Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-09-21 Monday

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Headlines for September 21, 2026; “War on the Press”: Trump Bans CNN, MS NOW & Politico from White House over Critical Coverage; “Extraordinary Rendition All Over Again”: U.S. Deportees Sent to Equatorial Guinea Beaten, Imprisoned; “America, Who Hurt You?”: Emmy-Winning Performer Sarah Jones on New NY Solo Show & Art as Resistance

New York, this is Democracy Now. Every president takes an oath to uphold the Constitution. It's the First Amendment. I do too. Much more so than you. Because they're fake news. Three news organizations, CNN, MS Now, and Politico, are suing President Trump for violating the First Amendment after banning their reporters from the White House.

White House on Friday. Their credentials were confiscated Saturday. We'll speak to Katie Fallow of the Knight First Amendment Institute. Then America sent them into a dictatorship's torture chambers, then looked away. Two men deported from the U.S. to Equatorial Guinea, which they have no connection to, have been beaten and imprisoned after speaking out about their confinement and conditions at a hotel where a group of U.S. deportees have been held since arriving in the country. We were not rioting. We were not protesting. We just were demanding our human rights. We know our human rights, and that's what we deserve, and that's what we want. We'll speak to the director of Equatorial Guinea Justice.

And finally, the extraordinary writer and performer Sarah Jones on her new, One Woman Play, America Who Hurt You. America Who Hurt You started off as really a podcast, thinking about this moment we're in and it was sort of facetious. America, girl, who hurt you? Why, you like this? Are you all right? You're in danger. You know, sorry I'm like a joke. Here, Sarah Jones, in her multi-character performance. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Iran's warning the United States and its allies against launching a major attack saying it is information a new assault is being prepared. Speaking on State Media Sunday, Iran's military central command vowed that any new strike would bring retaliation against U.S. bases.

The warning follows a government-organized rally Friday in which hundreds of people. hundreds of thousands of Iranians pledged to defend Iran. This is Iran's security chief. We've announced to the U.S. that one of our conditions is the release of our frozen funds. Secondly, they must announce an end to the war in all fronts, including Lebanon. Furthermore, they must not interfere in Iran's internal affairs and not collaborate with opponents of our revolution and must halt any form of aggression against Iranian territory, even with drones, must not continue their aggressions and must lift the naval blockade. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports more U.S. service members have died in the war with Iran

than the Pentagon has publicly acknowledged. Five U.S. officials told the paper, at least 22 troops have been killed four more than the number that appears in the Pentagon's public casualty database, while a sixth official put the toll at 23 dead since February 28th when the Trump administration in Israel launched the war against Iran. In Yemen, Iran-backed Houthi fighters launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh Saturday. Residents reported at least one explosion and later saw a large plume of black smoke near the airport while the Houthis claimed without offering evidence that they had said off major fires at Aramco facilities in Yanbu along the Red Sea coast.

It was the Houthi's first attack on the Saudi capital since the escalation opened a new front in the Iran war. President Trump announced Friday he's banning CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House. The ban took effect on Saturday morning when reporters from all three outlets were turned away and had their credentials confiscated or deactivated. Trump clarified the ban would be lifted if the outlets published more favorable coverage of him and his administration. This morning, CNN, MS now, and Politico issued a joint statement reading, quote,

we notified the government that we're filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes. Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalist's credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left on challenge, this threatens press freedom and the public's right to independent journalism free from government interference. We'll have more on this story after headlines. President Trump says the triumphal arch he's planning to build near Arlington National Cemetery. will double as a military complex. In a social media post Sunday morning,

Trump wrote that he plans to convert the monument, quote, into a top-grade military complex, triumphal arch to house store and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones plus snipers on both the roof and plaza areas and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition. in storage, unquote. Veterans have sued to block the arch. Critics have assailed it as a gaudy and ugly monstrosity, while aviation experts warn its height and potential use as a drone platform would endanger flights around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Virginia Democratic

Congress member Don Beyer, whose district includes Arlington National Cemetery, wrote quote, Trump clearly expects to lose a lawsuit and therefore wants to set up a pretext to argue that the arch is tied to national security, unquote. In Washington, D.C., hundreds of protesters rallied outside the Kennedy Center on Friday night to oppose President Trump's takeover of the Performing Arts Center and his threats to close and demolish it. Activists linked hands forming a human chain around the building. Joining them was Washington, D.C. City Council member Robert White. Well, look, this is a national memorial, the Kennedy Center, but it is in D.C. and it is a jewel here in D.C. and what it represents for the arts, for protests,

for democracy and action, it's something that we know too well, and there's no way we're going to let this monument go without a fight. In Gaza, Israeli air strikes killed at least three Palestinian Saturday. One strike near the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza killed Basir al-Ber, the son of Munir al-Berh, who is the Director General of Gaza's health ministry. This is Munir al-Berh, speaking at his son's funeral. I was with him in the tent, and he said, Dad, they will target us. I said, that is fine. We will go to heaven together. He said, Dad, they will target me,

