Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-05-27 Wednesday

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Democracy Now! Wednesday, May 27, 2026

This is Democracy Now. We're not going to change what we do because someone goes on a hunger strike. As a matter of fact, if it gets bad enough in the physician she would like to put themselves in extreme danger, medical danger, then we'll force feed them. We'll get a court order and force them. Hunger strikes do not work. Even as the Department of Homeland Security denies a hunger strike is going on, so-called borders are Tom Homan is threatening to force feed the hunger-striking detained immigrants at the for-profit jail in Newark, Delaney Hall. We'll speak to Gabriella Soto, protest organizer and wife of detainee Martine Soto.

Then two officers who were attacked on January 6th by Capitol rioters are suing to block President Trump's so-called anti-weaponization fund. Donald Trump has created a $1.8 billion sludge fund that is going to go to pay the rioters and paramilitary organizations that attacked our clients on January 6, 2021, and whose support has continued to threaten our client safety. We'll speak to the attorney for injured police, Brendan Ballou. He's also a former federal prosecutor who spent two years prosecuting January 6th insurrections and finally, tax me if you can. Oligarchs are robbing America blind, and the IRS is powerless to stop them.

Oligarchy in America is not new, but we're living in an era that I call in your face oligarchy, where oligarchs are far more visible than anything we've seen since the robber barons of the gilded age. We'll speak with Northwestern political scientist Jeffrey Winters, author of The Blind Spot, how oligarchs dominate our democracies. All that and more coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. President Trump Tuesday blasted U.S. media outlets saying on truth social, if Iran surrenders, they would portray it as a, quote, masterful and brilliant victory over the United States, unquote.

It comes as Iranian official signal that negotiations to reach a ceasefire deal are ongoing. Tehran's top negotiator, Mohamed Vaghar, the Speaker of Iran's Parliament, returned from Qatar on Tuesday. According to Iranian officials, his visit to Qatar aimed to secure the release of $24 billion, a quarter of Iranian funds frozen abroad. This comes as Iranian authorities partially restored Internet access after a nationwide blackout that lasted for nearly three months. Israel said Wednesday, it had killed Muhammad Ode, Hamas's newly appointed armed wing chief

in an operation in Gaza on Tuesday. A family statement said he was killed along with his wife and son. Gaza health officials said six people, including at least one woman, were killed and more than 20 others, wounded in the same Israeli strike, which destroyed an upper floor of an apartment building in Gaza City. Since last October's so-called U.S. brokered ceasefire, Israel's killed some 900 Palestinians in Gaza. This is a resident of Gaza City describing Israel's airstrike Tuesday. There was a sudden airstrike by Israeli warplanes.

It was a surprise. They hit a rooftop apartment in a building with three missiles, and they weren't simple missiles. They were heavy ones. There is no ceasefire. Day and night, there is shelling. The shelling is constant here. They say there is a ceasefire, but they're not. There is no ceasefire for us. This is the Eid atmosphere. As you can see, it is Eid now.

Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least 31 people and wounded 40 on Tuesday. According to Lebanon's health ministry, Israel launched more than 120 air strikes Tuesday alone. One of the heaviest days of bombing in weeks. An Israeli military official confirmed troops had begun operating beyond the so-called yellow line, which is a boundary running roughly 10 kilometers inside Lebanon. The escalation comes despite a U.S. brokerate ceasefire in place since mid-April. Since March 2nd, over a million Lebanese have been forced to flee their home, and more than 3,100 have been killed in Israeli attacks. This is a resident of Tyre. Kids, women, and elderly people all sitting here.

Suddenly, the Israelis send evacuation warnings, and these people get thrown into chaos. They pick themselves up and leave. Half an hour, 45 minutes later, look what happens. The U.S. military carried out another strike Tuesday on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing one person, leaving two survivors. The Trump administration once again claimed the vessel was carrying drugs without providing any evidence. Video shared by the U.S. since September, the Pentagon says it has killed nearly 200 people in strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The attacks have been widely condemned as illegal.

Hundreds of immigrants detained at the ICE jail known as Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, are continuing their hunger and labor strike to protest inhumane conditions and call for their release. Delaney Hall is operated by the private prison company Geo Group. Outside the thousand-bed jail, ICE agents classed with protesters, pepper spraying them. Three people have been arrested during the days-long standoff, even as Homeland Security denies there's an ongoing hunger strike. So-called borders are Tom Homan vowed to force-feed the immigrants on hunger strike if the situation at Delaney Hall, quote, gets bad enough, unquote.

