Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-05-11 Monday

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Democracy Now! Monday, May 11, 2026

From New York, this is Democracy Now. But I think overall what's happened is a truly historic shift in British politics. We've been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right. And yet what reform are able to do is to win in areas that have always been conservative. But equally, we're proving in a big way we can win in areas that Labor have dominated, frankly, since the end of World War I. In what's being described as a political earthquake in Britain, the far-right Reform U.K. party has surged in popularity in local elections. As British Prime Minister Kier Sturmer faces calls to resign, we'll talk with the British journalist Daniel Trilling, author of the new book, If We Tolerate This, how the British establishment made the far right respectable. Then we go to Washington, D.C. to speak with the Marine veteran and activists who spent five days

atop a bridge in a protest that made international headlines. I climbed the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge last week to call the people of my country into action, into nonviolent action to stop the war on Iran and remove the Trump regime from power. And then to the prominent biotech entrepreneur Rami Elgandor, he'd been selected by Rutgers University to address this year's graduating class of engineering students. But then the school canceled his speech over his social media posts on Israel and Palestine. The cancellation of my speech sets a dangerous precedent by sending a message that having a moral conscience is a liability. All that and more. Coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now.org. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace report. I'm Amy Goodman.

President Trump blasted Iran's response to the U.S.'s 14-point ceasefire proposal calling it, quote, totally unacceptable. Iran's foreign ministry says the U.S. continues to have, quote, unreasonable demands, unquote, and that Iran's response to the U.S. proposal, quote, was not excessive, unquote. This comes as Iran's economy is reeling from the impact of U.S. Israeli strikes. An Iranian government official estimated the war has caused the loss of one million jobs and comments reported by Iranian state media. On April 25th, an Iranian job search platform reported a record 318,000 resumes submitted in a single day, which is 50% higher, than the previous record, according to the news site, Asaer Iran cited by the New York Times.

According to the U.S.-based human rights activist news agency, over 3,600 people have been killed in Iran by U.S. Israeli strikes, among them 254 children. Meanwhile, the Pentagon confirms 13 U.S. service members have been killed and 415 wounded in the U.S. Israeli war in Iran. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted in an interview with CBS News's 60 Minutes that the Iran war isn't over because nuclear material remains in Iran. It's not over because there's still nuclear material enriched uranium that has to be taken out of Iran.

There is still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled. There are still proxies that Iran supports. their ballistic missiles that they still want to produce. Now, we've degraded a lot of it, but all of that is still there, and there's work to be done. Nobel Peace Laureate Nargis Mohamedi has been transferred to a hospital in Tehran more than a week after collapsing in prison. In a statement, her foundation said, quote, we must ensure she never returns to prison to face the 18 years remaining on her sentence. Now is the time to demand her unconditionally.

freedom and the dismissal of all charges, unquote. Over the weekend, the Guardian published an excerpt of her memoir smuggled out of prison in which Muhammad wrote, quote, authoritarian regimes do not always need an executioner's rope. Sometimes they simply wait for the human body to fail and then make sure no help arrives, or they create conditions in which death can come easily, helping it along by standing in the way of life-saving care. unquote. Mahmadi has been arrested 13 times, sentenced to a cumulative 31 years in prison, and 154 lashes. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for her advocacy against torture and the death penalty in Iran.

The U.S. says it will facilitate a new round of talks between Israel and Lebanon at the State Department's Washington headquarters Thursday and Friday. Israel and Lebanon reached a temporary ceasefire agreement in mid-April, but Israel continues. to launch deadly attacks inside Lebanon. The Lebanese health ministry said Sunday Israeli attacks over just 24 hours killed 51 people, including two medical workers. Since March 2nd, Israeli strikes have killed nearly 3,000 people across Lebanon. 1.2 million people have been displaced. On Sunday, hundreds of people gathered to mourn at least eight members of a displaced Lebanese family who were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit the building they were sheltering in. Among the dead was a six-month-old infant. This is Abu Salah, who attended the funeral.

What would we say? What would we say about the massacres committed against those innocent people, those civilians, those pure believers who are holding onto the land? My mother-in-law, may God bless her soul, was holding onto the land, and her children were holding onto the land. In Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least three Palestinians, including the head of the criminal police force in Han Yunus, Wasam Abduh. Hadi and his aid. A separate strike killed one person and wounded two others in the Magasi refugee camp in central Gaza. Israel has conducted near daily attack since the U.S. brokered so-called ceasefire took effect last October. At least 850 Palestinians have been killed since then.

This is Ali Musa Dababesh, who attended the funeral of the policeman. Although the ceasefire came into effect, several months ago. The occupation continues to target police officers in order to cause chaos amongst the people of the same nation. The occupation aims to create chaos and confusion within the Gaza Strip. This is its sole objective. Israel's deported two activists who were abducted from a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid for a flotilla that was violently intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters late last month. Spanish national, Saif Abu Keshek, and the Brazilian Tiago Avala, were among 175 activists forced off their humanitarian aid ships at gunpoint during Israel's raid on the global Samud flotilla.