and I don't want us both to get martyred. I said, so be it. We will go to heaven. He went outside the tent, and they struck him. He was martyred. May God have mercy on him. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, a suspected Palestinian gunman shot dead an Israeli man, while Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian motorist, who the military said was attempting to run them over. In Israel, President Isaac Herzog said Saturday, he'll clear the criminal record of Elor Azaria overriding objections from the military. Asaria is a former soldier convicted of killing, a wounded Palestinian attacker who posed no threat back in 2016. In July, defense minister Israel Katz wrote to Herzog, urging him to grant Azaria's request. The Israel defense forces

oppose the move, a senior aide to military chief Ayalz Amir, said Azaria has shown no remorse and has not accepted responsibility a decade after his conviction. Palestinian artists in Gaza have painted a mural depicting the U.S. rapper Macklemore, draped in a Palestinian flag with the caption, Thank you for using your voice for Palestine. The tribute was painted on a giant slab of concrete surrounded by rubble in the the ruins of Gaza City. It was commissioned after McElmore was fired from British pop star Ed Shearin's U.S. tour over his on-stage remarks condemning Israel's assault in Gaza and calling for a free Palestine.

Shearren and the tour promoter dropped McElmore under pressure from Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots in Boston's Gillette Stadium, who rallied other stadium owners to threaten to cancel Sherin's tour of Maclemore remained a part of it. On Saturday, Ed Shearren opened a concert in Philadelphia with an apology to fans over his handling of the affair. And for the first time, Shirin publicly addressed Israel's assault on Gaza. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate. My heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilians. lives, of children's lives. And the systemic injustice we're seeing unfold in the West Bank cannot be overlooked. The U.S. military attacked a boat. The military said was carrying drugs

in the Caribbean Sea on Saturday, killing four people. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was transporting drugs. Since September of last year, the U.S. has killed at least 231 people and 69 boat strikes in the Pacific and Caribbean targeting so-called narco-terrorists without evidence. Human rights advocates have condemned the attacks as illegal extrajudicial killings at sea. In Cuba, the power grid collapsed again, leaving millions without power for the sixth time since President Trump cut off fuel shipments to the island in January. Since then, just one tanker of fuel has been delivered by a Russian tanker in March.

The blackouts have taken a heavy toll on Cubans restricting transportation, shortening workdays, grounding flights, and endangering public health. This is Valentin Pada, a resident of Havana. It's very bad for everyone, because everyone gets desperate in a house without water and without light. It's a phenomenon that isn't seen anywhere else in the world, only here. And when people don't have water, look, I myself was without water for 15 days, without water or life for 15 days. The U.S. military scrambled to intercept a Chinese ship in the Middle East amidst the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran last spring, but called off a mission to board the vessel at the last minute.

After discovering an intelligence assessment had relied on false information from an AI chatbot. That's according to CNN reports the AI agent misidentified components aboard the Chinese ship as part of a nuclear weapons program. In more AI news, the Wall Street Journal reports independent security researchers were able to use Anthropics Clawed software to gain access to an open AI employee's chat GPT account, giving them a way to read and suggest changes to the open. AI's private cash of software. The hacking operation came two weeks after a swarm of AI agents broke out of containment at OpenAI and launched cyber attacks at the company Hugging Face. In Austin, Texas, an ICE agent shot a man in the torso on Sunday, sending him to the hospital

where he's in serious but stable condition. The injured man is identified by his attorney as 28-year-old. Wilbur Rafael Gosses-Perez, a Venezuelan National. He was reportedly shot while delivering food for DoorDash. Protests soon erupted with demonstrators chanting, abolish ICE. Federal immigration agents have shot more than 20 people since President Trump returned to office. Six of them died, including three U.S. citizens. And nearly all the shootings, agents fired at people inside the equivalent.

A federal appeals court has rejected the Trump administration's policy of rapidly deporting immigrants to third countries to which they have no connection. Friday's ruling by a three-judge panel on the First Circuit Court of Appeals sets up a likely challenge at the Supreme Court. Since President Trump returned to office, his administration has sent more than 25,000 immigrants to at least 29 third countries. Trina Riemuto, lawyer for the plaintiffs at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance said, quote, this decision confirms that due process and the protections Congress enacted against persecution and torture cannot be circumvented by putting someone on a plane to a country that was never part of their removal proceedings. will have more on removing migrants to third-party countries they have no connection to later in the broadcast. In Texas, the Trump administration started building the border wall through the Big Bend region. The work is a key step in the administration's $46 billion plan to fortify the border with walls, barriers, roads, and surveillance technology.