Newark is a sanctuary city. DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen has threatened to halt international flights and stop processing travelers to Newark International Airport and other major U.S. airports in sanctuary cities. We'll have more on this story after headlines. The Trump administration's expediting the use of mass immigration hearings in order to issue more deportation orders. NPR reports, immigrants are now being scheduled to appear in front of what's known as master calendar hearings with an unprecedented hundred or more people at a time. For many immigrants, this is the first time they would appear in immigration court to plead their case.

Immigrants without legal representation have been disproportionately targeted for these new hearings. Lawyers told NPR the practice is already underway in cities like Chicago and Boston. The Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in blocking a free speech lawsuit involving federal immigration judges. The conservative majority justices overturned a lower court ruling that had allowed the challenge to proceed. In 2020, a group of immigration judges filed the lawsuit over a federal government rule that limits their ability to speak out on public policy. The National Association of Immigration Judges said in a statement, quote, justice cannot endure when judges are intimidated into silence, nor can a nation remain free when the rule of law is subordinate to the whims of political ambition, unquote. Mass protests have continued in Bolivia for nearly a month as thousands take to the street. demanding the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz.

Lawmakers this week moved to approve the possible deployment of armed forces to suppress the mobilizations. Farmers, teachers, and others have joined the protest calling on Paz's government to roll back austerity measures amid soaring living costs. We want the government to solve this problem, to fix it once and for all, and to do so wholeheartedly. The babies are starving. We can't afford to buy food.

We seniors no longer have the money to buy food, and I have my granddaughters who are orphans. I'm asking for a solution. The Trump administration's reportedly preparing to deploy public health officials to Kenya in an effort to quickly staff a potential quarantine center to send U.S. citizens who've been exposed to Ebola. That's according to the Wall Street Journal, which said some members of the U.S. Public Health Service Commission Corps have received deployment notices to Kenya. The World Health Organization says there have been more. than 900 suspected Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, over 200 suspected deaths

in just under two weeks since the outbreak was first announced. This comes as health care workers gathered in the eastern DRC city of Bunya on Tuesday for the burial of a doctor who died while treating Ebola patients. This is the president of the Aturi Medical Association. We are indeed afraid. We're seriously afraid because all of us are supposed to take care for the sick. Today there are sick people coming in. Tomorrow there'll be more sick people coming. We're afraid. We're really afraid. But we cannot abandon the sick because we're afraid.

We've taken an oath. We will treat them. We will treat them. But while respecting the preventative measures. The Trump administration's pushing a new non-disclosure agreement that would apply to all federal workers. The Office of Personnel Management posted a draft to the Federal Register on Tuesday, prohibiting workers from disclosing non-public confidential or proprietary information. It would also bar them from sharing sensitive internal materials not currently available to the public. The draft goes beyond standard classified and unclassified categories of information. The new rule targets leaks to news outlets and would broaden non-disclosure agreements already in place at the Pentagon and other federal agencies. Esha Bondari, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech Privacy and Technology Project, said,

quote, such broad gag orders would leave the public in the dark about how the government works, preventing the kind of informed debate that's critical to democratic accountability. The government cannot shroud itself in secrecy in a democracy, unquote. A federal court blocked Alabama from using its new congressional map in this year's midterm elections, ruling it intentionally discriminates against black voters. The three judge panel wrote it. in their ruling, quote, we cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamaians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination, unquote.

More than one and four residents of Alabama are black. Alabama's Attorney General vowed to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which last month struck down Louisiana's majority black congressional districts. Meanwhile in South Carolina, the state Senate wrapped up at session Tuesday without voting on a new congressional map that would have dismantled the state's only majority black district. South Carolina's lawmakers quietly defied pressure from President Trump and the GOP to join the ongoing redistricting battle ahead of the midterm elections. And in Texas, the state's attorney general, Ken Paxton, backed by President Trump, defeated four-term incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the Republican Senate primary runoff Tuesday. Paxton has previously been indicted on charges of felony securities fraud and was impeached from

office on allegations of bribery, dereliction of duty, obstruction of justice, and abuse of public trust. Paxton is the first primary challenger to defeat an incumbent U.S. senator from Texas since at least 1980. The Republican candidates spent nearly $130 million, making it the most expensive Senate primary in U.S. history. Paxton now faces Democratic nominee, state representative James Tolariko, in the general election in November. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. We begin today in Newark, New Jersey, where tensions remain high since about 300 prisoners at the ICE jail known as Delaney Hall began a hunger

and labor strike Friday to protest inhumane conditions and due process violations. Delaney Hall is operated by the for-profit prison company Geo Group. Federal immigration agents have repeatedly clashed with protesters and community organizers outside the jail. Three people have reportedly been arrested. The Department of Homeland Security denied there's a hunger strike at Delaney Hall. But on Tuesday, the so-called border czar, Tom Holman, threatened to force-feed the hunger strikers while speaking on Fox News. We're not going to change what we do because someone goes on a hunger strike.

