The New York Times, the US’s most powerful establishment news outlet, has reported on President Donald Trump’s “memorandum of understanding” with Iran from a pro-war and/or pro-Israel perspective. Why did Trump end the war without limiting Iran’s “nuclear program” and its support for “proxy forces,” or without conducting “regime” change? These are the questions that have preoccupied the paper of record’s news reporting.
As I’ve noted before (FAIR.org, 3/30/26), multiple Times employees are reporting from and currently living in Israel, despite Israel’s blanket censorship policies, not to mention its killing hundreds of journalists. Meanwhile, the paper has no reporters in Iran, a situation it blames on Iran’s press restrictions.
This editorial decision has no doubt contributed to the paper covering the memorandum from an Israeli perspective, which is not aligned with the 59% of the US adult population who say the US using military force in Iran was the wrong decision.
‘Frightening new reality’
The New York Times (6/14/26) reports that Israel faults a deal that Iran agreed to for not “creating the conditions for the collapse of the Iranian government.”
Over its first article (6/14/26) published about the memorandum, the New YorkTimes headline read, “In Israel, Broad Discontent Even Before Deal’s Details Are Known.” The subhead noted that “Israelis across the political spectrum have said the agreement appears to leave fundamental security threats posed by Iran unaddressed.”
The piece, by Times Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner, uncritically granted anonymity to an “Israeli who had been briefed on the deal with Iran” to “discuss diplomacy.” They listed their “main problems” with the proposal: “no clear answers regarding the treatment of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, and not enough curbs on Iran’s nuclear program,” no “conditions for the collapse of the Iranian government” and “no clear mechanism for forcing Iran to halt its support for its proxy forces.”
One day later, the Times (6/15/26) published an article headlined “Israel Counts the Ways That Netanyahu’s Iran Strategy Failed.” Times Jerusalem bureau chief David M. Halbfinger and Tel Aviv staff writer Ronen Bergman noted that the agreement “omits some of the most important things Israel wanted.”
These “important things” included “to curb Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal” and “its funding of regional proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, who have attacked Israel with their own arsenals.” The deal “could help Iran bolster those proxies by easing sanctions, which would allow billions of dollars to flow into its bank accounts,” Halbfinger and Bergman added.
‘Catastrophic capitulation’
The New York Times (6/18/26) says “Israel awoke to a frightening new reality”—one that “seeks to handcuff Israel” by forcing it to withdraw from a country it invaded.
Three days later, Halbfinger published an article (6/18/26) headlined “Israel, Stunned by Trump’s Iran Deal, Sees It as a ‘Catastrophic Capitulation.’”
This time, Halbfinger wrote that
Israel awoke to a frightening new reality on Thursday as it absorbed, with disbelief and largely in silence, the terms of President Trump’s preliminary agreement to end the war with Iran.
Halbfinger noted that “it accomplishes none of Israel’s war aims, analysts and officials said, and arguably leaves the country in worse shape on each of them.” Among those aims? “Regime change,” “ballistic missiles and proxy militias” and “Iran’s nuclear program,” listed Halbfinger.
Uncritically parroting Israeli government talking points that frame Israel as the victim is journalistic obfuscation at best: Israel privately lobbied to assassinate Iran’s lead negotiator and to “restart the war with a new round of strikes targeting the country’s oil infrastructure” (Capital and Empire, 5/28/26), and it insists it has the right to continue ethnically cleansing Lebanon.
‘One of the biggest challenges of his career’
The New York Times (6/21/26) says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “fighting for his political survival”—as opposed to the Palestinians, Lebanese and Iranians Netanyahu would like to keep bombing, who are fighting for their actual survival.
One week after her first article about the memorandum was published, the Times’ Kershner wrote another article (6/21/26) headlined “Netanyahu Faces One of the Biggest Challenges of His Career.”
Her thesis was that Netanyahu “is fighting for his political survival” due to “the emergence of a peace deal that Israel is not a party to.” Kershner wrote that Netanyahu “has staked his career on preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, which Israel views as an existential threat.”
Kershner, like Halbfinger and Bergman, ignored the fact that Iran has upheld its promise not to build a nuclear weapon (Arms Control Association, 2/25). By contrast, Israel—not Iran—is the only country in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons, and the US remains the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon in war.