Clara Benson, one of the founders of the No Big Ben Wall coalition, said, quote, we will continue to fight for this land, no matter what the outcome is. We'll continue fighting to the end. You talk to people in West Texas and they say, even if they put it up, we'll fight for them to take it down. So this fight is not over, she said. Several civil rights groups are suing the Trump administration to block it from sending armed federal agents to polling places ahead of the the midterm elections. The lawsuit brought by the NAACP and others cites a case in Lee County, Florida, where officers set up an immigration checkpoint on a main road leading to a polling place. The precinct serves mostly black and Latino voters. Janine Nelson, president and director counsel of the NACP's legal defense fund, said, quote, using federal law enforcement as a scare tactic to target and intimidate black communities is illegal and antithetical to the promise of a multiracial democracy that was enshrined in the Voting Rights Act. Neither black, Latino, Asian, or any other voters nor any other community should ever again

face the threats of terror and intimidation at the ballot box that defined the Jim Crow era, unquote. In Russia, Ukraine carried out what Moscow's mayor called its largest ever drone attack on the Capitol, as Russian voters went to the polls Sunday. At least three people were killed in a major oil refinery in the Moscow region was damaged. It was Ukraine's first use of a ballistic missile in the war. In Russia's parliamentary election, only parties backing Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war appeared on the ballot. Yabloko, the last publicly anti-war party, still operating inside Russia, was barred from running.

Putin's main political rivals and critics are either imprisoned inside Russia, forced into exile abroad or dead. Meanwhile, Russian strikes overnight killed at least six people and wounded 38 across Ukraine. And in Germany, the far-right alternative for Germany, or AFD party, has taken first place in a state election for the second time this month. On Sunday, the AFD won more than 38% of the vote in the eastern state of Mecklenburg, West Palmyrana, beating second-place finishers and social Democrats by three percentage points. The ruling party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union, won less than the 5% needed for representation in the parliament, the party's worst result since 1949 since World War II. Elsewhere, Merz's party finished in second place in a state election in Berlin with Germany's left party winning the largest share at more than 25%. It was the strongest showing by the anti-capitalist party to date. This is left party candidate Elefeyralp, the fourth party.

frontrunner to become Berlin's next mayor speaking after Sunday's election. Berlin's shared vision won today, our shared vision of an affordable Berlin for all people, regardless of where they are from, regardless of what they believe, regardless of who they love, and regardless of what they earn. Democracy now will broadcast from Berlin, Germany, September 30th, October 1st and October 2nd. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

MS Now, CNN, and Politico are filing a First Amendment lawsuit today after President Trump banned them from the White House press pool over the weekend. An emergency request to restore their access is set to appear before a federal judge in Washington, D.C. A decision could come as soon as this week. In a joint statement, the outlet said, quote, without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalist credentials because it objected to our reporting, left on challenge. This threatens press freedom and the public's right to independent journalism free from government interference, unquote. Meanwhile, it's been reported this morning.

Trump has also removed CNN from a pool of TV journalists scheduled to travel with him to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which starts tomorrow. He's here today in New York. in New York. Trump took to Truth Social Friday to announce the ban, accusing the outlets of reporting fake news, fiction, and lies. On Saturday, journalists with the outlets confirmed their badges were confiscated when they attempted to enter the White House. This is veteran CNN correspondent Betsy Klein describing what happened. So I walk in, I tap my badge, and it beeps a couple of different times. It turns red, blue, and green, and it didn't accept my pin number.

the Secret Service agent in the Guard House, with whom I have been friendly in the past, asked to see my badge. And I handed it over to him. He told me that it had been deactivated. I asked him if he could provide an explanation as to why it had been deactivated. He said he had no further information. I asked him once more, if he had any more details, he could share with me. And he said that I should be referred to the White House press office, to the Wranglers, for more information. I asked if I could have the badge back. He said he would be keeping it. He did, however, hand me back this clear case with a lanyard that it came in. I also collected my things and then returned out the gate that I had come through.

But we had heard President Trump earlier this week say that he was going to ban CNN, MS now, and Politico from White House grounds. The president clearly following up on that promise. President Trump's also threatened to ban other news outlets from the White House, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. NBC correspondent Kelly O'Donnell questioned Trump during a news conference. Mr. President, earlier today you posted that you intend to ban CNN, Politico, and MS now from the White House. Every president takes an oath to uphold the Constitution, which includes the First Amendment. I do too.

How do you justify it? Much more so than you. Because they're fake news. You get so tired of reading and seeing fake news. There's something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stairs. Now, if they want to write them, that's fine. But I don't have to let them into the people's house.

A very simple ban. I don't want them in my office. I don't want them here. I would say the ban would go as far as you can. So we are banning them. Yes, we are. And there may be others to follow. What do you mean by others to come?

And how is this ban going to work? Others to come in terms of fake news. news? Yes. The New York Times is fake news. Washington Post is fake news. They're crummy papers. Both doing very poorly, by the way.

But we'll see, we're probably not going to display the paper anymore in the White House, those papers. But we haven't taken the step of throwing them out. But they're fake news totally. New York Times is so fake. Washington Post is disgusting. I mean, they're disgusting. I don't get it.

Why would they be? You know, we're doing so well. And they'll take the most possible. story and make it as negative as possible. That was Bloomberg correspondent Catherine Lucy, who asked Trump about his intentions to ban more media outlets. And before that, NBC News correspondent Kelly O'Donnell questioning President Trump. Well, for more, we're joined by Katie Fallow, Deputy Litigation Director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, where she focuses on threats to free speech and a free press.

