, fired by President Trump. And I was wondering if you could comment.

on her tenure and how it affects your work as Secretary of State for Arizona. As one pointed out in our earlier segment, the DOJ sending letters to nearly 40 states demanding sensitive information, including driver's license, social security numbers from every registered voter. If you can talk about your resistance and where you go from here. Well, my resistance started back in June of 2025 when I was asked to turn over a bunch of sensitive voter data, sort of some of what you mentioned,

but also including mothers maiden name, date and day and month of birth, tribal ID numbers, things that were not allowed by law to turn over. So they asked us to violate state federal law. They asked us to violate the Privacy Act of 1974. I said no, repeatedly. And then they sued the state of Arizona in my administration.

we will continue to fight this fight in court whether or not Pam Bondi is the Attorney General. And as an aside, good riddance. She was terrible anyway. So we'll see what happens with the next one. Hopefully better than the last, but I'm reluctantly hopeful. But what's going to happen in the future is I'm going to keep standing up for the voters in Arizona, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, independents, or whatever. This is about the American voice.

And I said it earlier. When we expand the franchise, we get a better idea of what Americans actually want. By narrowing and constricting through a lot of these different tactics that we see being used, what we're doing is getting a narrower view. And a decision maker has to have more information. Folks that are in leadership must understand what's really going on out there. So leaders who try to constrict voting rights, who try to shrink the voice to the American people, they're actually shortchanging themselves and they're going to be less effective.

That's one of the reasons why, once we're done with this first term, I hope I can get another one come November. But we're going to keep up this fight. As long as I am the Secretary of State, we're going to fight, number one, to protect our voters and their rights. Number two, their data, which comes directly along with that. And number three, continue to open access to all eligible Arizonans and Americans so that we can have that real voice represented in our government. permit. Adrian Fantasuanah, thank you for being with a Secretary of State of Arizona elected in 2022. Previously, the Maricopa County recorder who oversaw the 2020 elections. He's legally challenging Trump's new voting order. And we will do an interview with you in Spanish after the broadcast and posted at DemocracyNow.org.

When we come back, Palestinian activist La Caudia is out of ICE jail. After a year, she turns out. in studio. Stay with us. I call out to you, composed by Ahmed Kabur, performed right here in New York by the New York City Palestinian Youth Choir. This is DemocracyNow.companow.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We end today's show with Palestinian activist La Cacordia.

She was recently freed after spending a year in an ICE jail in Texas, arrested in March of last year. as part of the Trump administration's campaign targeting activists and others who advocated for Palestinian rights. La Cacardia grew up in the occupied West Bank, now lives in New Jersey. She says Israeli forces have killed more than two members of her extended, 200 members of her extended family in Gaza. In April 2024, La Cah was arrested during a Gaza solidarity protest at Columbia University. The charges were dropped the following day. But in March of last year, La Cah was detained after meeting with immigration officials in New Jersey voluntarily.

Her arrest came less than a week after federal immigration agents arrested the Columbia student protester organizer, Mahmoud Khalil. He was jailed for 104 days. Lecah Cordia is believed to have been the last person held in detention from the Trump administration. crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists while in custody, she was hospitalized in February following her first seizure. In mid-March, she was freed after a judge ordered her release on a hundred thousand dollars bond. La Cacardia joins us now in our studio. Welcome to Democracy Now. It's quite something to see you across the table. We've reported on you for so long. Lecah, how are you feeling? How are you doing right now?

A year in an ice jail, we'd like you to describe your experience and how you were first taken. First of all, thank you very much for having me. It's such an honor to be sitting with you today. How am I feeling now? I'm feeling blessed, grateful. By the same time, the way that I feel it's better sweet, knowing that I left behind many courage, courageous, innocent women and men who deserve nothing but freedom. They've done nothing wrong but dreaming. The last year was tough. It was long. I've seen and experienced many, a lot of

injustice. It's something was very disappointing to be there in the first place. I shouldn't be there in the first. You met with ICE or immigration agents in New Jersey. It was soon after Mahmoud Khalil was taken, so we knew that this was taking place that people were being picked up and describe what

happened then. That was in New Jersey? Yes. Detention Center? It was in a detention center in Newark, yes. Yes. It was supposed to be like just a meeting, regular meeting with my lawyer, along with my lawyer with the ICE agents. I led to

arrest. They took me in an on-work car directly to the airport, and they have informed my lawyer that I'm going to upstate New York, but they took me to Texas instead. And what did they tell you in those early days about why they were holding you? They were saying just it's something, it's an issue with my application. So I have a petition from my U.S. citizen mother to get that green card, and I haven't approved I-1 Ferry. So they just told me that you have an issue with your application. So basically, they were lying to me.

