By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

Independence Day occurs as this imperfect union, publicly declared on July 4, 1776, faces an existential threat. President Donald Trump daily amasses more authoritarian control, unchecked by the Republican majority in Congress and the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority. Mass arrests and deportations of immigrants accelerate, sweeping up alongside them many legal residents and even U.S. citizens. Trump is now considering “denaturalizing” citizens, stripping people of their citizenship to deport them if they don’t behave according to his whims. In this ongoing cascade of disturbing and often illegal actions, Trump’s ability to shock seems boundless.

This week he toured a new tent prison being hastily built in the Everglades by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and state Attorney General James Uthmeier. They dub the gulag “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Outside the White House Wednesday morning, as Trump set out for Florida, Fox News White House reporter Peter Doocy asked him, “With Alligator Alcatraz, is the idea that if some illegal immigrant escapes, they just get eaten by an alligator or snake?”

Trump responded, smiling, “You know, snakes are fast. But alligators, we’re gonna teach them [ICE prisoners] how to run away from an alligator, OK? If they escape prison, how to run away: Don’t run in a straight line, run like this,” Trump said, moving his hand in a zigzag path. “And you know what? Your chances go up about one percent. Not a good day!”

Trump continued:

“You have a lot of bodyguards, you have a lot of cops, that are in the form of alligators. You don’t have to pay them so much.”

Trump’s tent prison photo-op was another racist display of anti-immigrant hatred and inhumanity, mocking the marginalized for the cameras and his loyal base.

Florida is building the prison on the grounds of an unused airstrip. DeSantis, speaking at a “roundtable” hosted by the White House on the prison grounds, boasted that the site was ideal for the mass deportation of immigrants: “You drive them 2,000 feet to the runway, and then they’re gone. It’s a one-stop shop.”

Meanwhile, protesters picketed outside, representing environmentalists, immigrants rights activists, and the land’s original stewards, the indigenous Miccosukee and Seminole tribes.

One careful observer of this atrocious new Everglades concentration camp is Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. He said on the Democracy Now! news hour,

“‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ it’s a public relations name. Alcatraz was a prison for people who had been convicted of crimes and were serving their sentence. But immigration detention is not for people serving criminal sentences. The people held in detention often have no criminal record, or they have minor, lower misdemeanors…The Trump administration loves to say that it’s only going after the worst of the worst, but when they sent hundreds of people to Guantánamo Bay, fully a third of them had no criminal convictions at all. We’ve seen with their deportation of people to CECOT in El Salvador to be imprisoned without trial, that hundreds of those people were likely innocent of any claimed gang ties and had no criminal records at all. So, this is not Alcatraz. It’s a detention camp that ICE is using to hold immigrants, many of whom will likely have no criminal record.”

Florida Attorney General Uthmeier, a staunch Trump supporter who first touted the propagandistic name, is selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise on his campaign website.

Florida has more than alligators, pythons, and elected officials thrilled by cruel and unusual punishment; it is also where five of this year’s 13 reported ICE detention deaths have occurred. The Republican budget bill promises a gusher of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to supercharge the immigrant detention and deportation industry, ensuring the construction of many more ICE jails and tent prison complexes, thus guaranteeing more deaths in detention.

As the grim Everglades prison construction continues, Americans across the country celebrate the nation’s birthday. Most who celebrate the Declaration of Independence have never read the short document. If they were to read it, one line should stand out as especially relevant, given Trump’s thirst for power and the willingness of so many to cede it to him:

“A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

The Declaration of Independence is an imperfect document, referring, for example, to the Indigenous people of this continent as “savages,” and failing to reject, or even to mention, the institution of slavery. Indeed, roughly one-third of its 55 signers were enslavers themselves. But the Declaration is clear in its rejection of kings, tyrants and arbitrary power.

“No Kings” protests against Trump’s unprecedented power grab continue to grow. Millions took to the streets on his birthday last month. The next major mobilization is planned for July 17.

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

With each passing day, the violence wielded by ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, grows more intense and widespread. One grotesquely emblematic example of this was the recent violent arrest of 48-year-old Narciso Barranco in Santa Ana, California. Narciso, a hardworking immigrant laborer who came from Mexico over thirty years ago, is the father of three US Marines. While landscaping outside an IHOP restaurant on June 21st, he was assaulted by at least seven armed, masked men, who tackled him and repeatedly punched him in the head. They handcuffed him and shoved him into an unmarked SUV. The plainclothes agents wore face masks, bullet-proof vests and military-grade helmets. Some of the vests read, “Police–US Border Patrol” on the back, but to anyone confronted by these gangs, no identifying marks, names, or badges were visible.