Both men face severe physical abuse, they said, while in Israeli custody, which their legal team said amounted to torture. This is Saif Abu Keshek, speaking after his deportation to Greece. I left behind me thousands of Palestinian prisoners, children, women, and men. I am sure that the treatment I face is not compared to the suffering they are going through. The testimonies we hear of their torture, of their violation on daily basis. We have to continue mobilizing. We cannot forget the Palestinian prisoners. In the occupied West Bank, thousands of runners competed in the 10th edition of the Palestine International Marathon on Friday,

following a two-year hiatus due to Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip. Runners gathered outside the Church of the Nativity in central Bethlehem for the start of the race, while a parallel 5-kilometer race was held in central Gaza. Among those participating were amputees who lost limbs to Israeli bombs and bullets. A BBC-funded documentary titled Gaza, Doctors Under Attack, won Best Current Affairs Program at the BAFTA TV Awards Sunday, despite being dropped by the network last June. Channel 4 in the UK picked it up and aired it instead. The BBC pulled the film weeks before its scheduled broadcast.

In a statement, the BBC had said, quote, we have come to the conclusion that broadcasting this material risk creating a perception of partiality, unquote. Presenter Ramita Nevae and Ben DePere, the executive producer of the documentary, blasted the BBC in their acceptance speeches. We refuse to be silenced and censored. and we thank you. And we thank Channel 4 to showing this film. We also want to dedicate this award to Jabba Badwin and Osama al-Ashy,

the two journalists on the ground who made this film for us. So I'd like a round of applause for them, please. Just a question to the BBC, given that you dropped our film, will you drop us from the BAFTA screening later tonight? Thank you. In the United Kingdom, the far-right populace, Nigel Farage and his anti-immigrant party Reform U.K. made significant gains in local elections over the weekend as the Labor Party led by Prime Minister Kier Starrmer took heavy losses. Results show Reform U.K. gained nearly 1,450 council seats in control of 14 councils, while the Labor Party lost nearly 1,500 counselors, leading some members of the Parliament to call on Sturmer to resign.

The Conservative Party also suffered big losses. while the Green Party made gains, claiming hundreds of council seats and winning two mayoral elections. Nigel Farage is a chief architect of Brexit and an ally of President Donald Trump. He's repeatedly used racist language to attack immigrants and Muslims, while his former classmates may have accused him of racist and anti-Semitic bullying. We'll go to London after headlines for the latest on the British elections. Virginia's Supreme Court has struck down a congressional member. drawn by Democrats just weeks after voters approved a statewide referendum changing the borders

of Virginia's 11 congressional districts. The new MAC could have allowed Democrats to win an additional four-house seats in November's midterm elections. Its defeat is a major blow to efforts by Democrats to counter redistricting by Republicans in other states, including Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Meanwhile, officials in Alabama, have asked the U.S. Supreme Court for permission to throw out Alabama's congressional map, which is two majority black districts. Republicans are seeking to flip at least one of Alabama's two Democratic-controlled House seats. Alabama's emergency application came less than two weeks after the Supreme Court's conservative majority gutted the last remaining major provision of the Voting Rights Act in a six to three ruling. Internal documents obtained by the New York Times reveal the Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the Justice Department,

rushed Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil's deportation case. Last month, the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled Khalil could soon be deported. Khalil's case was reportedly considered high priority even before the board officially received it. The decision to deport Khalil also came just nine days after paperwork was submitted. Amaro Lopez, who was appointed to the board under President Biden and later fired under President Trump, told the New York Times, quote, that kind of timeline is unprecedented. It's an insane turnaround, particularly for such a high-profile case on a novel legal issue, he said. At least three judges also reportedly recuse themselves from the process.

On social media, Mahmoud Khalil wrote, quote, This story proves that the Trump administration's treatment of my case has always been corrupt and retaliatory. They put me through a sham immigration process while guaranteeing the outcome in advance, Mahmoud Khalil wrote. A Mexican couple held in an ice jail, was finally released and able to reunite with their 18-year-old son just a day before he died of cancer. Kevin Gonzalez was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and died Sunday in Mexico. His parents, Isadora Gonzalez-Avilles and Norma Annabelle Ramirez Amaya,

had been arrested in April while trying to re-enter the U.S. to visit their dying son after the request for humanitarian visas was denied. On Thursday, an Arizona judge ordered the release of Kevin's parents from ICE custody. On Friday, they returned to Mexico. Hoping to reunite with their parents, Kevin Gonzalez flew to Mexico a week ago where he had discontinued treatment. His father said, quote, We managed to make my son's dream come true,

to be with him again, to love him, to give him the love we could not give him during these months when he was not with us, unquote. The Pentagon says it's blown up another ship in the eastern Pacific, killing two of its passengers and leaving one survivor. Once again, officials with U.S. Southern Command provided no evidence for their claims that the ship had been carrying drugs. Southcom says it notified the U.S. Coast Guard to begin search and rest of the U. operations for the survivor, there's no word on the person's fate. Similar attacks by the Pentagon in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have reportedly killed 192 people. Legal experts say there are extrajudicial killings and are illegal under U.S. and international law. A CNN analysis finds U.S. military intelligence gathering flights are surging off the coast of Cuba.