And matter of fact, if it gets bad enough in the position, she'll like to put themselves in extreme danger, medical danger, then we'll force feed them. We'll get a court order and force feed them. Hunger strikes do not work. Meanwhile, DHS secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, threatened to cut off international flights and customs processing to Newark Airport. If Newark continues its sanctuary city policies, he threatened all airports in sanctuary cities.

On Monday, New Jersey's Democratic governor, Mikey Sherry, was denied entrance to Delaney Hall. This is Governor Cheryl. I'll continue to work to go in, but at the same time, I think this really brings to light why the state has been fighting Roxbury so hard, because this type of facility shows exactly why we should not have private mass detention facilities. Federal agents pepper-sprayed protesters on Monday. Among those hit was New Jersey Democratic Senator Andy Kim.

as he tried to de-escalate tensions between protesters and ICE agents. He had just completed a congressional tour of Delaney Hall, along with Congressmember Rob Menendez. They described filthy bathrooms, abusive guards, inadequate medical care, said prisoners were being threatened with deportation to Ebola-stricken countries. Tensions escalated Sunday after ICE removed hunger strike participant, Martineau. Soto, prompting protesters outside Delaney Hall to block a van being used to transport him away. Masked ICE agents responded by firing tear gas and pushing people to the ground. Soto was ultimately transferred to an ice jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey. On Monday, New Jersey Democratic Congress member Rob Menendez went to the Elizabeth Ice Jail after spending Sunday night outside Delaney Hall.

He shared this video on social media on Monday. I went in and said I was there to conduct an unannounced oversight visit as I have the legal right to do. And over the next 18 hours, was kept waiting, misled by ICE multiple times. But what I ultimately told Gabriello Martinez's wife was that I would find him and I would see him. And that's just what we got done doing here at the Elizabeth Detention Center where he's been transferred to. On Tuesday, Democracy Now is Juan Gonzalez, interviewed Gabriela Soto, the hunger striker Martin Soto's wife, and Leodorno,

an organizer with Movimento Cosecha, the immigrant rights group leading the protests outside Lainey Hall. I began by asking Gabriela to describe when her husband Martine was first arrested by ICE and to walk us through what happened over Memorial Day weekend. He was detained in Carney, New Jersey. In the 1st of February, he was out getting diapers for our son. He left around 5.30, 6 o'clock, and around 7, I, like, didn't hear from him, so I started calling his phone, but it was off. Then around 10, 15, 10.30 at night is when he called me from a prison jail number.

I got a call from a prison jail number and at that moment my heart just stopped because I already knew what that was when I started this protest for Friday. I wanted press to come so that they can see what they're doing to destroying

families and separating them. It was unfair that they targeted my husband because on that same Friday, after the protest like two hours after they got him downstairs to the management office and the first question that he was asked,

if we release you now, will you tell your wife to stop this protest? The second question was, did you know your wife was organizing the protest outside? And the third question was, are you the one organizing the strike inside? He said no comment to all of those three questions that he wants to go to his cell. They took that literally. And they locked him in a cell. I didn't hear for him for hours. On Saturday, when I did visit him,

his name was already highlighted on the paper. All the detainees that came down for visiting hours, they came down. My husband was the only one that didn't come down. I went to the guard, and I told him, why did my husband not come down? His name was highlighted on the paper. I saw the paper.

And the guard told me, oh, I wanted to talk to you before I brought him down. He took like 10 minutes asking me questions about why I'm spreading lies, why I am talking to the press, why I'm trying to bring light into what they're doing is unjust. He said, why are you telling people that we're feeding them worms? Why are you telling people that we don't give them medical care? I said, because it's true. And he said, it's not true.

You're just spreading lies. I stood back a little bit. and I said, do you want me to get testimony from every detainee here? Do you want me to do that? He said, no, just stop spreading lies. And I said, bring me my husband. After I left, it was, I stayed out the night. It was Sunday now.

I got a call from him at 3 saying if I'm going to go in to see him. I said, yes. We were on the phone. talking about that he was waking up, what he's doing the day, and everything. And then, on a recorded monitor line, I heard agents tell my husband, release, Martin Soto, release, release, outside, outside, America, America, release, release. Release, like, you're getting released, like you're going out, like you're not getting deported, like you're, like you're getting out.

