Juan González: Immigrant Rights Groups Are Playing Key Role in Confronting Trump's Neofascist Coup
*Democracy Now!* co-host Juan González describes how immigrant communities are organizing to fight back against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. “Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance,” he says. “It’s obvious that the neofascist coup we are witnessing will not be defeated simply by legal challenges in the courts. It will have to be confronted in the streets.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/11/trump_against_immigrants_juan_gonzalez
Center for Constitutional Rights Challenges Trump Migrant Flights to Guantánamo, ICC Sanctions & More
We look at a victory for immigrant rights, after a federal judge temporarily blocked the U.S. government from deporting three Venezuelan men to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the Trump administration has started to send thousands of immigrants for detention. Our guest, Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, sought an emergency order to protect the three men, who had been held for about a year at the Otero detention center. The men say they left Venezuela to request asylum in the United States but were rejected. When they saw others from the detention center transferred to Guantánamo, they feared they could be next and asked the judge to preemptively block their transfer. This all comes as the Trump administration recently withdrew temporary protected status for Venezuelans living in the United States. “We decided we had to move and prevent their transfer, their rendition, to the lawless space in Guantánamo,” says Azmy. We also speak with Vince Warren, the
executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Warren says that the United States is “facing a constitutional crisis on a range of issues, and it’s just not clear to any of us whether this administration will actually comply with the rule of law in any context.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/11/vince_warren_guantanamo_trump_immigration_courts
Palestinian Writer Mohammed El-Kurd on "Perfect Victims," Trump & Israel's Criminalization of Thought
We speak with the acclaimed Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd on the publication day for his new book, *Perfect Victims*. It comes at a time of heightened censorship and attacks on Palestinian expression in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as in the United States and elsewhere. *Perfect Victims* explores ongoing Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and human rights abuses and the “impossible demand made of the Palestinians” to be sympathetic in the eyes of international observers. He says that pressure leads to “curating yourself in a way that is not offensive to the Western gaze.” El-Kurd also discusses U.S. attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement, President Donald Trump’s calls for ethnically cleansing Gaza, Israeli attacks in the occupied West Bank and his own family’s history of fighting eviction from their home in East Jerusalem.
http://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/11/mohammed_el_kurd_palestine_perfect_victims
Headlines for February 10, 2025
Constitutional Crisis: Trump Admin Hints It Will Ignore Judge’s Ruling to Block Musk from Treasury Records, Freed Palestinians Say They Were Held by Israel in “Torture Center” Without Food, Water, In Occupied West Bank, Israel Kills Two Women, Including One 8 Months Pregnant, U.N. Warns U.S. Cuts Could Lead to 6 Million AIDS-Related Deaths as Trump Moves to Dismantle USAID, National Institutes of Health Moves to Cut $4 Billion in Biomedical Research, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Brink of Being Shuttered After Saving Consumers $21 Billion, Trump Announces 25% Tariff on Steel and Aluminum, U.S. Judge Blocks Transfer of Venezuela Immigrant Detainees to Guantánamo, NBC: Trump Preparing to Relaunch Immigrant Family Detention Policy, Trump Freezes U.S. Aid to South Africa over “Unjust Racial Discrimination” Against Whites, African Leaders Call for Ceasefire, Direct Talks with Rebels Amid Escalating Eastern Congo Conflict, Sam Nujoma, Namibia’s First President, Who Led His Country
to Independence, Dies at 95, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa and Luisa González Headed for Rematch in April Presidential Runoff, Mass Anti-AfD Protests Continue in Germany as Far Right Gathers for “Make Europe Great Again” Summit, Trump Fires Kennedy Center Board Members, Announces Plan to Install Himself as New Chair, Halftime Performer Stages Super Bowl Protest, Holding Up Flags of Sudan, Palestine, Louisiana Spent $17.5B to Remove Unhoused People to Cold Warehouse Ahead of Super Bowl
Constitutional Crisis: Who Is Musk's "DOGE Army," Gutting Gov't Agencies as Courts Question Legality?