Since February, the U.S. Navy and Air Force have conducted at least 25 intelligence gathering flights off Cuba's coast, using the same surveillance aircraft active in the lead-up to the U.S. strikes on Iran. Russia and Ukraine accused each other of violating a U.S. brokered three-day ceasefire. Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks killed three people and left many others wounded over the weekend, while Russia's defense ministry accused Ukraine of breaking the ceasefire more than a thousand times. Ukrainian President Volodemar Zelensky said his forces had responded in kind to Russian drone and artillery fire. On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters he thought Russia's attacks on Ukraine were nearing an end. The West promised assistance and then began fueling a confrontation with Russia that continues to this day. I think the matter is coming to an end, but it is a serious matter. Putin's remarks came after Russia held Victory Day celebrations with a military parade that for the first time in nearly two decades featured no tanks, armored vehicles or other heavy weaponry after the equipment was prioritized for the front line in Ukraine.

And in Hungary, Pater Majjar was sworn in Saturday to become Hungary's new prime minister ending 16 years of Victor Orban's authoritarian rule. Majors pro-EU center-right TISA party won 141 of 190. parliamentary seats last month in a landslide victory. The new Speaker of the Parliament ordered the EU flag restored to the facade of the Hungarian Parliament building after 12 years of absence. Teza Party also held an all-day event called a System-changing People's Festival. This is Hungary's new Prime Minister, Peter Majjar. The Hungarian people have given us a mandate to put an end to decades of drifting.

They have given us a mandate to open a new, chapter in Hungary's history, not only to change the government, but to change the system as well, to start again. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. We begin today's show looking at what's been described as a political earthquake in Britain. In local elections last week, the far-right Reform U.K. party surged in popularity while

the Labor Party suffered heavy losses. The Reform U.K. party is led by Nigel Farah. who was the chief architect of Brexit, close ally of President Donald Trump. Farage celebrated his party's success. But I think overall what's happened is a truly historic shift in British politics. We've been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right. And yet what reform are able to do is to win in areas that have always been conservative. But equally, we're proving in a big way we can win in areas that Labor have dominated, frankly,

since the end of World War I. Calls are growing for British Prime Minister Kier Starrmer to resign after his Labour Party suffered historic losses. This is Starrmer speaking Friday. Let me be clear, these are really tough results. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. And we have lost brilliant Labour representatives, people who put so much into their communities,

so much into our party and our movement. And the voters have sent a message about the pace of change, how they want their lives improved. They was elected to meet those challenges and I'm not going to walk away from those challenges and plunge the country into chaos. Well, they've sent a message that the change that we promised isn't being delivered in a way they can feel

and also, frankly, they're fed up with years of the status quo. But we were elected to deal with those challenges and I'm not going to walk away from that and to plunge the country into the country. chaos. In a sign of the splintering of the British political system, the Conservative Party also suffered significant losses while the Green Party won hundreds of council seats. We go now to London, where we're joined by the journalist and author Daniel Trilling. His new book is titled, If We Tolerate This, How the British Establishment made the Far Right respectable. Daniel,

thanks so much for being with us. Why don't you start off by responding to these historic losses of the Labour Party. Yeah, thanks, Amy. So absolutely right. This has been a real disaster for the Labour Party. It wasn't quite as disastrous as had been predicted a few weeks ago. But they've sunk to new lows electorally around Britain. So as well as losing hundreds of councillors in England, they lost very badly in the elections for the Welsh Parliament, which were happening at the same time. Labour has dominated Welsh politics for over a century and they're now, you know, trailing behind the Welsh Nationalist Party, applied Cymry and Reform who've come in second. But it was interesting to hear Nigel Farage's spin on what happened in that clip you played of him earlier, because,

yeah, this is historic. Reform have made this huge advance, you know, adding to their tally of council seats that they began to rack up last year in similar elections. But actually in terms of vote share, they underperformed expectations a bit. So reform got around 26, 27% of the vote overall.

But they really benefited from this wider fragmenting of politics. You know, we now have kind of four, five or even six party politics in the UK, depending on exactly where you live. Reform had benefited from that because they've kind of managed to concentrate that vote in area.

where they were able to win lots of seats. But actually, this suggestion that Reform have completely kind of erased the distinction between left and right, I don't think is true. And I think Farage is putting that spin on things because Reform were really trying in this election to make bigger inroads into areas that the centre-right Conservative Party had traditionally been strong in. And they didn't really do as well as expected there. Where they did do well were in areas that voted to leave the EU in the Brexit referendum. a decade ago and where they've always had the attention of a certain chunk of voters.