One of Narciso’s sons, Alejandro Barranco, a US Marine Corps veteran, was able to visit his father in jail. Narciso was still wearing the same work clothes that were bloodied in the assault.

“He looked beat up, he looked rough, he looked defeated, he was sad,” Alejandro said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “Anybody would be scared if they see these guys come up to them, masked, not in uniform, guns out.”

City of Santa Ana councilmember Jonathan Hernandez, also on Democracy Now!, added, “We are watching violence unfold, racial profiling increase in cities like Santa Ana, where 41% of our residents are migrants, 70% are of Latino descent…agents come into our community, and they’re refusing to identify themselves, they don’t have judicial warrants and these ICE raids are an example of the government’s overreach.”

In mid-June, President Trump briefly paused immigration raids on farms, hotels and restaurants, ostensibly to ensure these key industries that have supported him in the past continue to do so. “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote.

Soon after, he reversed himself. The short pause revealed a fundamental truth about undocumented immigrants: the US economy doesn’t function without them. Nevertheless, urged on by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, ICE, Homeland Security and Border agents are snatching and deporting the very workers on whom our economy depends.

There are some sectors of the economy that are thriving amidst the mass deportations. GEO Group, the private prison corporation, has seen its stock rise by over 50% since Trump’s election. Palantir, the tech and AI firm co-founded by Trump backer, billionaire Peter Thiel, has seen its stock rise over 500% in the past year. It was recently reported that Palantir is building tools to allow near real-time tracking of immigrants in the US. The Program on Government Oversight, POGO, reported that Stephen Miller’s financial disclosure reveals he owns up to $250,000 in Palantir stock.

Meanwhile, the Republican majority on the US Supreme Court has handed Trump a deportation-related victory. Several immigrants sued the government to stop or reverse deportations to Guatemala, South Sudan and Libya. A federal judge in Massachusetts issued an injunction against these so-called “third party nation removals.” This week, the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices overturned that injunction, without comment. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, writing that the Trump administration’s “flagrantly unlawful conduct,” backed by the Supreme Court, is “exposing thousands to the risk of torture or death.”

Resistance is active, growing and making a difference. Grassroots pressure and legal battles have won the release of international students targeted for their solidarity with Palestinians, among them Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and the first such student arrested and threatened with deportation, Mahmoud Khalil.

Likewise, grassroots, legal and Congressional pressure forced the Trump administration to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States. The Maryland father received asylum during Trump’s first term, in 2019, based on credible threats from an El Salvador gang. Then, this past March 12th, he was snatched from a parking lot and sent, against a court order, to El Salvador.

Under enormous legal and grassroots pressure, the federal government finally returned Abrego Garcia to the US. Despite that victory, upon his return the federal government promptly rearrested him, charging him with human trafficking for allegedly driving undocumented immigrants several years ago. He remains in federal custody in Tennessee, and, if released, ICE will likely attempt to deport him.

Meanwhile, Narciso Barranco sits in ICE detention, with his two sons still on active duty in the US Marines not far away, at Fort Pendleton. It is past time to unmask the violent agents targeting people like Narciso, and halt Trump’s racist, xenophobic mass detentions and deportations.

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

A terror campaign is sweeping the United States, orchestrated from inside the White House and waged by masked, militarized federal agents. Its primary targets are immigrants. Also included are those in solidarity with immigrants, and, increasingly, elected officials, all from the Democratic Party. This state repression has a dark and disturbing parallel: vigilante violence. Last weekend in Minnesota, a masked gunman posing as a police officer shot and killed a prominent Democratic elected official and her husband, and shot and almost killed another elected official and his wife. While a suspect has been arrested, the question remains: if masked agents come to your door, are they police, ICE, or could they be assassins?

Vance Boelter, 57, an white evangelical Christian preacher and mortuary worker, is accused of murdering Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in the middle of the night on Saturday, June 14th. About 90 minutes earlier, Boelter, dressed as a police officer with a black SUV modified to look like a police car, banged on the front door of state Senator John Hoffman’s home. Boelter allegedly shot Hoffman and his wife Yvette multiple times. He is also accused of seeking two other Minnesota elected officials that night.

While exiting the Hortman home, Boelter was confronted by local police. He retreated back into the house, firing his gun then fleeing out the back door, leaving the couple dead. He abandoned his SUV with its small arsenal of weapons and a notebook that contained a “hit list” of at least 45 elected officials – all Democrats – along with abortion providers and healthcare workers.