I have witnesses from the detainees inside of Unit 2 that they saw my husband sign the order of release. I was in the ramp on the Visitation Chapel ramp. I was looking at the door when they get released or when they get transferred. I saw him handcuffed. And two agents, he was refusing to get in the van. Two agents grabbed him by his ankles

and his arms or his wrists and threw him in the van. I saw him personally thrown into the van. At that moment, I called inside. I said, Sally, Steph, like, it's Martin, like, that's him. I rushed out. I opened.

I ran out. And the guards, the security people in the little house and the little penthouse, they were laughing while I was Well, I was running out. Everybody was blocking the van because they knew it was Martin. They knew I was my husband. He was banging on the windows saying, Gabby, where's my wife, Gabby?

Help, help. Right now, my husband is in Elizabeth Detention Center, but if you look up his name, he's not in an ice location. He's not in the ice locator. Like, he's disappeared from the locator. And that is what his ice is doing. They're separating people They're disappearing them

Innocent people Did you get to see your husband In Elizabeth where he's being detained now? Yes And what did he say? When I saw him He had his wrist bruised His arm bruised

It was red, purple, black He told me How they threw him in the van How they threw him in the floor when they returned him back to Delaney how they threw him in the last car when they were trying to escort him out sorry

on Monday after midnight when Ice Agents showed up to Delaney around 2 a.m. The first three cars that were there were diversion because they knew protesters were there as soon as they were closing the barricade to not let any more cars through one of the last cars

like the gray looking the great car speeding off that was my husband in it he told me that he saw every single moment he saw ice agents pepper spraying people he saw people blocking the cars he saw people trying to fight for him

people were trying to fight to not let that van to not let those cars leave he saw all of that but he was restrained to the car and a go fund me page has been set up for you guys Yes, because my husband, he's facing criminal charges from ICE because they are claiming that my husband assaulted him, assaulted them. So I'm trying to find out on what more charges that they can charge him with. I'm trying to see if I can get associated with lawyers, whether it's pro bono or whether it's paid lawyers. anything because I know that criminal charges, they're very, really bad.

And because I did the I-130 petition for him to give him citizenship because he's my husband and I'm legally married to him. And you're a U.S. citizen. And I'm a U.S. citizen. So these criminal charges can actually hold back on his process. So I'm trying to find a lawyer willing to. to take on his case so that they can prove that he didn't assault ice. He's one person with five ice agents, five, six, seven ice agents.

So how can one person arrested, like handcuffed, assault so many people, so many ice agents who are armed? They're armed. They have guns. They can use their hands. They're a lot bigger than him. My husband, in four months, lost 30 pounds. He is really skinny right now. How can one person who is completely skinny and selfless and helpless assault so many people? So they've charged him when they were transferring him to the Elizabeth jail?

Yes. You have two children together with Martine and you're pregnant with your third. What are you telling, how old are your little ones? One and four. What does your four-year-old understand? She thinks that's at work. When we were at the protest, she was holding up the sign for her dad. She didn't know what was happening, but she said, I think, to, like, a reporter,

Papa, I want my Papa. Like, you kid on me, Papa. Like, I want my dad. I want to see my dad. She cries every time we leave the visitation Which is why I stopped trying to take her Because she gets anxious, she gets heartbroken We're trying to tell her

That's at work, he's coming He's going to just, he's working because he has to buy you a little, a toy, a big toy Or, because she really wants a puppy So we try to also tell her But that is working to get you the puppy And then she was like, puppy, no, dad, yes. I'd like to bring in Lee Adorno from Movimento Cosecha. Lee, welcome to Democracy Now.

Can you talk about this detention facility? It's been an operation, the largest one in the New York metro area. It's been open over a year. How many incidents have occurred in that facility that you're aware of? Yes. So the facility has been reopened for about a year now. you know, there was a lot of resistance in the community. We all said that it was going to be a bad idea for them to reopen it. There was already abuse reported prior to that. This year, unfortunately,

we saw the first death at Delaney Hall during intake. The person who was being put into the detention facility wasn't even there for a day. And when we asked for explanations, the only think that ICE, well, Gio really said, was that he had fallen from the staircase or in the stairs, but nobody dies from falling down, right? We have been demanding more transparency. This, what has started to happen here at the Laney Hall in the past recent days that has gotten a lot of attention, is actually the culmination of different letters that we have gotten from people who are detained, describing the conditions. If you can talk, Gabriela, about the demands of the people.