So I think it's the overall fragmentation that is the real story here. So talk about, well, the title of your book, if we tolerate this, how the British establishment made the far right respectable. If you can talk about who Farage is and what he represents. Yeah, so one of the big changes in British politics in recent years is, been this very alarming and rapid rise of ideas and rhetoric associated with the far right. So, you know, very strong anti-immigration rhetoric, attacks on supposed elites running the country and so on. You know, things that will be very familiar to your viewers in the US from Donald Trump and his works.

And that's really, you know, the pressure there has really come from two sources. One of them is a lot of far right activity outside the electoral system. You know, we've had kind of big street protests and rallies and mob violence in some cases attacking hotels that are being used to accommodate asylum seekers. And then we've had a lot of pressure from Farage's political party reform UK who have been, you know, trying to shape some of these resentments and some of this anger into a right-wing populist political project

of the kind that we're seeing in lots of different liberal democracies around the world at the moment. You know, for Farage, this is just the latest stage in a kind of long political career where he's come from outside the mainstream right and has tried to make his brand of right-wing populist politics the leading force in Britain. So he was previously leader of the UK Independence Party

and via his leadership of UKIP, he played an instrumental role in winning the Brexit referendum for the Leaf campaign. He then formed another party called the Brexit Party after that to kind of push for the hardest exit from the EU possible. And Reform UK, the latest vehicle. In fact, it's a renamed Brexit party. But what he's doing here is actually trying to build a political platform

that will allow him and his party to win power in Westminster nationally. And the key themes that that's built on, you know, is heavily anti-immigration. And they make a real point of trying to kind of flex their muscles and show how ostentatiously cruel they're going to be to what they call illegal immigrants, which is a wide range of people who are living in the youth. UK, some of whom have lived here for quite a long time. Earlier this year, one of reforms big pre-local election announcements was that it wanted to create a British ice. So that kind of tells you where they are on that. You know, they made that. Now, Daniel, let me play a

campaign ad from Nigel Farage. I'm in Essex today, and this is the Bell Hotel in Epping. Now, you might remember these scenes being on national news last year. Anyone that comes illegally into Britain on a boat or in the back of a lorry would be detained and deported. But that's going to mean having to detain quite a lot of people who are here already. They should not be free to walk the streets. Policy is very simple. You vote for a reform MP. You will not have a detention facility in your constituency. But if you vote green or those that support open borders in the world, that's where the detention centres are going to be. Equally, I could say the same of Labor and the Conservatives because they've done nothing to stop it.

Daniel Trilling, your response. Yeah, I mean, that kind of sums up what reform are about. So like I was saying before, you know, it's kind of making a virtue of how punitive and cruel they're going to be to certain groups of immigrants, but also kind of directing that at their political enemies as well. You know, so this announcement, which Farage made a couple of weeks ago, was all about kind of stigmatising his opposition. So the Green Party, who have also kind of broke through from outside the mainstream by taking a kind of strong left-wing position.

You know, he's trying to class as open board as fanatics. And, I mean, what are they saying there? They're kind of threatening to use the power of the state, if they ever get hold of it, to intimidate their political opponents. You know, placing detention centres in areas that vote for parties that Farage doesn't like. you know, it's kind of punishing people for voting the wrong way and perhaps even trying to scare voters into not opposing him. If you can also talk about, we see parallels here in the United States leading up to President Biden's defeat around Israel and Palestine, one of his top advisors, Wendy Sherman, now calling what's happened in Gaza genocide.

In Britain, you have kids. Starrmer crackdown on Palestine action, which they've called a terrorist organization, if you can talk about their positions here. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'd say kind of, you know, from having written about the far right for years and, you know, study the history and so on, I think one thing that governments of the centre should really avoid doing is kind of giving them the tools to play with, you know. So it's a real problem if governments of the center start kind of passing their own draconian authoritarian policies. And I think that's exactly what you've seen with the Starma government in

relation to the Palestine protests. You know, so this protest group that uses direct action, Palestine Action, was classed as a terrorist organization and banned, which as a result means that, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of peaceful protesters who have expressed their support for Palestine action since the ban have also been arrested and are potentially facing criminal conviction just for expressing rhetorical support for that group. And, you know, much, like in the US, I think, these actions by the government have been in response to a huge amount of public anger. Obviously, Israel's war on Gaza,

but what they also see is Britain's complicity in that war. So, you know, the UK has a strong military ally of Israel. When the Labour government came to power in 2024, they suspended a lot of arms, sales to Israel on the grounds that there was a risk they could be used for human rights abuses, but actually carried on supplying certain key items like parts that could be used in Israel's F-35 fighter jet program. And so the government have really tried to just kind of contain dissent in a way that has alienated huge amounts of their core support.