Talk about what's happened. the banning of CNN, MS Now, and Politico. At least for now, it's those three organizations. And now they're announcing that they are suing the White House today. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this latest step on Friday was just the latest in President Trump and his administration's onslaught against the press. And he's obviously had tried to throw out Jim Acosta from CNN during his first administration. But all of his attacks on the press have greatly increased in his second administration. And in the Jim Acosta case, Ted Boutros represented him. He got his credentials back, and Ted Boutros is representing MS now, CNN, and Politico in today's lawsuit.

Okay, yes, exactly. And Ted has been involved in a lot of these cases against the administration. But, you know, what he did is also follows his excluding the AP from the press pool. I think it's important to sort of see that there's two different kinds of, of press forums that are at issue here. So there's the wider press corps, which are the journalists that get hard passes, go into the White House, have certain areas where they can work out of,

and then can go into the Brady Press briefing room. And then there's a much smaller group called the press pool, which is allowed to go at the invitation of the White House into smaller areas like the Oval Office and to travel with the president. And they are potentially different. kinds of forums. But in any event, Trump has last year kicked the AP out of the press pool because the AP refused to use the word, the term, Gulf of America rather than Gulf of Mexico.

And so they can't go into the Oval Office or be on Air Force One. Correct. And then, but what what Trump did on Friday was even more extreme, arguably, from a First Amendment perspective, because he completely banned CNN, MS now, and Politico, from even using, as we saw, using their press pass to go into the White House and even report from the press briefing room. And that area is a public forum as the Court of Appeals in D.C. has held for decades that the White House has invited members of the press to come in to allow them to report to the public. And as the courts have said repeatedly, the government is not allowed to kick people out of that forum based on their viewpoint. So you also have this press pool that CNN was, it's a rotating pool for the broadcasters. So one camera can, you know, be set up and they give the video to everyone else. It's CNN, CBS, NBC, and Fox.

Today, CNN was the one. And President Trump's come here, is coming here to New York. And the question is, will the others not replace them? And there won't be video of President Trump then. I mean, I think that's a question of join in solidarity. Exactly. What is the actions of the other news outlets? I mean, you saw when the AP was banned from the press pool, a lot of other news outlets, including Fox, made statements saying this is against the First Amendment and we stand in support of AP. On the other hand, they've still been participating in the press pool and all the members of the Washington. and the White House Press Corps. And the head of the White House Correspondent Association now is Fox.

Exactly. And she came out very strongly in her statement this weekend. And I think that's good. And I think you see over the past year some more willingness among major news outlets to push back against Trump. So let's go to one of the statements on Saturday, the senior White House correspondent for Fox News, the current White House Correspondents Association,

WHCA President Jackie Heinrich. criticized Trump's ban. She wrote on social media, quote, today's action revoking access for journalists from CNN, political, and MS now violates the First Amendment. The implications extend beyond these organizations. A standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future. The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinize those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favorably. That's why courts have repeatedly held that once the White House provides access

to journalists, it cannot deny. that access arbitrarily are based on the content of their reporting. The WHOCA calls on the administration to immediately restore our colleagues' access. Again, that's Jackie Heinrich, who is the head of the White House Correspondent Association, is with Fox. And it's just what you said, but what are they going to do about it? Would they clear out of the White House press room and say, we're not going to report on President Trump, which is so important to President Trump?

Also, there's no White House press secretary, and there hasn't been since Carolyn Levitt stepped down. Yeah, I mean, it does feel like things are in disarray, to some extent, in the White House. But I think the main issue is that you have the president who doesn't like certain news outlets because he's said it explicitly. He's not trying to hide it, that he doesn't like when they report on him negatively. And that's a problem for several reasons. First of all, obviously, it discriminates against the individual press outlets. outlets that are in their reporting. Second of all, it creates a chilling effect on other members of the news media, which is sending the message that if you write stories that are critical of the

president, you're going to lose your access. And let's remember what happened at Stars and Stripes, a publisher, editor and reporter at the federally funded news organization, Stars and Stripe are suing the Pentagon claiming Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top officials had them fired over their critical reporting. The firings came after Stars and Stripes broke news about poor conditions, low morale and mental health crises aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln during its unprecedented deployment to the Middle East. President Trump called the report's fake news. In April, the White House fired Stars and Stripes Independent Ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, without an official reason. And of course, we know that Hegg Seth tried to make reporters sign an oath to be inside the