Now, it's two things, right? They're on hunger strike and on a work strike. This is a for-profit company, Geo Group, that runs this facility. It's very interesting that the governor, Governor Sherrill, said that a private company should not be running a mass detention facility. The conditions are in there are horrible. They get paid $1.50 a day for a whole day of work. That is why mainly the hospitality tent outside of Delaney Hall.

We help families with getting to their commissary because it's never enough. And there's families that sometimes just can't pay all the time for like these things for them. It's basic things, toothbrushes, food, essential things. their demands are not to get better conditions. Their demands are to get freed and be heard. There are innocent people in there. And Gabriela, how are you communicating with people inside Delaney and how aware are they of the protests outside?

So we get phone calls every day. Martin, my husband, gave my number to his inmates, to his detainees to contact me if anything. I get phone calls. They are very much aware of what is happening outside. We made it very strong for them to know that they are not alone inside, that we're not letting anything happen to them. My husband personally told me to tell Unit 2 to pass along the message to every single person.

To continue with the hunger strike, to continue with the labor strike, and for me to not give up on these detainees. How much danger do you face? I don't know personally, but I feel like I'm in a lot of danger because my name is out there everywhere. Personally, I am happy that I started this to protect these people, but at the same time I also feel scared because if they were capable of doing damage to a congresswoman. La Monica McIver. Facing criminal charges. A congresswoman, if they were capable enough to do harm to her,

me being just a nobody, what can they do to me? Or my husband. Like, I'm scared for both of us. I'm scared for my kids. We heard Governor Cheryl mention Roxbury. Can you explain what Roxbury is, not Roxbury, Massachusetts, but Roxbury, New Jersey. This was a warehouse that was purchased by ICE for, what, $130 million to warehouse people? Yes, it was at sale for 60, but then ICE paid $120-something million, like double.

the price of what it was worth. So we already starting to see the red flags pop up. This was under Christy Gnome, who was fired by Trump? I believe so, yes. But we're starting to see that flag of, like, why are they throwing money at these places, these warehouses to convert them into detention centers when we are clearly seeing that it's a bad idea from Delaney Hall, right? What is very concerning about Roxbury is that it's even bigger than Delaney Hall.

The last detention center that only... Delaney could house something like a thousand people. Yes, the new one would be able to house 1,500 at minimum, like very easily. That was community organizer Leodorno with Movimento Cosecha, harvest movement. And also Gabriela Soto. Gabriela has been organizing outside the Delaney Hall immigration jail in Newark, New Jersey, while her husband, Martin Soto, was inside. He participated in the ongoing hunger and labor strike, but was moved to the Elizabeth jail over the weekend.

Gabriela is a U.S. citizen. She and Martine have two kids. She's also four months pregnant. Special thanks to Amber Gagarian and Julie Cohen. Coming up, two police officers who were attacked on January 6, 2021 are suing President Trump. We'll speak with their attorney. Stay with us. Never

Never Again by La Santa Cecilia in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. Two officers who defended the Capitol January 6, 2021, have filed a lawsuit in federal court

to block the creation of the nearly $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund. Some are calling it a thug fund. The fund was announced by the Department of Justice earlier this month as part of a settlement with President Trump and his family. The president sued his own administration's IRS for $10 billion over the leaking of his tax returns by an employee of a federal contractor.

The $1.776 billion fund is intended to make payments to Trump supporters who say they were wrongly investigated or prosecuted by previous administrations. critics, which include some Republicans in Congress, have accused Trump of creating a slush fund for his allies, including insurrectionists who joined the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol. Capitol police officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges are bringing the lawsuit because the fund could be used to compensate the capital rioters who attack them and put their lives at risk. Both officers say they've faced continuous credible threats ever since. On January 6, 2021, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, was nearly crushed to death. In this tape, you hear Officer Hodges as he's pinned against a door by the mob. The so-called anti-weaponization fund would be overseen by five commissioners.

First, it was said four of whom would be appointed by the Attorney General, though the Attorney General, Todd Blanche said he'd appoint all five to serve at the pleasure of the president. For more, we're joined by Brendan Ballou, CEO of the Public Integrity Project, representing officers Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, the police officers suing the Trump administration over the $1.8 billion fund to compensate Trump's allies. Brendan Ballou is a former federal prosecutor who himself spent two years prosecuting January 6 Capitol rioters. His new book is titled, When Companies Run the Courts, How Forced Arbitration Became America's Secret Justice System. Welcome to Democracy Now, Brendan. Start off. I mean, that chilling moment where Hodges is being crushed in a door as he shouts, screams, moans, talk about what this suit is.