I mean, really, I think in these recent elections, much more pressing issues like the cost of living and rising fuel prices and so on were on voters' minds. But a lot of that support that would have gone to Labor previously, which has gone to, the Green Party and to some of the other smaller parties is also to do with anger over Israel and Gaza and the way that our government has responded to that. I also want to ask you about rising support for the Green Party. This is the Green Leader, Zach Polanski. This is a historic victory.

This is the first time the Green Party have ever won a directly elected mayor. And two-party politics is not just dying. It is dead and it is buried. And actually, whether it's here, that Labour have been rejected or whether we're seeing around the country, it's very clear that the new politics is the Green Party versus reform. My message to Kyrgyzama is that he needs to go, but I don't think that's my message. I think that's the country's message. We've seen for a long

time now his popularity has been going and he's lost the trust of the country. And to see a Labour minister today saying that they don't just respond to the mood of the country, they stick to the plan. I feel very misjudged. But it doesn't feel like a coincidence. That feels like the entitlement and the privilege that this Labour government have acted with every single day that they've been an office. Daniel Trilling, your response. Yeah, so obviously, Zach Polanski and the success of the Greens is the other big development in, certainly in English politics, because obviously Scotland and Wales had elections, but there's a slightly different political setup in both those countries.

The Greens, you know, they've been around for a long time in Britain, but Polanski was elected as their leader last year with a mandate to shift the party, you know, quite markedly to the left to pursue what he calls eco-populism. So kind of attacking the centre of politics, but from the left this time, as opposed to reform, who obviously come at it from the right. You know, the Greens have got strong positions on social and environmental justice. They also now take a very strong rhetorical stance in support of workers' rights. And, you know, they've now got this unprecedented opportunity to put some of their principles into action. They've won control of several local councils in London and other parts of the country.

The big question I think is really, can they now follow through on this? The Greens at the moment are untested. They've got a lot of goodwill from people who've lent them their votes. But I suppose the one question is, can they deliver what they promise? The other question is, you know, Britain at national elections has this first-past-the-post electoral system that does not really very fairly reflect the spread of votes in the country. country, that becomes even more complicated when you move, as we're doing now, from a two-party system to a multi-party system. So when we get to our next national election, the question is

going to be, will there be an electoral force on the progressive wing strong enough to keep reform out? And if there isn't a single force like that, how are these different parties, the Greens, Labour, Scottish nationalists, Welsh nationalists, who sometimes seem to hate each other more than they hate their opponents on the right, going to come together and collaborate in a way that will stop Britain going down what I think could be a very dark path. I wanted to ask you before we go about another country, about Hungary. Over the weekend, Peter Magyar was sworn in Saturday to become Hungary's new prime minister. Madja are ending 16 years of Victor Orban's authoritarian rule.

You've been writing about Hungary. Talk about the significance of this and the damage to the institutions. of Hungary during this past 16 years, Daniel? Yeah, I mean, I'll make a kind of self-interested point, first of all, as someone from Britain, I think it's a real lesson in why it's so important to prevent far-right populists from winning in the first place. Because, as we've seen over the past decade or more in the case of Hungary, they can be very hard to dislodge from power once they're there. They can end up being pretty popular with the electorate that they try to appeal to.

but in pretty much every case where a far-right populist has one power around the world, they have undermined institutions that are vital checks and balances on the democratic system. You know, if you think how often free speech is the kind of the watchword of far-right populists, I think in every single country where a government has been formed by far-right populists, free speech hasn't got any more free. In fact, it's got significantly harder to express dissenting opinions. And Madjah's victory shows kind of what's required, I think, to push back, which is like, you know, if you get to that stage, a broad coalition of people opposed to the far-right populist government.

You know, Madjar is a right-wing conservative. Some of his positions won't be that different to some of Victor Orban's, but he has taken this very strong stand against corruption, against the undermining of the liberal democratic system. And so lots of people who don't necessarily share his politics on many of the issues that he stands for have got behind that in a huge effort, which is why when I was talking about Britain before, I was stressing this need to kind of talk and think about coalitions that can be formed to keep the right-wing populists out of power. Daniel Trilling, I want to thank you so much for being with us, journalist and author speaking to us from London. His new book is titled, If We Tolerate This, How the British Establishment made the far right respectable. Coming up, we go to Washington, D.C. to speak with a Marine veteran who spent five days atop the Frederick Douglas Bridge to protest the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran.

Stay with us. Why do we build a wall? My children, my children. Why do we build the wall? Why the wall? We build the wall to keep us free. That's why we build the wall. We build the wall to keep us free.

How does the wall keep us free? My children, my children. How does the wall keep us free? We keep us free. The wall keeps out. The enemy, we build the wall to keep us free. That's why we build the wall. My children, my children, who do we call?

Billy Bragg performing why we build the wall in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. We go now to Washington, D.C. where a former Marine reservist and father of two spent five nights on top of the Frederick Douglas Memorial Bridge to protest the war in Iran in artificial intelligence. Guido Reichstadter scale the 168 foot arch of the bridge on May 1st. He continued to post his social media while he was on top of the bridge.