Pentagon, which many reporters across the political spectrum refuse to do. Yeah, and that's terrible. And the real, like, victims of this, you know, war on the press are members of the public, which are entitled to know about what their government is doing, particularly on really important issues like how the war is going or what the conditions are on a warship. And Stars and Stripes has, for decades, provided really important reporting on the military. And it is funded by the government, but there's been a longstanding intention to protect it from this kind of government meddling in what their editorial viewpoint is. Because they result, particularly at the Pentagon, is you had all of the Pentagon press corps turn in their

badges rather than sign this, you know, pledge that would have required them to only, to essentially agree to only report on things that the Pentagon had authorized. And then the end result is you essentially have a press corps now in the Pentagon that is made up of just supporters of the Trump administration like My Pillow Guy and Laura Lumer. And again, you know, the public is the one that is suffering the most from this. So that's the critical point. And I want to end with this point is that the First Amendment is not just about the freedom of the press. It's about the public's right to know, Katie Fallows. Exactly. It's about the public's right to know to hear critical. critical information and to criticize their government and to hold their government representatives

to account. I want to go to Tatiana Margolin. Democracy now reached her, co-director of Stryka, a nonprofit whose mission is to counter rising authoritarianism globally. This is some of what she said about Trump's media ban. My name is Tatiana Margolin, and I'm the co-founder of an organization called Stryka. We work on connecting anti-authoritarian movements around the world. What we just saw President Trump do by restricting access to three U.S. media outlets to the White House is not at all surprising for anyone who has been watching authoritarians around the world. This is a very common tool in the authoritarian toolbox. For example, Vladimir Putin of Russia also gradually restricted journalists' access, but not only to the truth, but to

himself. It began somewhat innocuously by reporters in the Kremlin press pool being excluded for allegedly inappropriate behavior or asking unauthorized questions. But over time, the Kremlin turned the press pool into a kind of theater where journalists were basically reduced to playing the role of extras to the Putin show. And in recent years, we've even heard stories of journalists and reporters filing reports about Putin's events without even attending them because it has become unnecessary to even be there. Everything is completely predictable. Tatiana Marvell and co-director of Stryka speaking to democracy now this week. And your final response, Katie Fowler.

Yeah, I think she exactly points out that Trump is often playing from the authoritarian's playbook of trying to shut down any negative coverage of him or his pocket. policies. And what sets the United States, hopefully, apart from those regimes is the First Amendment and the protection that is enforced by the judiciary of the right to report on and to criticize the government. And I'm hopeful that the courts quickly overturn his ban. And I hope that the White House abides by it. Katie Thallow, Deputy Litigation Director at the Ninth First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, where she focused on threats to free speech and a free press.

To see our interview with the head of Knight Institute, Jameel Jaffer, go to Democracy Now.org. This is Democracy Now. When we come back, we'll talk about migrants who were sent to a country they have nothing to do with. Equatorial Guinea. Stay with us. something you know

my own my own my phone who do you know that's a betta ney my ven't

a mavene me or a ma'am a a manh mavene

who mavene for you a bit better me and for something to say about Something to say by Fatimato Joara. We're performing in our Democracy Now studio.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. Amnesty International's calling for the release of two men deported from the U.S. to Equatorial Guinea. They were arrested by local police forces there and transferred to a prison earlier this month. The men are Samson Bahrain, who is from Eritrea, and Ahmed Soleiman, a gay asylum seeker from Egypt, who was living in Arizona when he was detained by ICE. Both of them were deported by the Trump administration, despite U.S. immigration courts granting them protections. On September 11th, police forces arrived at Hotel Bami in the city of Malibu in Equatorial

Guinea, where more than two dozen men and women have been confined after their deportation from the U.S. This is a country, Equatorial Guinea, they have no ties to, part of a secret of so-called third country agreement. It's believed the two men were arrested and taken to prison for speaking out about the inhumane conditions endured by U.S. Deportees at the hotel and threats by armed forces. Just days before their arrest, video footage obtained by Reuters showed guards pointing their guns at a group of U.S. deportees inside the hotel after a Cuban man asked an officer to return his confiscated cell phone so he could contact his family and lawyer. This is Ahmed Soleiman, describing what happened that day.

This was before his arrest. He's since been taken to a prison in Malibu. Yesterday morning, another detainee here has had his phone confiscated for about two weeks, and he went downstairs to speak to the officers to try to have them call the director in charge, who was also their boss. Like I said, he hasn't had his phone for about two weeks. He hasn't been able to talk to his loved ones, his family, his lawyers, which in turn is a violation of human right laws.

We are not criminals in this country. We deserve rights. We have rights and we know our rights. So after about 15, 20 minutes of him being downstairs, pleading with these officers to call the director, these officers were completely disregarding his pleas, his requests, and we're just ignoring him, not giving him the time of day, we're sitting on their phones, not even listening to him.

That's when they then took us inside the hotel where they pointed their guns at me. They cocked their guns, took it off of safety, and pointed their guns at me, telling me to get on my knees with my hands up, where I had to remain in that position for, you know, 10, 15 minutes while there was chaos going on in the hotel. We were trying to fight to get his phone back. We weren't fighting violently. We were not rioting. We were not protesting.

we just were demanding our human rights. We know our human rights, and that's what we deserve, and that's what we want. That's all we ask for. That's all we ask for since we've been here, and somehow we are still getting violated time and time again. This all comes as a federal appeals court has rejected Trump's policy of rapidly deporting immigrants to third countries they have no connection to. Friday's ruling sets up a likely challenge at the Supreme Court. More than 25,000 immigrants have been deported to at least 29 third countries they have no ties to since Trump returned to office. For more, we go to North Carolina, where we're joined by Tutu Alacante, a human rights lawyer from Equatorial Guinea and founder and director of EG Justice.