Yeah, so let's talk about officers Dunn and Hodges specifically. You know, you talk about that specific moment where Officer Hodges was being crushed in the door in the tunnel connecting the Capitol to the inaugural stage. He could have died there later. He almost had his eyes gouged out by another rioter. Officer Dunn was at one point surrounded by rioters who were hurling racial epithets of them. Both of them could have died that day.

And the scary thing is that the threat to the. these officers doesn't end on January 6, 2021. By the mere fact that they're continuing to speak out about January 6th to make sure that the history of that day is not forgotten or a race, they continue to receive threats, credible threats of violence, credible death threats. And the real concern that we have with this slush fund that Donald Trump is creating is that this is going to be a way to funnel $1.8 billion to supporters of the president who have previously enacted violence in his name and who who may be the very ones threatening our clients. So in a very real way, this slush fund is about more than just corruption.

This is about the personal safety of these officers who defended the Capitol on January 6th. So I want to turn now to July 2021, months after the attack. The House of Representatives Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection, the Capitol held its first hearing, listening to four. testimony of four officers attacked by Trump supporters while defending the Capitol. This is one of the men that you're representing, Brendan, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, describing that racist abuse he and other black officers encountered January 6th. More and more insurrectionists were pouring into the area by the Speaker's lobby near the rotunda and some wearing MAGA hats and shirts that said Trump 2020.

I told them to just leave the Capitol. And in response, they yelled, no, man, this is our house. President Trump invited us here. We're here to stop the steal. Joe Biden is not the president. Nobody voted for Joe Biden. I'm a law enforcement officer,

and I do my best to keep politics out of my job. But in this circumstance, I responded. Well, I voted for Joe Biden. Does my vote not count? Am I nobody? That prompted a torrent of racial epithets. One woman in a pink maga shirt yelled. You hear that guys?

This shit voted for Joe Biden. Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in screaming. Boo! No one had ever, ever called me a n*** while wearing the uniform of a Capitol police officer. In the days following the attempted insurrection, other black officers shared with me their own stories of racial abuse on January 6th. One officer told me he had never, and in his entire 40 years of life, been called a to his face, and that streak ended on January 6th. yet another black officer later told me he had been confronted by insurrections in the Capitol who told him, put your gun down and we'll show you what kind of n-h-h-you really are.

That was Officer Harry Dunn testifying before the House of Representatives Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. And this is Officer Hodges. on my left was a man with a clear-eyed shield stolen during the assault. He slammed it against me and with all the weight of the bodies pushing behind him, trapped me. My arms were pinned and effectively useless, trapped against either the shield on my left or the doorframe on my right. With my posture granting me no functional strength or freedom of movement, I was effectively defenseless and gradually sustaining injury from the increasing pressure of the mob.

Directly in front of me a man seized the opportunity of my vulnerability, He grabbed the front of my gas mask and used it to beat my head against the door. He switched to pulling it off my head, the straps stretching against my skull and straining my neck. He never uttered any words I recognized, but opted instead for guttural screams. I remember him foaming at the mouth. He also put his cell phone in his mouth so they had both hands free to assault me. Eventually, he succeeded in stripping away my gas mask and a new rush of exposure to CS and OC spray hid me. The mob of terrorists were coordinating their efforts.

now, shouting, heave, ho, as they synchronized pushing their weight forward, crushing me further against the middle door frame. The man in front of me grabbed my baton that I still held in my hands. And in my current state, I was unable to retain my weapon. He bashed me in the head and face with it, rupturing my lip and adding additional injury to my skull. So that was Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges. So we just heard from Hodges and Dunn, Brendan Ballou, the two men that you represent. If you can talk about Todd Blanche, President Trump's former personal attorney, now the Attorney General, when he himself was questioned by Senator von Hollen and others, refused to say that they would even rule out those insurrectionists who attacked police. Talk about why you

believe this fund is illegal. President Trump calls it an anti-weaponization fund. Others call it a thug fund. Yeah, absolutely. So let's start with what purportedly created this fund in the first place, which is the lawsuit that you mentioned by Donald Trump against his own IRS. Now, to have an actual lawsuit in federal court, you need what lawyers call a case or controversy. The two sides actually need to be opposed to each other. And that just wasn't the case here. Donald Trump was on one side and his own IRS, which he controls, was on the other. And that led to a sham settlement over this potential $10 billion lawsuit. So this isn't really even the kind of case that the Department of Justice could settle. But even if it could, the settlement that it purported to reach, this creation of this weaponization, this slush, this thug fund, whatever you want to call it, is not authorized by statute. And what I mean by that is it is functionally the creation of a new department or agency. And, you know, you can't use the fiction of a settlement to create a new government agency.