In a social media post Tuesday evening, he said he'd run out a war. and would head down, adding he expected to be going to jail for a while. In an earlier post, he wrote, quote, one man on a bridge is relatively powerless, but the collective withdrawal of our obedience and support is capable of bringing a swift end to the regime in its wars. This nonviolent collective action is our greatest power, and it's the exercise of this power that those who rule fear more than any weapon.

For the sake of the world, its children in our future, let us build this power with each other together, he wrote. This is not the first time Guido has climbed the Frederick Douglas Bridge in protest. In 2022, he spent 24 hours on the bridge to protest the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. He's also a co-founder of Stop AI, a grassroots movement to disrupt artificial intelligence technology. After he ended his protest on the bridge, Guido was raised. arrested in charge with unlawful entry, failure to obey an officer and several other charges. Well, Guido Reichstadter joins us now in Washington, D.C. Welcome to Democracy Now.

Explain what you did. Good morning. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah, I think, like, most simply what I did was follow the call of my heart. I couldn't stay silent in the face of, you know, these ongoing acts of mass murder by the U.S. government in my name. And I felt like I had a, that I have, a duty to the truth, which is that we have the power to end these wars today. we, the people who's in whose name these murders are being committed,

we've got the power and the responsibility to non-violently withdraw our support, our cooperation from the system, from the regime, which is prosecuting these acts of murder in our name. And if we do that, we can end them. And that's actually, you know, that's our right. It's our power. And it's, I feel that it's our responsibility. Can you, Guido, explain why you came to D.C.

planning to attend a talk by Senator Bernie Sanders on the dangers of AI, of artificial intelligence. And yet this protest, though you'd scaled the Frederick Douglas Bridge before, was about the U.S. war on Iran? Sure. Yeah, I've been, I've been worried about AI for a long time since. about 25 years when I first heard about the possibility of building artificial general intelligence or AI systems with, you know, the full range of essentially cognitive capabilities of a human brain. It just seemed like it was, you know, 25 years ago, everyone thought that might be hundreds of years in the future. And since chat GPT was rolled out in late 2022 and, you know,

broadly the deep learning revolution. The whole field has really updated quickly and shortened their timelines for when that might be possible. And, you know, the world's leading, most cited living scientists, engineers in the field, academics, all recognize that the development of technology poses the risk of catastrophic harm,

even including, you know, loss of control of advanced systems. potentially human extinction. So I moved to San Francisco in 2024 to begin social mobilization on that. That's actually what brought me to D.C. on Friday or on last Wednesday. Was that a part of your protest? Was it both issues, both AI and the U.S. Israeli war and Iran? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. There's, there's, so I put it out in the first post that I put on social media when I got on the bridge that was identified those, those, they're really three. is ending the war, removing the Trump regime from power, and an urgent warning to our society about the potential imminent arrival of a kind of point of no return beyond which will be

consigned to these catastrophic effects from AI. And I care about the society in which I live. I've got two children, and I care about the world. And I feel that I have that responsibility to warn the people that I care about, about a danger. that is recognized by, you know, the people who are closest to the development of this technology. And it's coming on fast. And this is, you know, a lot faster than maybe is recognized. And it's great that Senator Sanders held that discussion between academics and China and the United States about the need for global treaty coordinating to stop the development of really dangerous systems. But we need to treat it like an emergency.

And that means more than talks, and it means action. You were raised as an evangelical Christian, a conservative household. Talk about how that informed what you did. Sure. You know, that's part of what led me to join the Marines right out of high school. And it's also, you know, when I was confronted in university with the reality, of American intervention, the history of American intervention and power, imperialism in the world, it's what made it also possible, I think, or easier for me to reject that and say, no, this isn't right,

which is what I did in 2003 when, you know, in the run-up to the Iraq War. Well, in fact, I refused to deploy to the Iraq War and resigned, you know, essentially refused to deploy, said, I'm not going to, I'm not going to train. I'm not going to, I'm not going to go fight this war. And you can either let me go or you can send me to jail. But you can't force me to do what's wrong. And that's what I went up on the bridge to do as well, to say, you know, to the people of my country, it's like, what's being done is wrong. And we have, we have to stand up against it and not accept it. And, you know, if we do that in mass collectively, we have the power to stop it.

What is the place right now, Guido, in terms of charges? And do you feel that your protest was a success? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I have currently one federal charge, unlawful entry, and a DC charge of failure to obey. and I'm also facing charges in San Francisco for non-violently blocking the doors of Open AI, one of the leading frontier AI companies. You know, for me, the important thing was doing what's right, doing what I felt I had to do, and I was able, you know, even just trying to do it is the success, right?