We look at how Elon Musk’s executive branch agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, known as ”DOGE,” is wreaking havoc, with young male software engineers slashing government services and funding in what legal experts are saying could amount to a “constitutional crisis.” Most of the DOGE staffers are pulled from Musk-linked tech companies and have limited work and educational experience. “Even if these young men are very technically gifted … some of them seem to have questionable backgrounds,” says *Wired* reporter Vittoria Elliott, who has revealed key details about the staffers in a series of articles. One DOGE staffer, Marko Elez, resigned and was later reinstated after he was traced to racist social media posts. DOGE’s lack of oversight, training and transparency poses “an incredible risk,” adds Elliott, as its unvetted and underqualified staffers take control of the sensitive data of Americans.
http://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/10/musk_doge_federal_government_vittoria_elliott
In Bid to Help White Landowners, Trump Cuts Off Aid to South Africa, Putting Millions of Lives at Risk
President Trump has ordered a freeze on all foreign aid to South Africa in an executive order he signed Friday, claiming that a new land reform law amounts to “government-sponsored race-based discrimination.” The country’s white minority still owns the vast majority of farmland decades after the end of apartheid rule. Trump also criticized South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ and said the United States would accept white South Africans as refugees facing what he characterized as persecution. The cuts to aid are already causing widespread suffering in South Africa, where “after 30 years of democracy, not much has changed in terms of wealth ownership” and a white population with colonial roots is “using politics, ideology, misinformation and propaganda … to maintain the status quo,” says South African activist Trevor Ngwane.
"The PayPal Mafia": Meet the South African Oligarchs Surrounding Trump, from Elon Musk to Peter Thiel
President Trump’s targeting of South Africa is clearly tied to his influential adviser Elon Musk and a coterie of wealthy U.S. oligarchs, “all of whom in some way or other grew up in South Africa as children.” These men are known as the “PayPal Mafia” due to their involvement in the founding of the financial tech company PayPal, explains reporter Chris McGreal. McGreal, a former South Africa correspondent for *The Guardian*, outlines Musk’s pro-apartheid and neo-Nazi family history, which appears to form the basis of his adherence to a right-wing ideology that believes white South Africans “are the victims of the end of apartheid” and at risk of a “white genocide.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/10/elon_musk_doge_south_africa_apartheid
Mustafa Barghouti on Trump, Ethnic Cleansing & Israel "Moving the War" from Gaza to the West Bank
Israel “has moved the war from Gaza to the West Bank,” says the Palestinian National Initiative’s Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who joins us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military’s ongoing assault there has displaced over 35,000 Palestinians through evictions, destruction of infrastructure and indiscriminate attacks resulting in over 80 deaths. Barghouti also condemns Donald Trump’s declaration that the U.S. should take over the Gaza Strip. He calls both the “theft of Gaza” and the military campaign in the West Bank war crimes.
http://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/10/mustafa_barghouti_west_bank_israeli_assault
Headlines for February 7, 2025
Trump Sanctions ICC over War Crimes Investigations Against Israel, Trump Says Palestinians Will Be “Happy, Safe and Free” After Mass Expulsion from Gaza, Senate Votes to Confirm Project 2025 Architect Russell Vought as White House Budget Chief, DOGE Staffer Marko Elez Resigns over Racist and Hateful Social Media Posts, Lawmakers Denied Access to EPA as Trump Admin Shutters Environmental Justice Office, Scott Turner Confirmed as HUD Secretary as DOGE Prepares to Slash Billions from Housing Department, First Female Coast Guard Commandant, Linda Fagan, Evicted from Home After 3-Hour Notice, Rights Groups Condemn NCAA over Ban on Trans Women in Sports, January 2025 Was Hottest on Record, Hitting 1.75 Degrees Above Preindustrial Levels, Trump Nominates “Sharpiegate” Scientist to Reprise Role at NOAA, Mourners at Memorial for Altadena Fire Victims Demand Equity in Rebuilding Process, Trump Administration Shackled Indians for 40 Hours Aboard Deportation Flight
Holding Musk Accountable: Rep. Ro Khanna on Stopping DOGE's "Unconstitutional" Power Grab
We speak with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California about the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on the federal bureaucracy and the gutting of various agencies, led by the president’s unelected billionaire adviser Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“No DOGE employee should have access to any of Americans’ sensitive, confidential information, and they should not have access to be able to stop payments,” he says. Khanna calls Musk’s actions “unconstitutional” and says the Trump administration must be held accountable. “There is a movement now which is pushing back. We did not have that for a couple months, I acknowledge that. But the Democratic Party in this last week has had a new energy and a new resolve to stand up.”
Khanna also comments on the use of Guantánamo Bay to detain immigrants, Trump’s colonial proposals to seize Gaza and other foreign territories and more.