These political assassinations took place hours before millions of people across the United States – including in Minneapolis and St. Paul – would gather for the “No Kings” day of protests. The protests were held in response to President Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington, DC, which he held on his 79th birthday. Boelter had “No Kings” flyers in his car, suggesting he also may have been targeting the protests. By late Sunday, after the largest manhunt in Minnesota history, Boelter had been caught. But in a nation awash with over 300 million guns and with Trump fanning the flames of division, the risk of political violence is extreme.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to promise to deliver “the largest mass deportation in US history.” Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, considered the architect of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, has demanded federal officers meet a daily quota of 3,000 arrests.

To meet that goal, ICE and agents from the Dept. of Homeland Security have been sweeping worksites, homes, restaurants, marketplaces and anywhere they think large numbers of undocumented immigrants might gather – also sweeping up citizens and documented residents as well, denying almost everyone their rights to due process.

Elected officials have challenged this lawlessness, and in some cases, been arrested as well. Most recently, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, also a candidate in next week’s Democratic mayoral primary, was in a Manhattan federal building on Tuesday, escorting asylum seekers from immigration court. ICE agents waiting by the elevator attempted to arrest a man, and, when Lander demanded to see a judicial warrant, they violently arrested him too.

Speaking the next morning on the Democracy Now! news hour, Lander said,

“Pam Bondi was very clear, they’re trying to wreak havoc In cities. They say, to liberate Democratic cities from their duly-elected officials. This is part of what authoritarians do: strike fear into immigrant families and communities and try to undermine the rule of law and basic democracy by stoking conflict. Our challenge is to find a way to stand up for the rule of law, for due process, for people’s rights, and to do it in a way that is nonviolent and insistent, demands it, but also doesn’t help them escalate conflict.”

Last week, California Democratic US Senator Alex Padilla entered a press conference in Los Angeles, held by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. He was immediately tackled, handcuffed and detained. Speaking Tuesday on the Senate floor, Padilla emotionally recounted,

“I was forced to the ground, first on my knees and then flat on my chest. I was handcuffed and marched down a hallway … If that is what the administration is willing to do to a United States senator for having the authority to simply ask a question, imagine what they’ll do to any American who dares to speak up.”

President Trump, Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller have proven over and over again that they will go to great lengths to silence their critics, which is all the more reason to speak out.

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

The die is cast. President Donald Trump has deployed the military against protesters in his drive for authoritarian control. The week started with Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard, deploying 2,000 troops to Los Angeles, to quell growing protests against his attempted mass deportations and against the wishes of California Governor Gavin Newsom. The week ends with Abrams tanks rolling through the streets of Washington, DC in the first military parade in decades, demanded by Trump at a cost to taxpayers estimated as high as $100 million. While the parade officially falls on the US Army’s 250th anniversary, they had not planned on a parade. Trump ordered there be one on June 14th – his 79th birthday.

Amidst this, Trump gave what may have been his most ominous speech ever, speaking Tuesday at the US Army’s Fort Bragg. The speech included the usual boasts, lies, insults, threats, endlessly rehashed grievances like the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, and so on, along with his usual and disgraceful attack on the press. What stood out at Fort Bragg, though, was his backdrop: several rows of US Army soldiers. That imagery in itself is not particularly noteworthy; every president in recent decades has used troops as political props. What stood out this time was the behavior of the troops.

As Trump lambasted California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, the troops booed in support of him. According to Military.com, the troops behind him were vetted for allegiance and appearance. This partisan, political rallying of soldiers signals a dangerous development. If Trump succeeds in bending the armed forces to his will, US democracy, with all its imperfections, will truly be in peril.

“In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor of Los Angeles. They’re incompetent,” Trump said at Fort Bragg, as the troops responded with boos.

Trump also ordered Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to ready troops for deployment on US soil, a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the use of military domestically. By Wednesday, 700 US Marines from Fort Pendleton in California had been deployed to Los Angeles.

In touting his Washington, DC, military parade, Trump threatened, “For those people who want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force…with very heavy force.” Trump didn’t say which police or military entity would be using the force, but thousands of troops are being brought into DC for the parade. As the Brennan Center for Justice noted in an explainer, there is a loophole in the Posse Comitatus Act that essentially allows presidents to use the District of Columbia National Guard for law enforcement “whenever they choose.”

“He’s inflaming tensions. He’s provoking a situation,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta explained on the Democracy Now! news hour, after filing suit to block Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and the Marines to LA. “Unfortunately, I think he wants conflict. He wants something to erupt so that that provides the basis for him to try to grasp and seize additional power. His throughline and his modus operandi is to just seek more power. That’s why he calls everything that’s not an emergency an emergency. He calls things that aren’t an invasion an invasion. He uses that language very specifically, because those are the triggers to give him more authority.”

Mayor Karen Bass declared a second night of curfew on Wednesday as anti-ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) protests continued there, and spread rapidly around the country.

