This week on CounterSpin:

Prosecutors at the 1946 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared:

War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

After the Trump administration dropped bombs on Iran last weekend, without congressional approval, the media debate wasn’t about legality, much less humanity. The Wall Street Journal offered a video series on The Massive Ordnance Penetrator, “The 30,000-Pound U.S. Bomb That Could Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Bunkers.” But it’s not just boys excited by toys; the very important Wall Street Journal is “examining military innovation and tactics emerging around the world, breaking down the tech behind the weaponry and its potential impact.”

Most big media are consumed right now with whether those bunker busters did their bunker busting or maybe the U.S. needs to buy bigger, better bombs to … do what, exactly? Well, now you’re asking too many questions.

Things you should not question? Statements like that of Sen. John Fetterman that Iran is the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror.

U.S. corporate media in war mode are a force to reckon with. We do some reckoning with media analyst Adam Johnson, co-host of the podcast Citations Needed, Substack author at the Column, and co-author, with In These Times contributing editor Sarah Lazare, of some relevant pieces at InTheseTimes.com.

The post Adam Johnson on Media in War Mode appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

We’ve always heard that racists hate quotas, yet Stephen Miller’s “3000 a day, however which way” mandate is terrorizing immigrant communities — brown immigrant communities — around the country. The response from people of conscience can look many ways: linking arms around people in danger, absolutely; vigorously disputing misinformation about immigrants, whether hateful or patronizing, also.

But another piece is gaining a deeper, broader understanding of migration. News media could help answer one implied question — “Why is anyone trying to come to the U.S. anyway?” — by grappling with the role of conditions the U.S. has largely created in the places people are driven from. We talk about that largely missing piece from elite media’s immigration coverage with Michael Galant, senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Anyone who pays attention and cares can see that the Trump budget bill is a brazen transfer of resources from those that are trying to meet basic needs to those that can’t remember how many houses they own. But corporate reporting rarely breaks out economic policy in terms of how it affects different people — especially how it affects communities for whom they show no consistent concern. Economic policy is itself racialized, gendered, regionalized, targeted. Humanistic journalism would help us see that.

LaToya Parker is a senior researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and co-author, with Joint Center president Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, of the recent piece “This Federal Budget Will Be a Disaster for Black Workers.”

The post Michael Galant on Sanctions and Immigration / LaToya Parker on Budget’s Racial Impacts appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

Media are focused on public protests in LA but seem less interested in what’s making people angry. That’s in part about the federal government’s stated bid to capture and eject anyone who they determine “opposes U.S. foreign policy.” Protesters and witnesses and journalists in LA aren’t being shot at and thrown around and sent to the hospital because they disagree with U.S. policy, we’re told, but because they’re interfering with the federal agents carrying out that policy. See how that works? If you don’t, and it worries you, you’re far from alone.

We hear from Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights and Dissent, about the critical case of Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil, held without warrant in a detention facility in Louisiana since March, for voicing support for Palestinian lives. There’s an important legal development, but just like with ICE sweeps around the country, how meaningfully Khalil’s case ultimately translates will have to do with us.

If the goal were to “get rid of” unhoused people, the answer would be to house them. It’s cheaper than jailing people for being homeless, so if it’s those “taxpayer dollars” you care about, this would be plan A. Why isn’t it? We hear from Farrah Hassen, policy analyst, writer and adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona.

The post Chip Gibbons on Freeing Mahmoud Khalil / Farrah Hassen on Criminalizing Homelessness appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

An email we got this week tells us: “The radical left is up in arms about DOGE. Just think about it — DOGE has exposed BILLIONS in wasteful spending, and is rooting out fraud and corruption at every turn. They’re making the government work for the people of this great nation once again, as the founders intended, and that is why the left simply can’t stand DOGE.” The ask is that we fill out a survey that represents “our once-in-a-lifetime chance to slash the bloated, woke and wasteful policies in the federal government. Thank you, and God Bless, Speaker Mike Johnson. (Paid for by the NRCC and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.)”

Reports are that Elon Musk is leaving government, going back to make Tesla great again or something. But if that’s true, why did we get this weird, sad email? We’ll talk about how to miss Musk when he won’t go away with Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project.

The New York Times has its stories on the Boeing “non-prosecution agreement” in the “Business” section, suggesting that whether planes drop out of the sky is mostly a concern for investors. A huge corporation paying money to dodge criminal charges is evidently not a general interest story. And the families and friends of the hundreds of people dead because of Boeing’s admittedly knowing malfeasance? They’re just another county heard from. If you want reporting that calls crimes “crimes,” even if they’re committed by corporations, you need to look outside of corporate media. We’ll hear about Boeing from independent journalist Katya Schwenk.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of trans youth in sports and gender-affirming care.

The post Jeff Hauser on DOGE After Musk / Katya Schwenk on Boeing Deal appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and … Oprah? They’re among the entertainers in Trump’s sights for, it would seem, endorsing Kamala Harris in the election and, maybe, for saying something unflattering about him or his actions — which, in his brain, and that of the minions who’ve chosen to share that brain, constitutes an illegal political contribution to his opponents, wherever they may lurk.

At a moment when politicians who swore actual oaths are throwing over even the pretense of democracy, or public service — or basic human decency — many of us are looking to artists to be truth-tellers and spirit lifters: to convey, maybe, not so much information as energy — the fearless, collective, forward-looking joy that can sustain a beleaguered people in a threatening time.

There’s a deep history of protest music and music as protest, and our guest is very intentionally a part of it. Tom Morello is a guitarist; part of Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, Prophets of Rage and The Nightwatchman, among many other projects. His music has always been intertwined with his activism and advocacy for social, racial, economic justice. We talk about the work of artists in Trumpian times.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the embassy shootings, a lawmaker’s arrest, and commencement protests.