"Authoritarian Rampage": Trump/Musk Sued to Block DOGE Access to Confidential Info of Millions
A lawsuit by a coalition of labor unions Thursday prompted the Labor Department to agree not to release any sensitive economic and privacy data to DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk. Musk’s group has already gained access to sensitive files and computer systems across other key agencies as part of a push to restructure much of the federal government. “There are huge problems with what Elon Musk and his team are doing to access the most critical personal data that this country owns,” says Rob Shriver, senior adviser to the accountability group Democracy Forward, which filed the lawsuit over Labor Department data, and a former acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. Legal challenges have also reversed the Trump administration’s executive order to freeze trillions in federal funding, delayed a buyout offer sent to most of the federal workforce to encourage mass resignations, and at least partially blocked Musk
from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system. We also speak with Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman, who calls Musk’s actions “an authoritarian rampage through the government … designed to access information, surveil the country, destroy the institutions of government and advance corporate interests without restraint.”
Trump Guts EPA's Environmental Justice Office, Putting Poorest Communities of Color at More Risk
The Trump administration is planning to shutter the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights at the Environmental Protection Agency and has placed nearly 170 employees on administrative leave. “I’m very concerned about the deregulation and the focus on corporate profits,” says Mustafa Santiago Ali, the former head of the environmental justice program at the EPA. He resigned in 2017 to protest a Trump administration proposal to severely scale back the size and work of the agency. “Any time that we place profit over people, then we are putting a crosshair on our most vulnerable, our most marginalized,” says Ali.
Headlines for February 6, 2025
Protests Erupt Against Trump and Musk Takeover of Gov’t Agencies, NOAA Receives Order to Halt “International Engagements”; HHS Workers Placed on DEI “Hit List”, Sen. Brian Schatz Warns Against “Creeping Fascism” as He Leads Filibuster Against OMB Nominee Vought, Unions Sue to Prevent DOGE from Accessing Labor Dept. Data, CIA Sends White House Email with Names of Recent Hires; DOJ Official Accuses FBI of “Insubordination”, Trump Signs Order Banning Trans Women and Girls from School Sports, Judge Blocks Trump’s “Cruel and Unusual” Order to Move Trans Women Prisoners to Men’s Wards, Federal Court Puts Indefinite Hold on Trump’s Order Ending Birthright Citizenship, Texas Empowers National Guard Soldiers to Arrest Asylum Seekers at U.S. Border, ICE Agents in Colorado Go Door to Door Demanding IDs and Asking People to Turn In Their Neighbors, Protests Nationwide Denounce Trump Administration’s Immigration Raids, First Deportation Flight Carrying Immigrant Prisoners Arrives at Guantánamo,
Guatemala Agrees to U.S. Demands to Accept Deportees from Other Countries, Israeli Defense Minister Orders Plans for “Voluntary Departure” of Palestinians from Gaza, Swedish Gunman Kills 10 at Adult Education Center That Serves Immigrants, Panama Canal Authority Denies Trump’s Claim of Free Passage for U.S. Ships, Javier Milei Withdraws Argentina from World Health Organization, Blasts Social Justice Groups, Ecuador’s President Slaps Tariffs on Mexican Goods, Mirroring Trump’s Authoritarian Moves, Trump’s Release of Water from California Dams Won’t Help Farms or L.A. Firefighters
"Trump Does Not See Palestinians as Human Beings": Plan for U.S. to "Take Over" Gaza Faces Outcry
World leaders are rebuking Donald Trump’s proposal for the United States to take over the Gaza Strip, ethnically cleansing the region of Palestinians. “There’s no question that even though the entire region would reject it … the fundamental reality is that we are heading to the complete destruction of Palestinian society in Gaza as a matter of status quo,” says our guest Omar Baddar. Baddar, a Palestinian American political analyst and member of the National Policy Council of the Arab American Institute, also discusses Trump’s recent statements signaling a potential breakdown of the official ceasefire in Gaza.
http://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/6/omar_baddar_trump_gaza_israel_palestine
Peter Beinart on "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza" & Trump's Call for Ethnic Cleansing
We speak to *Jewish Currents* editor-at-large Peter Beinart about his new book, *Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning*, which is “addressed to my fellow Jews” and criticizes what he characterizes as the increasing privileging of Zionism as a part of Jewish identity. “The Jewish community is structured to basically make the existence of a Jewish state, a state that privileges Jews over Palestinians, sacred, … elevat[ing] ethnonationalism — a Jewish state — over Judaism itself,” Beinart says. In response, he challenges the erasure of Zionism’s explicitly colonial roots and political myths about majoritarian rule, arguing for the acceptance of more critical stances toward the state of Israel within Jewish communities.