US Congressmember Delia Ramirez, a Democrat from Chicago and the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, also spoke on Democracy Now! against Trump’s tactics:

“What you are seeing is the beginning of fascism, point blank. He is sending the military to the cities that would dare to have dissent and resistance…What he is about is control, suppressing dissent in order to dismantle resistance. The threats of sending these special ICE teams to Chicago, to Seattle and other cities is about making sure that he can dismantle any organizing.”

Any efforts by Trump and his followers to disrupt or dismantle grassroots organizing appear to be failing. While organic protests continue to spring up nationwide, often led by immigrants themselves, Indivisible and other groups declared June 14th “No Kings Day,” and have organized at least 1,800 protests around the country to challenge Trump’s authoritarian power grab.

As the summer heats up and with US democracy increasingly at risk, two fundamental truths must remain front and center: people have a First Amendment right to protest, and US soldiers have an obligation to disobey unlawful orders.

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

President Donald Trump issued an extensive travel ban on Wednesday, expanding one of the most controversial policies of his first term, the “Muslim ban.” Back then, Trump’s travel ban was challenged in court but ultimately, in 2018, its third scaled-down version was permitted by the Supreme Court. This followed a White House meeting in which Trump referred to Haiti and African countries as “shithole countries,” according to meeting participants like Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin. Trump also said he would prefer more immigrants from Norway, one of the world’s wealthiest and whitest nations.

Meet the new Trump, same as the old Trump, only now surrounded by sycophants eager to enable his whims, and with an even stronger majority on the Supreme Court. Trump’s new travel ban parallels the attempted mass deportations he promised while campaigning. Despite numerous setbacks in the courts and growing public opposition, the deportation program is upending the lives of countless immigrants and their families in a chaotic spree of ICE arrests, indefinite imprisonment – in many cases in violation of court orders – and removal from the US. The White House has already sent deportees to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador, and is reportedly negotiating with other countries to form a global gulag of prisons in nations seeking Trump’s favor.

Trump’s new travel ban, which takes effect on June 9th, bars individuals from 12 countries and limits travel from seven more. Complete bans were announced for Afghanistan, Myanmar/Burma, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It restricts travel from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

About half these countries are in Africa, and about half are majority Muslim. All of them are populated to a vast degree by people of color. The world’s three poorest countries, per capita – Yemen, Burundi, and Afghanistan – are on the list. It’s worth noting that at a 2024 campaign event, Trump mused, “Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries…Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”

The ban immediately drew criticism from human rights advocates, and constitutional lawyers and others. Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the Democracy Now! news hour,

“It’s significant on its own, but more so in a continuum with a series showcasing, almost day by day or week by week, some new immigration policy that effectuates their sort of evangelical, white supremacist fantasy about this country.”

Trump promised to seek out rapists and murderers to deport. But, in reality, as plainly stated by his Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, considered the architect of the mass deportation policy, it’s really about the numbers, and hardworking immigrants who obey the law will be targeted as well.

The conservative Washington Examiner reported that Miller summoned the heads of 25 ICE and Homeland Security field offices to DC to excoriate them on low deportation numbers. Quoting an anonymous source, the Examiner reported,

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official recited.”

Miller told Fox News,

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day, and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day.”

On the ground, the Trump/Miller deportation spree is tearing apart families, while at the same time, provoking increasing resistance.

“This cannot continue to be how we, as a country, are treating people who are here in search of safety and protection, who are our neighbors, our friends, our church families,” said Guerline Jozef, executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, on Democracy Now! “We are literally destroying lives instead of giving them the opportunity to continue to live their lives here with dignity and compassion.”

On May 30th, 20 armed, masked ICE agents in tactical gear raided a popular San Diego Italian restaurant. The agents handcuffed the entire staff and ultimately arrested four workers. When bystanders attempted to block ICE vehicles from leaving the scene, ICE agents threw flash-bang smoke grenades at the outraged crowd.

Adriana Jasso, an immigration and human rights advocate based in San Diego, has been organizing and educating immigrant communities about their rights and how to protect themselves against ICE raids.

“We understand and have adhered to our historical responsibility to fight back, to resist and to denounce and take the moral imperative,” Jasso told Democracy Now! “This also could be an opportunity for the movement to gain the strength to stand up and face a fascistic, harmful government that has done away with the fundamental human rights and constitutional rights that we as communities deserve.”

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

“Six-hundred days on, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is at its darkest point yet,” reads the latest statement by the UN’s Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which coordinates Palestinian aid. Israel has kept Gaza under a near total siege for three months, preventing food, medicine, fuel and clean water from reaching Gaza’s more than two million residents. Deaths from starvation mount as the Israeli military bombs and assaults hospitals, homes and tent camps for the displaced in so-called “safe zones.”