You know, Republicans would be pretty mad, for instance, if Barack Obama used the fiction of a lawsuit to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for instance. It's the same thing here. This is the creation of a new agency that the president functionally controls that he will get to decide how the money is spent and who the money goes to. Now, all that is what makes- Is that right? I mean, this is a settlement with him. Oh, absolutely. You know, and they've made clear as part of this broader settlement, you know, he is going to, you know, he is going to be.

to be completely immune from any further IRS investigations, and so it only makes sense that they would potentially try to send money to him or to his family members or to his associates. But for us, I want to make clear for your audience, you know, it's not just, you know, this isn't just a profoundly corrupt slush fund, although it absolutely is that. This is a slush fund that will physically endanger our clients and the people like them, because you are very smart to play those quotes from officers of Hodges and Dunn. about the dangers that they faced on January 6, but they are continuing to face very real dangers by speaking out about January 6th since then.

The risk that we run is that this slush fund is going to be used to pay the proud boys, the oathkeepers, the very people that assaulted these officers and that continue to threaten them and increase the danger against them because it is going to give a presidential endorsement to these people, saying that not only if they enact violence against the against the president's enemies, will they be put beyond the reach of the law? But they will actually be financially rewarded for doing so. Brendan Ballou, before we end, I was wondering if you can talk about the major thesis of your new book, when companies run the courts, how forced arbitration became America's secret justice system.

You're kind to ask. So America has a secret justice system that surrounds us, and yet we know almost nothing about it. It is an alternative to the public court system called forced arbitration. It's a system where instead of having a judge, you have a private arbitrator that is typically or often paid for by the very company that you are trying to sue. Proceedings happen in secret and can almost never be appealed. And so unsurprisingly, these courts almost always rule for the companies rather than for the consumers or the employees. Now, this all matters because we are increasingly being pushed into this private justice system. And if it feels like, companies are increasingly beyond the reach of the law, if you're getting

scammed by companies, overcharged by companies, getting worse customer service, getting discriminated against her, or even killed by companies, if that seems to be happening more than it used to, forced arbitration, pushing cases outside of our court system and into the secret justice system that companies largely control can explain why companies are getting worse in so many ways. Brendan Ballou, we want to thank you for being with us, CEO of the Public Integrity Project, representing officers Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, the police officers suing the Trump administration. Brendan's new book, When Companies Run the Courts, How Forced Arbitration Became America's Secret Justice System. Coming up, the blind spot, how oligarchs dominate

are democracies. We'll speak with Northwestern University political scientist, Jeffrey Winters. Stay with us. Money talks. Money shouts. Don't take much to hear. Like it or not, you need a lot if you're going to make a life down here. Money talks, money spits, makes its presence felt. Want to be broke. The money song by Dick Walters. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. We end today's show with a new book that looks at how the in-your-face power of the ultra-rich in the Trump administration isn't just a flaw, a flaw of our current political moment, but a foundational feature of our democratic system.

As the world moves towards an ever deeper state of wealth and equality, the power of oligarchs is. greater than ever. Northwestern University political scientist, Jeffrey Winters, argues democracy's failure to address wealth inequality is by design. His new book is called The Blind Spot, How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracies. And he's just published an article in Mother Jones headline, Tax Me If You Can. Oligarchs are robbing America blind, and the IRS is powerful to stop them. is powerless to stop them, in which Winters writes, quote, How did America's oligarchs grow so willing to openly rub their wealth power in our faces? Well, a big part of it has to do with their success in neutering perhaps the greatest threat to their dominance,

the ability of the government to tax them and to hold those who cheat accountable. For more, we go to Chicago, where we're joined by Northwestern University Professor Jeffrey Winters. Thanks so much for being with us. Lay out the thesis of both this piece in Mother Jones and your book, The Blind Spot. Well, it starts with something of a puzzle, which is the United States clearly is a country that has become more democratic over its history, far more inclusive. And yet, the country has also become more unequal. And that sort of doesn't make sense. In fact, not only have we become more unequal, but liberal democracies around the world

are now among the most unequal societies ever to have existed in human history. And this is a head scratcher for us because if just the oligarchs or just the most powerful people in a dictatorship are completely in charge, we would expect that wealth would become more and more concentrated and the people down below would get very, very little. But in a democracy where there's power sharing, we would expect that inequality would be kept in check. In fact, the opposite is happening. And so that's sort of the starting point of the book to try to disentangle, to try to look at the historical story of how it is that all, which is about wealth power, is combined and fused with democracy, which we should think of as

participation power. Both of them are operating in our system simultaneously. Talk about what it means. I mean, when we see at President Trump's inauguration, the tech bros behind him, the billionaire supporters, not always supporters, but because he was becoming president, that brotherhood. Explain what it means when there is little regulation and how the IRS fits into all of this. Sorry, the sound has gone out. But the question, most of it that I heard is about the tech bros. And I think what we need to understand about the household names now that all of us are aware of, these very, very powerful and wealthy people, is that they are the most visible part of the oligarchs in our system today. But we also need to understand that they are just part of a much broader and deeper structural phenomenon.