That's Equatorial Guinea Justice. His latest for just security is headlined, America sent them into a dictatorship's torture chambers. then looked away. He's joining us from Chapel Hill. Tutu Alacante, thanks so much for being with us. How many migrants to the United States have immigrants have been sent to Equatorial Guinea? So first of all, thank you for having me, Amy. It's a pleasure to be here. So far, the United States has sent 66 immigrants from countries southern Equatorial Guinea to Equatorial Guinea. to Equatorial Guinea. And we are talking about mostly immigrants from African countries, although we have also had

people from Georgia, as well as most recently people from Cuba and Brazil. And so talk about these two men and talk about the allegations that they are being brutalized, and also if we've heard from them in prison now. Yeah. So before I do that, I'd like to lay out a bit of the timeline here. So starting in November 2025, 10 months ago, the United States started this horrendous policy of sending immigrants, not from Equatorial Guinea to Equatorial Guinea, a country that the U.S. knows very, very well that is a human rights violator. How do we know that? Because the State, the State Department, The Army reports that the U.S. have been putting out for the last three decades are consistent about the fact that Equatorial Guinea uses torture, uses incommunicado detentions, and often extrajudicial killings of people that it keeps in prison.

So this is the country that the Trump administration has decided to send immigrants, many of whom, as you alluded to in your intro, has already achieved a huge level of protection from immigration judges in the U.S. in the case of these two individuals, Mr. Ahmed Solomon from Egypt, and we should say, Ahmed came to the US when he was four years old and grew up in Arizona, right? So this is a 30-year-old man that has, for all intents and purposes, live in the US his whole life. The other individual, Samson, Sanson Berhani, is a gentleman from Eritrea. What do we know? we know that these individuals were taken, in my opinion, illegally to Equatorial Guinea, on the false pretenses, many of them did not know until they were almost in Equatorial Guinea

where they were going to. And once there were denied the ability to contact their family members, their phones were taken away, they've been denied access to lawyers. I myself and my colleagues represent many of these individuals at the African Commission, and we have the lawyers that represent them here in the U.S. And it has been impossible to establish a regular contact with them. So meaning effective assistance of counsel is impossible. Access to family members is impossible.

In many instances, access to medication, which many of these individuals need, is impossible. These are two brave individuals that in the face of injustices stood up to protect other deportees whose phone was being taken away or who were being harassed by the military. And as a result, they found themselves being subjected in the case of Ahmed, having a gun pointed at him, and then eventually taken to prison, brought back, hooded, and with ropes tied around their bodies, basically being tortured in front of the immigrants, as a sign to the other immigrants as to what happens when you stand up?

Tutelo-Cante, can you talk about what you understand to be the third-party agreement? We just did a story on people being sent from the United States to the Central African Republic, and they got millions of dollars from the United States. In Equatorial Guinea, you talk about it being one of the most closed, corrupt and repressive dictatorships in the world. Teodora Obion has ruled the country since 1979, making him the longest reigning ruler in the world. What do you know he got?

Yeah. Well, a couple of things. And before we talk about what he got, you know, we should be clear, Emmy, that this is extraordinary rendition all over again, in broad daylight, right? What did the government of Equatorial Guinea get in return? A couple of things. One, which is insignificant,

given the level of corruption that exists in Equatorial Guinea, is $7.5 million of American taxpayers' money. But more importantly, for the government of Equatorial Guinea is the legitimacy that comes from being on the good side of the United States. Your audience should know, I mean, that this is a government that the U.S. Senate Committee on Investigations in 2004 did a huge report on, after investigating Riggs banks and identified and documented corruption,

millions of dollars coming from Equatorial Guinea to the Riggs banks. In 2010, the vice president, who is now running the show, Mr. Teodoron Gamalabian, basically also has his assets confiscated by the U.S. Department of Justice, following another Senate investigation, the look at how he was able to, to bring millions of dollars into the United States. And as I mentioned earlier, the State Department has documented year after year the level of human rights violations that exists in this country. So for them, getting Trump administration, the Trump administration, to strike this deal,

it was about gaining the legitimacy that would allow Ted O'Rin, the current Vice President, son of the president, to very soon become officially the president. Well, Tutu Alacante, want to thank you for being with us. We'll continue to follow the cases of Ahmed Soleiman from Egypt and Samsambrahane, originally from Eritrea, and so many others, not only who've been sent to Equatorial Guinea, but to other third-party countries as well. Tutu Alacante is human rights lawyer from Equatorial Guinea. He's the executive director of EG Justice. Coming up, the extraordinary performer Sarah Jones, on her one woman play, America, Who Hurt You. back in 20 seconds.

and guard us from fry. Change all that's gone for the new. Folk musician Nora Brown with Stephanie Coleman singing the unicorn at the Kennedy Center. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. We end today's show with the Tony and Obie Award-winning writer and performer Sarah Jones, known for her Broadway hit, Bridge and Tunnel. She's back in New York with her latest solo performance, America, Who Hurt You?