“Palestinians in Gaza are enduring what may be the cruelest phase of this cruel conflict,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on May 23rd. “The entire population of Gaza is facing the risk of famine. Families are being starved and denied the very basics. All with the world watching in real time.”

Israel’s violence is waged on Gaza with bipartisan US support. On the same day that Guterres spoke, Israel bombed the home of Dr. Alaa al-Najjar while she worked at the Nasser Medical Complex’s emergency room. Nine of her ten children were killed. Her husband, also a doctor, and her sole surviving child, 11-year-old Adam, were grievously injured.

Her brother-in-law, Ali al-Najjar, responded to the attack:

“We started pulling out charred bodies. One of the Civil Defense workers was handing me one of the bodies. She [Dr. Alaa al-Najjar], standing next to me, recognized it. She said, ‘This is Reval. Give her to me,’…as if her daughter were still alive. She asked to hold her in her arms…She wanted to embrace her daughter, forgetting that her daughter was burned in front of her eyes. We took those charred children and transferred them to Nasser Hospital. I took the doctor with me. She is now caught between the dead, her only surviving child and her husband, who is between life and death.”

Adam was rushed to Nasser Hospital’s emergency room, where he was treated by Dr. Graeme Groom, an orthopedic surgeon from London volunteering in Gaza.

“It’s difficult for me to describe the horror of what happened to her family, because we were in the operating theater all day, and this little scrap of humanity arrived when we should have finished what we had planned to do. Poor Adam was sent up to us for us to remove his left arm,” Dr. Groome said days later, speaking on the Democracy Now! news hour. “People who are very, very close to explosions have what we call a traumatic brain injury. Their brains are scrambled, and their cognitive function may be permanently damaged. We will continue to work on his arm and his other injuries. Time will tell about his brain injury.”

Those Palestinians in Gaza who have miraculously avoided death or injury during Israel’s more than 600-day assault and siege still face catastrophic food shortages, lack of clean water and sanitation, and the crushing physical and psychic trauma of sustained siege, hunger and war.

Al Jazeera reports Israel is targeting community kitchens, with up to 20 of the small but vital facilities destroyed in recent weeks. This further drives the desperate population to limited aid stations set up by a shady, US-based, Israeli-backed organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Hours before GHF began operations this week, its executive director Jake Wood resigned, writing, “It is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.”

Drop Site News journalist Jeremy Scahill described the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Democracy Now!:

“It was established by people with ties to the CIA and Israeli intelligence, meant to serve as part of Netanyahu’s war of annihilation. Netanyahu himself said…that he was getting some pressure, even from his most passionate backers in the Republicans in the Senate. He said that they didn’t want the optics of starving Palestinians, that this could hinder the ability of the United States to continue arming and supporting him, and so they wanted to give the veneer of some form of aid.”

Scahill says that GHF “created what international aid officials have said are concentration camp, or internment camp, like conditions” to distribute paltry food aid. Troops guarding the installations have fired into the crowds, killing and injuring people seeking food.

While Gazans face starvation, President Donald Trump maintains his plan for the US to “own” Gaza, to develop it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” NBC reported the Trump administration discussed plans to resettle up to one million Palestinians from Gaza to Libya, which the White House denies. Regardless of the destination, ethnic cleansing is a war crime and a crime against humanity.

Meanwhile, citizens and students around the world continue to defy crackdowns on Palestinian solidarity protests, demanding a just and enduring peace in Israel/Palestine.

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

Columbia University held graduation this week, with thousands receiving their degrees. Some students were missing, though, casting a pall over the proceedings and provoking protests, evidence of ongoing Palestinian solidarity among Columbia’s students, faculty and staff despite the university’s efforts to crush it.

Mohsen Mahdawi was there. As he ascended the stage, he thrust his arms high, his hands giving peace signs to cheers and a standing ovation from his classmates. Mohsen, a Palestinian-born green card holder, was arrested by masked and hooded ICE agents on April 14th when he appeared for his naturalization interview in Vermont. After two weeks in prison, federal Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered Mohsen’s release, writing: “Our nation has seen times like this before, especially during the Red Scare and Palmer Raids of 1919-1920 [and] during the McCarthy period in the 1950s.”

When the Trump administration attempted to deny Mohsen permission to travel to his graduation, Judge Crawford further ruled, “During his time in New York State, Mr. Mahdawi is permitted to move freely and conduct his daily activities normally including, but not limited to, meeting with elected officials, speaking with and being interviewed by members of the press and media, speaking at public events, attending protests.”

Shortly after receiving his diploma, Mohsen described how he felt, speaking on the Democracy Now! news hour:

“There is a strong sense of joy that I am able to come to this university all the way from a refugee camp, to survive the war.”