Thank God I was able to make it to the top and to, you know, go through that action. But doing what's right is the success. Choosing to do what's right and accepting the consequences is the, that's the pivotal thing. That's the pivotal decision that everyone has to make. And if we can make that, that's what's successful. But broadly, I think it has motivated, um, motivated, um, inspired people, even around the world, I've gotten messages from, you know, hundreds of folks. Finally, Guido, I asked you about AI and about the war in Iran. Do you connect the two?

The whole question of the use of AI, looking at Michael Clare's comments, artificial intelligence played a major role in selecting targets for attack during Operation Epic Fury. the U.S. Air and Missile Campaign against Iran that began February 28th. Your final comment in these last 30 seconds. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it was not only used as a weapon of war, it is being developed as a weapon of war, but also as a tool for the advancing fascist movement to surveil and control the society, which makes war possible and makes resistance more.

difficult. So, and we should expect that as AI systems grow in capability in the future, if this is not stopped, it will destroy democracy and it will probably destroy the world. We've got a responsibility to stop it. If we care about the people we love and the society we live in and our children and their future, we've got to make sacrifices and do what's necessary, even if it's uncomfortable. Guido Reichstadter, I want to thank you for being with us. co-founder of Stop AI, father of two. He scaled the Frederick Douglas Bridge in Washington, D.C. last week to protest the war in Iran and AI remained on the bridge for four days and five nights, a former marine reservist. Coming up, the prominent biotech entrepreneur, Rami Elgandur. He had been selected by Rutgers University to address this year's graduating class of engineering students, but then the school canceled his speech.

They said over his social media posts on Israel and Palestine. Stay with us. Landed by Sophia Shari. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. In New Jersey, Rutgers University is abruptly withdrawn its invitation to a prominent biotech entrepreneur and alum to speak at its engineering school convocation. Rami Elginor, a 2001 alum of the Engineering School, have been scheduled to deliver graduation address at Rutgers New Brunswick campus May 15th, but his invitation was canceled over what the university said were complaints about a social media post on Israel, Palestine. Two unions of educators at Rutgers University issued a joint statement condemning the university's decision to cancel the speech,

calling it politically motivated suppression that, quote, reflects a broader pattern of universities applying a Palestinian. exception to their stated commitments to free speech, unquote. Agendor is also executive producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hendr's Job, about the killing of a Palestinian child and her family in Gaza, along with paramedics who tried to rescue them, and the film American Doctor that premiered earlier this year at Sundance Film Festival, the film following three doctors who go to Gaza to volunteer. Rami Algendor joins us now in New York. Thank you so much for being with us. Talk about what happened.

Thanks, Amy. It's a pleasure to be here. I appreciate the opportunity. I was invited by Rutgers in December of 2025, principally because of my student engagement. I do a lot of student engagement as an alum with Rutgers University, and I love the students and spend a lot of time with them. I actually did a fireside chat with this dean that issued me that invitation in December in March and early in early March, I believe. and then a couple of weeks ago, about two weeks before I was set to give the graduation address, I received the call that I was disinvited. Why? As you shared, it was very vague.

There was no specifics. I asked for specifics. It was to quote the dean that my social media posts oppose the beliefs of a few students. I asked how many students? He said a few. A few to me sounds like maybe five or so. So it seemed unbably. to me that for a class of a thousand students that a handful of students having complaints

would lead to this outcome. And look, I am obviously a big proponent of free speech, but disagreement is not harm. Having a different point of view is not harming these students in any way to lead to this sort of outcome. I want to ask you about your background. You are alum of Rutgers, and then talk about what you went on to do. Sure. Yeah. So I, I graduated from Rutgers in 2001 with a degree in electrical computer engineering. I worked for five years as an engineer. I then went on to business school at Wharton Business School in Philadelphia. From there, I got into venture capital and moved to the great state of California,

where I was in venture for about five years as well. I then joined my first startup. I built that startup from about 30 to 1,000 people, took a public on the New York Stock Exchange, was there for about seven years. I then left, took a couple years off and joined my most recent company. Our Selix, where I'm chairman and CEO, and for that organization, I ran it for past five and half years. We were just acquired by Gilead for $7.8 billion, and we make a cancer therapeutic that is what I believe to be the best therapeutic option ever developed from multiple myeloma.

And so has Rutgers courted you through the years? Of course. I feel like I am the poster child for Rutgers School of Engineering. I've made a lot of my degree. I got asked all the time, is it engineering degree valuable given what I do today? And it's absolutely valuable. And I'm so proud of Rutgers, and it's really just been heartbreaking to go through these last couple of weeks. It's interesting that Rutgers has dealt with some student complaints over your invitation versus what happened with another event just last month. In April, the Rutgers chapter of students supporting Israel invited a former soldier from the Israeli defense forces who'd served in Gaza last year to come to campus despite protests