And while you were in custody, you were hospitalized following a seizure. Your legal team said your legs were chained to your bed, and you were denied access to your lawyer or family during that time. Could you talk about that? Yes. So a few days before I experienced that seizure, actually, I was very sick. I've never had a fever like this in my whole life. I was extremely sick and no one cared about me, nor the medical care didn't come to see me.

I wasn't provided any medicine or anything. So a few days later, I fell down and I experienced my first ever seizure in my whole life. I was rushed to the hospital. The entire time I was chained to a hospital bed. We're talking about chains, not handcuffs. I was begging them to just at least like, like free my hand, just like I feel weak. It's heavy. I was told that they can't.

And when I asked to speak to the lieutenant, the lieutenant said, no, we can't move it. And I asked why, and she said because I said so. The experience was horrible. I felt like I'm an animal. I'm not a human being. I'm not being treated like a human being chained to a hospital bed. If I want to use a bathroom or a shower or anything, I'll be chained. I asked to speak to my mother.

I was denied access to my mother. I asked to speak with my lawyers. I was denied access to my lawyers. I told them, fine, can you please inform my lawyers or my family? They refused. So basically, I felt like I'm being kidnapped. You were detained at the Prairiland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. Can you describe what the conditions were like inside and tell us some of the stories of the women that you were imprisoned with?

So I always say to speak about the conditions, we need days to speak about few of the conditions. First of all, it's a jail system. So the word detention is actually very nice to describe the place. It's dungeons, jail. Like, for example, we were in a room that the capacity is supposed to be 37, but we were like 66, sometimes 100. I slid on the floor for three months myself. There wasn't any bed, any available bunks for me.

There were, like, we were most of the time overcrowded. We didn't really have access to the sunlight daily. The health care, it's horrible. They don't have doctors. They don't have nurses. whoever it's working in healthcare, they're like under the nurse. One time they gave me a shot, or actually they wanted to take a blood for me for like, you know, blood tests and all of that. And my hand actually swallowed for almost like two weeks.

And when I told them, like, can you please do something? They said, it is what it is. For example, the showers also got, they stopped working for almost. two weeks and when we kept complaining like the showers are not working that's how people get sick we were told it is what it is also every time we complain about something we would be like faced by like shut up or stop complaining or like you should be thankful for all of this the water have things swimming in it we would sleep on a pepper thin

mattress. There were pregnant ladies, for example. Some ladies will have their pregnancy, like at risk pregnancy. Nobody will take care of them. Like they weren't being seen by a doctor or anybody. The food there

is horrible. We used to call it dogs' food. And even like some of the detainees with me, they actually own dogs and they would say I don't even feed this food to my dog. So, like, if you ask for medical care or anything, most of the time it will be rejected. I had elders with me, 75 years old, 60-something years old, who've been in America for like

50 years or more doing nothing, going to a regular check-in. following the law, doing the right thing. These are civil offenses. Yes, yes, absolutely. What I've seen there, it's actually daughters, mothers, doctors, doctors, teachers, workers, like, that's what I've seen there. I've seen girls 16 and 17 years old. I've seen a girl, she told me that they went to, they stormed her school,

and they literally handcuffed her in a front of, front of her classmates, the humiliation. This actually, like, the detention centers conditions and the ICE Asians methods, like, brought to my mind, to my memories a lot of bad memories from the West Bank and how Israeli soldiers would treat the Palestinian prisoners or Palestinian in general. The humiliation, the way of, like, abusing, like,

mentally torturing. Ice dungeons are systematically built to break people mentally, to break people down, to make you give up, to make you beg to be deported. Even though you're going to face

a lot of injustice in your own country sometimes. But yes. I wanted to ask you, you mentioned your time in the West Bank. You've been living in the U.S. for nearly a day. decade after leaving the occupied West Bank where you grew up with your father, you came to this country to reunite with your mother, who's a U.S. citizen.

Talk about your time, the comparisons you're raising your time as a child in the West Bank. And we just have 32nd. I mean, I grew up under a military occupation. I grew up getting used to, if I want to go to school, I would. go through a checkpoint, a military checkpoint. I was nine years old, and I woke up on an Israeli soldier pointing his rifle on my face and laughing, literally laughing. I've seen my father being humiliated many times by the Israeli soldier.

I experienced bombing, gas bombs. I've seen people dying in the front of my eyes. Like a father was shopping with his daughter, He's just got killed for nothing. I hate to cut you off. We have to end it there. Thank you so much, La Cacordia. For you to be here in studio means so much.

Palestinian protest, a release from a Texas ICE jail after a year. Thank you.