He continued, “There is sadness that my family, my parents, could not leave the West Bank and come and see this moment. Sadness that there are no universities left in Gaza where students can experience such joy, where hope can be harnessed.”

Mohsen is only one of many international students targeted by the Trump administration, solely for expressing solidarity with Palestinians and opposing the Israeli assault on Gaza.

Others include Fulbright Scholar Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University grad student from Turkey who was in the US on a student visa. She was snatched off the street by a group of masked, plainclothes federal agents for co-authoring an op-ed in the Tufts newspaper supporting Palestine. Rumeysa spent six weeks in a Louisiana immigration jail until the same Vermont federal court ordered her release.

Another student abducted by ICE is Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University grad student with a green card who is married to a US citizen. His wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, a dentist, was eight months pregnant at the time of his arrest on March 8th. He was briefly held in New Jersey before ICE flew him to Jena, Louisiana, where he remains locked up. He was denied permission to be with his wife when she gave birth to their first child, a son, Deen, on April 21st. On May 22nd, after legal efforts and public outcry, Mahmoud was granted a one-hour contact visit with Noor, and was finally able to hold their newborn son for the first time.

Mahmoud was an organizer of the Columbia Gaza solidarity encampment and chief negotiator with the university. He is a Palestinian, born in Syria, holding Algerian citizenship. As with others targeted for removal, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims Mahmoud’s continued presence in the US “would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

Mahmoud’s supporters held an alternative graduation ceremony for him, at a church near campus, where his wife read a statement written by Mahmoud in prison: “‘I was taken from my family and from you, detained simply for speaking the truth about Palestine. Columbia University, the place where we sought knowledge, justice and truth, chose silence instead of solidarity. It failed me, but you didn’t.’”

Mahmoud Khalil wasn’t completely erased at the official proceedings, however. When Columbia University’s acting President Claire Shipman attempted to address the graduates, they replied with sustained booing, followed by, “Free Mahmoud! Free Mahmoud!”

Israel’s assault on Gaza that inspired the Columbia encampments over 19 months ago continues, as do mass protests around the world. Traditional allies of Israel, like the UK, Canada, France and the European Union, are taking steps to limit trade and other relations, demanding Israel allow food and aid into Gaza.

Mohsen Mahdawi remains committed to peace. Though in the final steps on his path to citizenship, he now must fight deportation. Standing in his cap and gown outside Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he’s been accepted for graduate school, he described his hopes for the future:

“I am coming here to be in the middle of this fire, because I am a peacemaker, because I am a firefighter. I will come here to study international affairs, focusing on diplomacy and security, and focusing on conflict resolution and peacemaking. This is the story of hope, from a refugee camp to Columbia.”

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

The march to authoritarianism in the US accelerated on May 9th with another arrest of an elected official by the Trump administration. Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, had accompanied a Congressional delegation to Delaney Hall, a private prison run by GEO Corporation under contract to ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The delegation included Congressmembers Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez, Jr., all Democrats representing districts that include or are near Newark. They went to the East coast’s largest migrant jail to conduct oversight as authorized by law.

They were allowed to pass through the gate, along with Mayor Baraka. There they waited for over an hour. Baraka was told to leave, which he did, moving outside the gate to public property. His subsequent unprovoked arrest was a shocking abuse of federal police power, another clear instance of President Donald Trump and his enablers trying to seize power and crush dissent.

Mayor Baraka was held by ICE for five hours then released, charged with trespass. He is no stranger at the gates of Delaney Hall, as he explained days after his arrest on the Democracy Now! news hour:

“I actually go there every day…I go at 7 a.m. with fire code officials, UCC [Uniform Construction Code] officials, health inspectors, to get in, as it is our right to inspect the facility for them to apply for a certificate of occupancy. We’re in court with GEO right now, because they’re defying city ordinances.”

GEO rapidly ramped up operations at the 1,000-bed jail in order to serve as a major hub for Trump’s mass deportations. Newark sued GEO on April 1st, alleging it “blatantly continues to violate City ordinances and regulations.”

Baraka recounted his arrest:

“When the special agent in charge, Patel [Ricky Patel, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations, Newark] showed up, he escalated the situation. The Congresspeople tried to reason with him, surrounded me inside, and finally got him to agree for me to leave. I left, on the other side of the fence…They arrested me, and the congresspeople and other bystanders tried to shield me from being arrested.”

Homeland Security later issued a press release falsely claiming that “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility. Representatives Robert Menendez, Jr. and Bonnie Watson Coleman and multiple protestors are holed up in a guard shack.” Acting US Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba, one of Trump’s former personal lawyers, falsely claimed on X that Mayor Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark…NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.”