The post Tom Morello on Music as Protest appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

On a Sunday night, not when officials do things they’re most proud of, House Republicans passed a plan to give more money to rich people by taking it from the non-rich. Call it what you will, that’s what’s ultimately happening with the plan to cut more than $700 billion from Medicaid in order to “offset,” as elite media have it, the expense of relieving millionaires from contributing to public coffers. Even the feint they’re using — we’re not cutting aid, just forcing recipients to work, like they should — is obvious, age-old and long-disproven, if evidence is what you care about. Thing is, of the millions of people at the sharp end of the plan, most are children, who have no voice corporate media feel obliged to listen to. We’ll nevertheless talk about them with independent journalist Bryce Covert.

You may have seen an editorial in the Washington Post indicating that, despite what you have heard for years, from trans people and from doctors and medical associations that work with trans people, maybe it’s okay for you to still entertain the notion that it’s not science but talk show hosts who have it right, and trans kids are just actually mentally ill. We’ll talk about that with journalist and trans rights activist Erin Reed, of Erin in the Morning.

The post Bryce Covert on Work Requirements / Erin Reed on Trans Care “Questions” appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

As part of its deadly denial of food, water, and medicine to Palestinian people, Israel attacked a civilian aid ship endeavoring to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza, setting it on fire, injuring crew members, cutting off communications. The ship was called the Conscience. Millions around the world ask every day what it will take to awaken the conscience of leaders to stop the genocide of Palestinians, instead of trying to silence the outcry.

Corporate media are complicit, with please-don’t-think-about-it headlines like NBC News‘ “Aid Groups Describe Dire Conditions in Gaza as Israel Says There Is No Shortage of Aid.”

We talk about attacks on aid delivery and media’s role with Mara Kronenfeld, executive director at UNRWA USA (UNRWA being the UN Relief & Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA USA being the partner group amplifying and grounding that work).

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of Gaza’s starvation and the MOVE bombing.

The post Mara Kronenfeld on Israel’s Aid Blockade appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

They say ignorance is bliss, but I know that, for myself and others, our lack of knowledge of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency will only hurt us in our response to the effects that the dealings around that stuff are having on our lives. Bartlett Naylor breaks it down for us; he works at Public Citizen, as a financial policy advocate at their project Congress Watch.

Billionaires don’t need tax cuts; they already have a system designed to appease them. But it’s not enough! Part of the budget bill to give more to those who have everything is an effort to sell off public land for exploitation for fossil fuel companies, who are determined to die taking the last penny from our fingers. Pulling up the covers and waiting for better times isn’t the way; if we stay focused, we can save critical elements of, in this case, unspoiled wild places in this country. We hear from Ashley Nunes, public lands policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Plus Janine Jackson looks back on an interview with the late Robert McChesney.

The post Bartlett Naylor on Meme Coin Grift / Ashley Nunes on Public Land Selloff appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

The website of the Kairos Democracy Project has a quote from John Lewis, reminding us, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.” Our guest Tanya Clay House is board chair at Kairos and a longtime advocate for the multiracial democracy that the Trump White House seeks to denounce and derail — in part by erasing the history of Black people in this country. As part of that, she’s part of an ongoing project called Freedom to Learn and its present campaign, called #HandsOffOurHistory.

Corporate news media evince lofty principles about the First Amendment, but when people actually use it, the response is more telling. When USA Today covered activism in Seattle around the WTO, it reported that, “Little noticed by the public, the upcoming World Trade Organization summit has energized protesters around the world.” You see how that works: If you’re the little-noticing “public,” you’re cool; but if you band together with other people and speak out, well, now you’re a “protester,” and that’s different — and marginal. Whatever they say in their Martin Luther King Day editorials, elite media’s day-to-day message is, “Normal people don’t protest.” In 2025, there’s an ominous addendum: “Or else.”

We hear from Danaka Katovich, co-director of the feminist grassroots anti-war organization CODEPINK, currently, but not for the first time, at the sharp end of state efforts to silence activists and activism.

The post Tanya Clay House on Freedom to Learn / Danaka Katovich on Attacks on Activists appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

Elon Musk reportedly told Tesla investors that he’ll be amping down his role with the Department of Government Efficiency to, one guesses, bring his big brain back into their service. Like the “War on Terror,” “DOGE” is a thing that was in part spoken into normalcy by the corporate press.

Media seem ready to, if not embrace, to make respectful space for whatever hot nonsense is proffered — if it fits within their political template. In this case, it’s a thing — not officially a new Cabinet-level department, but acting like one — wildly powerful, yet utterly opaque and run by an unelected billionaire. DOGE sparked lawsuits about its legality from day one, but today’s news is about, legal or not, what it’s doing and how we can respond. The Revolving Door Project is tracking all of that; we hear from executive director Jeff Hauser.

There’s no reason you need to know that Selena Chandler-Scott is a 24-year-old woman from Georgia who had a miscarriage last month; pregnant people lose those pregnancies routinely. You should know that Chandler-Scott was sent to jail for her miscarriage, and though later released, she won’t be the last. “Fetal personhood” may sound abstract or legalistic; but this case brings home vividly how granting legal rights to embryos and fetuses doesn’t “potentially” “open the door to,” but concretely means undermining the rights of people who carry pregnancies, leaving them open to surveillance, suspicion, and prosecution.

U.S. media seem uninterested in Chandler-Scott’s story and its implications, but we hear from Karen Thompson, legal director at Pregnancy Justice.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of Pope Francis.

The post Jeff Hauser on DOGE / Karen Thompson on “Fetal Personhood” appeared first on KPFA.