It's being presented by the National Black Theater and Theater for a new audience at Polanski Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, produced in association with film end productions, Cinerich, and Jason Jackson. Sarah Jones has been described as a one-woman global village for her remarkable one-person multi-character shows. Her past productions include sell-by-date and surface transit. The acting legend, Merrill Streep, called Sarah Jones a once-in-a-lifetime artist. She's also a board member of Democracy Now. I sat down with Sarah Jones last week and began our conversation by asking her about the title of her new show, America Who Hurt You? So, Amy, I'm going to bring a bit of the theater here into the Democracy Now studios. First of all, I'm so grateful for you and the work you do.

And America Who Hurt You started off as really a podcast thinking about this moment we're in and it was sort of facetious. America, girl, who hurt you? Why, you like this? Are you all right? You're in danger. You know, sort of like a joke. And you're hearing me in a British accent because I was also thinking about the relationship between these two histories.

We're in the 250th year of the United States even coming into existence, right, officially. But if people come to the theater or if they know me, they know that part of what I'm playing with is identity. And so I do speak the Queen's English because I'm from Queens, New York. But bringing the idea of America's

really trauma, which seems to drive our politics. And you know, you can watch democracy now to see how that plays out. But it starts with our history of genocide as a country, our history of enslaving, you know, African people, our history of indentured servitude. So many of our, you know, ethnic backgrounds, there's a history of inequality that America has never really talked about or overcome. And now we're erasing it and sweeping it under the rug in why. wild ways, right? Literally, you go to the Smithsonian and it's like, nothing to see here. You know, all of this isn't true anymore. And so if we don't deal with the reality of how we got here, our history, we're going to keep playing out the same nightmares that we're seeing. So that's a huge

part of why the show exists. Your family seems to run counter to everything the government represents today. As you say, you come from Queens, the most diverse borough in the world, talk about your family. Yeah, well, my joke in the show, I come from a multi-racial, multi-religious family. So you'll meet people in the show who are based on my real life. Here, let me bring somebody out now. Hopefully don't spit out your coffee, but. Hi there, everybody. Hi, Amy. Wonderful to see you. So Sarah Jones, who you just met, she brings all of us out. I'm related to her. She has older white relatives, black, Latino, we have Christians and Jews.

Everybody who's ever been persecuted, you're going to see them on that stage. Anyway, the idea is that across genders and across ages and across races, so many of us have experienced an American story that doesn't look like the sanitized, you know, American dream that some people are trying to pretend is our reality. So we're just trying to bring some more truth, you know, into the story. And we want to have a good time. We want to laugh because that's one of the antidotes to the nightmare. You know, they win if we're all in complete misery and isolated.

So we're getting into the theater. You know, people should come to Brooklyn and be in real space together instead of doom scrolling and, you know, kind of not connecting up. In your recent Vogue piece, you write about the collective trauma of century-old truths. Yeah. I think that all of us, right? We are such an interesting country in that we have. have selective amnesia. There are people who can recite, you know, they go do reenactments of

civil war battles, but they don't think about the significance of the genocide of Native Americans and that that's in our land. They don't think about, you know, how there are still laws on the books to this day that discriminate against people that are left over from, you know, like if you look at how our voting, for example, preventing people from voting goes all the way back to making sure certain people, women, black people, you know, the list goes on. But if you look at our voting today, what are they doing? Dismantling the post office and, you know, creating all kinds of barriers that look just like the grandfather laws of the past. So I think, unfortunately, we have historic trauma that is being replicated in different clothes, if you will, but we never really let go of

the Civil War clearly, because some people are making a reboot right now. So the show is kind of trying to look at not shaming and blaming each other, but in the way that trauma comes from somewhere. And I'll give you an example. There's a certain leader who, you know, grew up as a little kid with a de facto Nazi Klansman for a dad. And that dad screamed at him, you're a loser, you're a loser. Well, now he's running our country and screaming at the world, you're a loser, you're a loser. Doesn't he come from the same borough you do? He not only comes from the same borough of Queens. He went to the same school as my sister. A few years apart. But I always say, you can't spell Donald Trump without trauma. You have to use the A twice. But this is what happens

when childhood trauma and privilege are mingled together and you just keep letting people fail up and, you know, bankrupt themselves. Now he's bankrupting the country. How does the show explore the issue of patriotism? You know, I think about how patriotism, you know, if you go back to the Declaration of independence is featured prominently in the show. And we look at how are they trying to rewrite some of us out of it altogether, right? Your father was a little obsessed. My father was a little obsessed with the Declaration of Independence. He could recite it from memory, not always at the most opportune times. You didn't want him at a party if he was just going to launch it to the declaration. It's not quite cocktail chat. But patriotism, I think about how the best aspects