So we, on the one hand, these individuals are, because of their visibility, it's actually making the American population very aware of oligarchic power. We have to understand that 20 years ago, these were not the names that everyone knew, and 20 years from now, the names are going to be different. So we personalize it, but we also need to understand it. in a much deeper, structural, and historical way. You talk about how right now there is a wider gap between the rich and poor than was even during European feudalism or in Imperial Rome's slave society. Talk about the significance of this, Professor Winters. Well, all of us are pretty aware that if we think back to imperialism,

Imperial Rome, we don't view it as an equal society. It certainly wasn't democratic. And if you take the gap between the wealthiest Roman senators and the average person in Imperial Rome, who was either a slave or a small farmer, the ratio of their wealth was about 16,000 to one. If we fast forward, sorry, if we fast forward to today in the United States, and we take the average person in the Forbes 400, compared to the median person in the United States, that has exploded to 140,000 to one. And so we are just dramatically, dramatically more unequal. Our wealth is far more concentrated in fewer hands than ever before. And that, if it were under authoritarianism, might not be an issue. But what we are seeing is that it's actually in a democracy that this is happening. And I don't argue in the book against the idea that the United States is a democracy. I argue that it is very much a democracy. We have the right to vote. We have freedoms to speak.

It is consent of the governed in so many ways. All of those things were very important to the framers to put in place. But the framers also, because there was an oligarchic democratic crisis at the time of the Constitutional Convention, they wanted to make sure that there were safeguards built into the system that would defend those with very concentrated wealth, the oligarchs of the day. And so that's how we get a system which is both democratic and oligarchic at the same time, something which, by the way, never existed before in human history. We've always had a wealth pyramid, but it was always in the past sustained by force, fear, awe, intimidation of all kinds. What we have today is what I call participatory inequality. We have incredible inequality, but we participate in it.

How does AI exacerbate the well? wealth gap and the power gap, Professor Winters. Well, AI is something that is evolving so rapidly and so few of us really understand where it's going and how it's going to play out. But one thing is clear. This apparently transformational technology is in the hands and being controlled by very, very few people. and they are determined that it is going to be a profit-oriented endeavor.

Competition is high. We are seeing concentration of capital in AI on an extraordinary level. And it is also, by many people's estimation, possibly going to unemployed people on an incredibly large scale. So if you put the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few corporations and the people who control them on the one hand and what may be employment devastation going on in society on the other, if it plays out that way, it's a formula for extreme inequality and I would say potentially destabilizing to society. We just have a minute to go. You say we are 50 years into a period of exploding inequality in the United States and globally, clearly tearing the fabric of society. Where do you find hope? What can remedy this?

I think the hope is that there are policies that can be put in place already. I'll just mention quickly something called the Corporate Transparency Act, which most people don't know about. It was passed in 2021 as part of the defense authorization bill. And what it basically said was that all corporations, we would know the beneficial ownership of corporations. There would be a registry because you can set up a corporation in Delaware, Wyoming, and elsewhere, which is completely secret. And those kinds of entities are very important for oligarchs to evade taxes, to move their money around the world in very secret ways. That got passed. It turns out in March 2025, the Treasury Department essentially gutted it by making 99.9% of all corporations exempt from it.

Those battles are incredibly important. They're doable. People have to be aware and pay attention to these fundamental kinds of states. struggles. That's just the beginning. There are many, many more things, and I try to lay them out in the book, a set of ideas about what to do about oligarchy. The book is called The Blind Spot, How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracies. Jeff Winters is Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. That does it for our show. I'll be at the IFC tonight at 6 o'clock for the showing of Steel a Story, Please, about Democracy Now with Director Tia Kallel, Tia Lesson,

and Chani Nicholas, tomorrow in Great Barrington, Friday in Tucson, Saturday in Phoenix. And then next weekend in Tampa as well as in Miami. And then on to Vermont. You can check our website at DemocracyNow.org. I'm Amy Goodman. Thank you so much for joining us.