by pro-Palestinian and Muslim and Arab groups and a petition signed by over 7,000 people of the Rutgers community demanding the event be canceled. The event took place as planned. Yeah, I mean, look, I think if I had to summarize this entire dialogue around Israel and Palestine, I would summarize it using the word false equivalency. And it's a false equivalency across a couple of different metrics. The first one is on free speech. So on the one side, we talk about these cancellations. I've seen a lot of these articles online about my speech was canceled, and there was a speech canceled at GW Law. But that speech was not canceled. That speaker actually withdrew. I'm actually an alum of the School of Engineering. That speaker was not even a law

graduate, let alone had any association with Georgetown. So it seems like there's one, on one side, actual free speech on the other side. so much. Let's talk about America. America first, on the one side. I've never heard a pro-Palestine advocate ask for one penny for Palestine. On the pro-Israel side, we're constantly asked, not even asked, demanding unlimited funding and political cover. So I keep hearing this sort of like false equivalency, like, oh, both sides are kind of the same. They're not the same. And then lastly, from a principal's perspective, on the Palestine side, we are advocating for equality. On the pro-Israel side, Israel is the only country in the world that still automatically and

systematically prosecutes children in military court. They just passed a law that legitimized or passed the death penalty only for Palestinians, for one ethnic minority. So, look, you ask, about my background, Amy. I'm a CEO who made their career by being in the details. I constantly hear that, you know, there's sort of two sides to this issue, and there are two sides, but they couldn't be more starkly different. What would you have said in your speech? I really was talking about the journey that got me here. You know, a lot of the student engagement I do, the one question they asked me is, how did I manage to be as successful as I've been without compromising my beliefs and my values? So I go mostly through my

career arc. And the two things I focus on on being yourself and choosing kindness as a way to lead. And do you get pushback at Arcelix for your views? I do not. I have friends as well as colleagues that are of all different races, ethnicities, including Jewish friends and colleagues. And Arcelics itself, I have had no issues. I've had multiple attempts from outside of Arcelix to cancel me or silence me over my speech and my time they're a CEO, but never from within the company. On April 20th, Congressmember Ro Khanna wrote on social media, the free ride is over. Israel has a $45 billion defense budget. I am team America, Kana wrote.

You replied to the post writing, forget a free ride. They've committed genocide. They're running dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners. Weapons embargo is the absolute minimum. Sanctions in diplomatic isolation are beyond justice. testified, this will sell them weapons won't fly, unquote. On Sunday, democracy now reached out to Rutgers to invite a representative to join us on the show or send us a statement on why your speaking invitation was rescinded. Ruskers sent us the following statement, quote, in response to objections from students regarding Mr. Elgondor's social media posts, including one that shared an inflammatory claim and following the dean's own discussions with Mr. Elgondor that raised concerns about whether the event and

his remarks would remain consistent with the celebratory nature of the occasion, the School of Engineering decided to rescind the speaking invitation for the school convocation. Interestingly, today, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Christoph has a new article out, headlined the silence that meets the rape of Palestinians. In it, Christoph writes about a Gaza journalist detained by Israel in 2024. Nicholas Christoph writes, quote, on one occasion, he said he was held down, stripped naked and he was blindfolded and handcuffed. A dog was summoned. With encouragement from a handler in Hebrew, he said the dog mounted him. He tried to dislodge the dog, he said,

but it penetrated him. Christoph goes on to write other Palestinian prisoners and human rights monitors have also cited reports of police dogs being coached to rate prisoners, unquote. Christoph Peace links to reports from BBC, Al Jazeera, and Middle East Eye. Your comments on what has been cited. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I just want to be clear that Rutgers never shared that with me. So it is dishonest at this point to come out and point to this tweet when I repeatedly asked what the source of this invitation was. And they said they never even reviewed my social media, let alone had a specific tweet to point to. And you can verify that in that their initial statement to the Associated Press said that,

said we hadn't reviewed anything. And now after drawing a lot of fire, they decided to point to something. The second thing I'll say before I get to the human rights issue is that the idea that as a public company CEO, I'm just tweeting will-nilly things that are not verifiable is just farcical and laughable. So it's an embarrassing position for the university to take. The third, though, and the most important of these is how morally bankrupt can you be to read that tweet and have your concern be the content of the tweet rather than the accusations in it. And the fact that Palestinians are systemically not believed, despite the overwhelming

evidence, as I talked about in this false equivalency dynamic of rape, murder, prosecution. I mean, we are talking, forget the genocide in Gaza, forget the terrorism in the West Bank. Save the Children, one of the most prominent organizations in the world, says that half of the children abducted by Israel are sexually assaulted. What are we talking about? Like, how is this still a dialogue in this country? And this is maybe the most disturbing thing I have ever heard. Five seconds.

Yeah. Sorry, this is the most disturbing thing I've ever heard with respect to this sexual assault by animals. I thank you for being with us, Rami Elgandor, biotech entrepreneur, scheduled to deliver graduation address at Rutgers, but his invitation was canceled. He's executive producer of the Oscar-nominated film,

The Voice of Hind Rajab. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.