http://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/6/peter_beinart_being_jewish_gaza_book
"Educational Arson": Trump Moves to Abolish Dept. of Education Amid Broader Attack on Public Schools
As the Trump administration, led in part by his unelected adviser Elon Musk, sets its sights on cutting the Department of Education, we speak to longtime educator Jesse Hagopian about what he calls an “extremist, authoritarian power grab to dismantle public education and enforce ideological conformity.” Hagopian, whose new book, *Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education*, traces the history of racist educational censorship, adds, “This isn’t about protecting children. We know that dismantling the Department of Education is really about imposing … the violence of organized forgetting.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/6/jesse_hagopian_trump_attacks_on_education
Headlines for February 5, 2025
Trump Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Entire Gaza Strip and for U.S. to “Take Over”, U.S. Ignores ICC Arrest Warrant Seeking Netanyahu’s Arrest for Crimes Against Humanity, “A Serious Violation of International Law”: Palestinians Reject Trump’s Gaza Takeover Bid, Palestinian Poet Refaat Alareer, Killed in 2023 Israeli Strike, Finally Laid to Rest in Gaza City, Trump Places 10,000 USAID Workers on Leave and Orders Them to Return to U.S., Trump Orders U.S. WIthdrawal from U.N. Human Rights Council and U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees, Federal Workers Sue DOGE, Alleging Musk Illegally Compromised Personal Information, Democratic Lawmakers Protest Elon Musk’s “Hostile Takeover” of U.S. Government, Ukraine’s Zelensky Accepts Trump’s Bid to Trade U.S. Arms for Rare Earth Minerals, Senate Confirms Trump Loyalist Pam Bondi as Attorney General, Proud Boys Lose Trademark Rights to Historic Black Church It Attacked in 2020, ACLU Sues to Block Trump’s Ban on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender
Youth, Senators Advance Nominations of RFK Jr. for Health Secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for Intelligence Chief, Hundreds of Women Raped and Burned to Death as M23 Rebels Seize Eastern DRC’s Goma, Philippine Congress Impeaches Vice President Sara Duterte over Corruption, Assassination Threats
Blueprint for Ethnic Cleansing: Trump Proposes U.S. Take Over Gaza & Forcibly Remove All Palestinians
President Donald Trump met at the White House Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where Trump again suggested ethnically cleansing Gaza of its Palestinian population. Trump has already mused about moving Gaza’s population to Jordan and Egypt, which those countries have flatly rejected, but on Tuesday he went even further and said the United States should “own” Gaza and develop it into a seaside tourist destination. “Nothing has been more destabilizing for the region over the last eight decades than the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel, and nobody at any level is going to sign up for a continuation of that,” says Palestinian American analyst Yousef Munayyer, who calls Trump’s plan “ethically and morally repugnant.” We also speak with former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, who says Israeli society is currently “giddy with excitement” over Trump’s presidency. But he adds that “perhaps Israel’s greatest Achilles’ heel is if it actually falls for the idea
that America is all-powerful.”
"Catastrophic": Trans Youth Lose Access to Care as Hospitals Capitulate to Trump Attacks
As President Trump continues to sign new executive orders attacking transgender people and their rights, we hear voices of protest from New York, where hundreds of people rallied Monday outside NYU Langone Hospital in Manhattan to demand it continue providing gender-affirming care for trans patients, after news that some patients had been dropped by the hospital. This comes after the Trump administration signed an order withholding federal research and education grants from hospitals that offer gender-affirming care to transgender people under 19.
"I Will Go to Jail to Defend Your Care": New York Doctor Vows to Keep Helping Trans Youth Patients
The Trump administration claims an order to withhold funds from hospitals that offer gender-affirming care to transgender youth is “already having its intended effect” as hospitals announce a halt to gender-affirming care for trans patients. The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and others filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of transgender youth who say the order is depriving them of medical care “solely on the basis of their sex and transgender status.” ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio says the situation is “catastrophic for transgender people of all ages, particularly transgender youth,” and notes Trump’s near-daily attacks are targeting a community that makes up less than 1% of the U.S. population. “We need to see people standing up.” We are also joined by pediatrician Dr. Jeffrey Birnbaum, who has vowed to keep working with transgender youth patients in New York. “Keep politics out of science,” says Dr. Birnbaum.
http://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/5/trans_healthcare_doctor