of America are people's movements. It's journalism like what you find on democracy now. It's people who stood up to power. Whenever people admire Americans or, you know, if you celebrated Labor Day, thank a union, for God's sake, like right here in America. So looking at how patriotism really can be about, you know, our values and diversity, equity, inclusion. These shouldn't be curse words. This is, you know, part of what patriotism can look like or being proud of the best aspects

of America. So that's why I'm trying to sort of shift that lens because I don't hate this. country. I just am saddened and disappointed and afraid of the cliff we're going over if we abandon the best of what America can be. Lonnie Bunch, the first African-American head of the Smithsonian Institution, which runs so many of the museums in Washington. He was also happened to be the founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture has stepped down under enormous pressure, not that he has said. That's the reason why. The signs that President Trump has wanted to put up in front of various museums saying that this information is actually not true in the museums,

those signs haven't been put up yet. But what this all means, and I mean, I think of the federal exhibit, in Philadelphia at the first White House, George Washington, that talked about George Washington having slaves, has been totally dismantled. But in all of these cases, in that case, you have people continuing to read what was on in the exhibit in front of the dismantled exhibit. Yeah. I mean, we're in a moment, and I think this connects up with the show. I had this idea come to me that we think democracy is won or lost at the ballot box. And really, it's one or lost at the box office. It's the movies. It's the stories. It's the television we watch. It's our museums. It's our culture. Social media. Not what we're thinking about

every four years. It's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Ideas that we are picking up from the culture inform how we behave as public citizens and how we vote, right? So if you don't want the truth out there because you know it would derail your agenda, you're going to put up all the signs that say, you know, pay no attention to that history behind the curtain. And you're literally going to try to erase history. This show, America Who Hurt You is about restoring the history that has intentionally been erased in hopes that, no matter how, I mean, we could see it with the consolidation of media, right? If everybody is watching one mouthpiece that's connected to the president, the truth is over. Like, it's a wrap for the truth. If we don't hold on to independent media,

independent voices and theater, you know, and culture. So talk about where America who hurt you started. You start with the British accent. I do. I know. Where this incubated and these parallel histories. Yeah. So part of it, okay, so this is really fun to go back and forth, Amy,

thank you for being a good sport. So part of it is that, as I mentioned, it started as a podcast and we had guests like Jane Fonda talking about climate and Brian Stevenson talking about. about civil rights, kind of trying to do that un-eratia of the truth, right? That, I mean, we're in a country where the websites are being scrubbed daily and you can just lose information, you know, right through your fingertips. But that podcast was originally hopeful and happening around the 2024 election when we hoped sanity might prevail. And then once we got the result,

that frankly still seems a little suspicious to me, speaking of, you know, rigorous honesty and truth. I sometimes worry that we're all missing the reality of what happened with that election, but that's a whole other story. Right around that time, I got a commission from Oxford University, and the irony of that is, while it was a great honor, you know, to get to, I got to be the first, they had never had a performing arts center. And part of me wants to say, oh, you're a thousand-year-old institution. You're the oldest academic institution in the English-speaking world, and you have no arts. That should tell us why colonialism kind of played out the way it did. But it was wonderful to go there and get to develop work and perform there. But it was not lost on me that in order to write

the truth about what's happening in America, I had to go to the UK because my work was being defunded. We're still trying to, I mean, you know, we know how many kind of journalists are being lost in our economy. Black women in particular, I think we've lost half a million jobs. Are there enough of us to lose half a million jobs? So we know that we're under threat as artists, as journalists, and, you know, sometimes we have to look farther afield. So Oxford is really kind of the birthplace of a particular version of America who hurt you. And it's been incredible to bring it back here as this 250th year and beyond, you know, our standing in the world, our reputation. Not that we were ever perfect, let's be clear.

We've needed a reckoning for a long time to talk about our foreign policy, our interventions. But now we've taken the violence of our foreign policy, and now we're enacting it in bigger ways on our own country. And I think we have to talk about that if we're going to survive. Tony and Obie Award-winning writer and performer Sarah Jones, back in New York with her latest solo performance, America Who Hurt You, presented by the National Black Theater and Theater for a New Audience at Polanski Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn for just the next few weeks. So check it out. And that does it for our show. This week I'll be speaking after screenings of the film about Democracy Now.

Steal a story please with the film directors here in New York at the IFC Tuesday, Wednesday at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Westport, Connecticut. Then I'll be in London, England, Friday through Monday. Friday night at 8 at the Hackney Picture House, Sunday at Cinema Lumiere in London at noon, and next Monday at the Louis Depot near Brighton at 8 p.m. Then I head to Copenhagen, Denmark, Tuesday for the screening of Steelers Story, please, at Grand Theatre at 7. Next Wednesday through Friday, I'll be in Berlin broadcasting democracy now, September 30th through October 2nd. On Thursday, October 1st, the film will play at Spore in Berlin at 7. Check our website for all the details at DemocracyNow.org.

I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.