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin expanded on the lies, telling CNN Saturday, “There will likely be more arrests coming. We actually have body-camera footage of some of these members of Congress assaulting our ICE enforcement officers, including body-slamming a female ICE officer.”

Congressmember Bonnie Watson-Coleman, who is an 80-year-old cancer survivor, rejected the government’s allegations, saying on Democracy Now!,

“There was no body-slamming. The Department of Homeland Security or the representatives from the administration are doing what they do consistently, and that is to lie and to deflect and to try to create legitimacy for illegitimate things that they are doing.”

So, in addition to arresting an elected city mayor, the Trump administration is now threatening to arrest sitting members of Congress. This makes even more alarming a pronouncement by Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, hours before Baraka’s arrest:

“The Constitution is clear…that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. It’s an option we’re actively looking at.”

Habeas corpus is the right of those detained to demand the government justify their imprisonment in court or be freed.

Mayor Baraka, who is running for governor and is campaigning for the June 10th Democratic primary, appeared in federal court on Thursday, pleading not guilty to trespass. Alina Habba demanded a full trial, despite the mountain of exculpatory evidence.

The prosecution of Mayor Ras Baraka, like the prosecution of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan in Wisconsin, accused of helping an immigrant avoid arrest by ICE agents, and the threatened arrest of members of Congress – all portend a frightening escalation in Trump’s drive to authoritarianism.

Several blocks from the Newark courthouse is Harriet Tubman Square, where in 2023 Mayor Baraka unveiled a memorial to the great Underground Railroad conductor and abolitionist, who escaped slavery and returned again and again to lead others to freedom. Newark has a long history of resistance to oppression, as President Trump and his enablers are about to find out.

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

On May 3rd, 2024, Roger Fortson was on a video call with his girlfriend when a knock came at his door. Fortson, a 23 year-old Black man, was a Senior Airman in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in Florida. Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Deputy Eddie Duran had responded to a domestic disturbance call at the apartment complex. Building staff directed him to Fortson’s unit. After the deputy pounded on the door, Fortson opened it, holding his left hand up, palm out, posing no threat. In his other hand he held his legally owned pistol, as was his right. Within seconds, Duran fired six shots at point blank range. Fortson fell to the ground. As he lay dying, he uttered his final words, “I can’t breathe.”

Within weeks, Duran was fired and charged with manslaughter, facing 30 years in prison. He is currently out on bail awaiting trial. Meanwhile, civil rights attorney Ben Crump is representing Fortson’s family, and recently filed a civil suit against Duran, Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden, as well as the apartment complex owner and the staff person who wrongly directed Duran to Fortson’s apartment.

“The FaceTime video of his girlfriend is just horrible,” Crump said, speaking on the Democracy Now! news hour, not long after Fortson’s death. “You hear him saying, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and you hear the police officer barking orders, ‘Don’t move. Don’t move.’ And we lose this young man, one of the brightest lights for his family and our community…U.S. Airman Roger Fortson was an American hero. He was a patriot. He was a young man who was doing all the right things. He was trying to provide for his mother, his 10-year-old sister Harmony, his 16-year-old brother André. He was highly intelligent. He was special ops. He was the best that we had to offer America.”

As Crump was filing the lawsuit this week, another case of a death of an innocent Black man while in police custody was in the news. Three officers formerly with the Memphis Police Department were in state court, facing murder charges for the death of Tyre Nichols. Nichols, a 29 year-old Black father who worked at FedEx was pulled over by police as he drove home from work on January 7th, 2023.

Ben Crump is also working on this case, and described on Democracy Now! how Nichols died:

“Tyre Nichols was one of the worst police videos of brutality that we’ve ever witnessed. Tyre Nichols was about two blocks from his home. He didn’t break any laws. But there was a SCORPION unit, this special tactic unit at the Memphis Police Department that was allowed to harass and violate the constitutional rights of Black people in a certain section of Memphis, Tennessee, under the guise that they were deterring crime…they literally beat him to death. And if it was not for the camera on the night pole, they would have probably gotten away with it. But that camera showed us everything.”

The five officers, all Black men, were part of a notoriously violent police team known as the SCORPION unit, the “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods.” The unit was disbanded after Nichols’ death.

This week, a jury found former officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith not guilty of murder, in a state trial. In a separate federal case, they were found guilty of witness tampering, and await sentencing for that conviction. Two others were also convicted on the federal charge, and pleaded guilty to state charges and will avoid trial. All five are expected to serve time in prison.

Police violence is a persistent problem in the United States, disproportionately victimizing people of color, especially Black men. According to the non-profit Mapping Police Violence project, just this year there have been 401 police killings in 45 states and the District of Columbia (as of April 24th), with over 20% of the victims Black, far out of proportion to their representation in the overall US population.

President Trump, while campaigning in 2024, openly called for police brutality. At one Pennsylvania rally, decrying shoplifting, he said, “Now, if you had one really violent day … one rough hour, and I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately.”

ProPublica reports that Trump’s Justice Department is expected to freeze consent decrees, or court-ordered oversight of problematic police departments across the country, from Minneapolis to Louisville, Kentucky to Memphis. This makes even more vital the work of grassroots groups to hold police accountable for unlawful conduct and excessive force.

The GOP-run Congress recently pressured Washington, DC to erase the words on a public plaza that became famous in 2020 as millions protested the police murder of George Floyd. But you can’t erase the message: Black Lives Matter.

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

May Day, May 1st, has long been a day of protest, and this year is no exception. Protests are happening across the country, against President Donald Trump and his attack on the social safety net, on immigrants, on people of color and the LGBTQ community, and more.

On May 1st, 1971, massive protests against the Vietnam war engulfed Washington, DC. Most participants were organized into affinity groups – small groups of trusted friends and associates considered more difficult for authorities to infiltrate and disrupt. One of those affinity groups included MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, historian Howard Zinn, and Pentagon consultant and former Marine officer Daniel Ellsberg. An estimated 12,000 people were arrested during the protests on that May Day and the days that followed.

Six weeks later, the New York Times published the first installment of the Pentagon Papers, the US government’s secret history of its involvement in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg was the whistleblower who leaked the classified papers, and that act of courage would change not only his life, but the trajectory of the war.

On April 30th, 1975, fifty years ago, the last of the US military and embassy officials fled Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, as North Vietnamese tanks rolled in. The war was officially over.

We interviewed Dan Ellsberg many times over the years on the Democracy Now! news hour. Our final interview with him was just weeks before he died. It aired, coincidentally, on May Day, 2023. He had just received a terminal cancer diagnosis, and, at 92, knew his time was short. Referring to the late 1960s, when he worked as a RAND consultant to the Pentagon and began secretly photocopying the Pentagon Papers, Dan Ellsberg recalled,

“The people I was working with in the government felt — everyone I could think of felt the war was hopeless, essentially. It was hopelessly stalemated, and there was no coming out. ‘Stalemate’ was taboo the year I came back from Vietnam with hepatitis, in 1967, after two years there. Lyndon Johnson had said, ‘No official is to use the word or hint at the word stalemate.’ And yet, that’s where it was. So, the war continued.”

Six weeks before Chomsky, Ellsberg and Zinn protested on May Day, 1971, Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam. As Saigon fell, Viet, then four years old, fled with his family to the United States. They were sent to a military camp in Pennsylvania with other refugees, then eventually settled in California. Viet Thanh Nguyen is now a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a professor at the University of Southern California, USC. Now on tour for his new book, “To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other,” he joined us on Democracy Now!, reflecting on the Vietnam war and the long history of mistakes committed there by the United States:

“The mistakes American presidents have made started with Woodrow Wilson in 1919, refusing to listen to the appeal of a very young Ho Chi Minh in Paris, who had come to ask for American recognition of the Vietnamese quest for independence. From that mistake, we’ve had a series of mistakes over the past century, mostly revolving around the fact that the United States did not recognize Vietnamese self-determination. The US meddled in Vietnamese affairs, sided with the French in terms of their colonization, took over the French efforts after the French were defeated by Ho Chi Minh in 1954.”

Viet Thanh Nguyen continued, “If the United States had not interfered, I think the outcome in the long term would have been pretty much exactly the same, with Vietnam turning into a capitalist economy, which it pretty much is now, and the United States relying on Vietnam as an ally against China. The difference would have been that …at least 3 million Vietnamese people wouldn’t have died, and hundreds of thousands of Lao, Hmong and Cambodians.”

Viet Thanh Nguyen concluded, “In 1975 the majority of Americans did not want to accept refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia…Fast-forward 50 years, I would say that the majority of Americans, if they thought about Southeast Asian Americans in the United States, probably generally have pretty positive images of people like us, because of our food and our ethnic enclaves and the like. And meanwhile, there are now new people to be afraid of. And this is an old cycle in American history.”

President Trump marked his 100th day in office this week, demonizing immigrants, defying court orders and wielding executive power with little restraint. Meanwhile, on May Day, over 1,000 separate protest events were planned from Bethel, Alaska to Madawaksa, Maine, and across the Atlantic in London and Paris.

This is not the first time a homegrown authoritarian has threatened the United States. The question now is whether the power of the people can rise to this moment.