Kershner wrote:
The agreement seeks to curtail Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon, where the Israeli military has been fighting Hezbollah, the Iran-backed proxy militia on its doorstep. The deal makes no mention of curbing Iran’s ballistic missiles, which Iran has used to attack Israel and US Gulf allies during the wars. And it leaves the nuclear issue to be addressed in further negotiations.
Framing Israel’s killing of more than 4,100 people in Lebanon and displacement of 1.2 million since March (Drop Site News, 6/22/26), as “Israel’s freedom of action” insinuates that Israel is entitled to occupation and ethnic cleansing. And by noting that Iran has used its ballistic missiles “to attack Israel and US Gulf allies during the wars,” Kershner ignored which two countries attacked the other first, and which country used its ballistic missile arsenal to defend itself against further attacks (PBS, 6/18/26; Middle East Eye, 6/23/26).
‘A let down and reality check’
In a New York Times piece (6/15/26) on Iranian reaction to the deal, there is no criticism of the US or Israel, other than an attack on Trump from “a monarchist political activist in Washington who has supported the war against Iran.”
As for the Iranian perspective, the Times published an article (6/15/26) headlined “Many Iranians Express Relief Over Agreement to End the War.” The subhead read, “After enduring months of conflict, ordinary people in Iran were relieved to hear about the deal. Opposition groups were disappointed.”
The Times’ Farnaz Fassihi noted that
Iranians expressed a range of emotions over the agreement to end a war that killed thousands across the region and brought enormous loss with no gain for millions of others.
Fassihi quoted just two sources based in Tehran, one of whom she interviewed by telephone, the other by text message. One asked, “What was the point of this war? What did it bring us exactly?” The other asked: “Is this REAL? Are they serious?”
Fassihi added that
for Iranian opposition groups and some members of the diaspora who had hoped the war would topple the Islamic Republic, the agreement was both a let down and a reality check.
Fassihi cited a social media post by Behnam Amini, a “monarchist political activist in Washington who has supported the war against Iran.”
Fassihi also noted:
In Iran, a minority within the hard-line political faction—those who ideologically favor destruction of Israel and war with the US by any means—unleashed fury at Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the lead negotiator and speaker of parliament.
The piece was unable to quote a source that expressed explicit opposition to the US/Israel’s attacks on Iran—which suggests the limitations of the Times’ long-distance approach to covering Iranian opinion.
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Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of Peace
Severe weather has gripped the globe this week, with record-shattering, deadly heat in Western Europe. In the US, heat, wind and drought conditions fueled wildfires in the Southwest, while heavy thunderstorms, wind and floods caused destruction in eastern and central states.
Scientists attribute these extremes to fossil fuel–driven climate change. Europe’s heatwave would have been “virtually impossible to occur at this time of year” 50 years ago, scientists from the World Weather Attribution group reported. The project’s Theodore Keeping of Imperial College London told reporters (EuroNews, 6/26/26):
The science of how climate change is worsening heatwaves is settled…. Continued fossil-fuel emissions are directly responsible for the disruption people are experiencing this week in their homes, schools and workplaces.
With extreme weather events worsening each year, and the world on track to surpass by 2030 the Paris Agreement’s attempt to limit global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, connecting these disruptive and deadly events to climate change is a key part of the story.
Yet on the evening of Tuesday, June 23, despite leading their shows with severe weather headlines, nightly news shows on NBC, ABC and CBS failed to mention climate even in passing.
Cropping out climate
NBC Nightly News (6/23/26) had a tight shot of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres…
Substitute anchor Hallie Jackson began the NBC Nightly News (6/23/26) by describing apocalyptic scenes around the globe:
Tonight, the dangerous triple weather threat with fires, floods and deadly heat affecting millions. The flash flood emergency here at home: Fast-moving waters trapping drivers and washing out roads. Wildfires exploding out West. Plus, overseas, a record-shattering heatwave in Europe leaving dozens dead.
The broadcast covered heavy rains in Oklahoma, wildfires in Utah and Nevada, and heat and fire in Miami disrupting World Cup events. In France, it was so hot, Paris shut down the Eiffel Tower Tuesday, and Wednesday was expected to reach a 102°F record. More than 40 people were believed to have drowned in France’s rivers and beaches while trying to escape the heatwave that began last week.
In London, NBC’s Danielle Hamamdjian reported record highs in the city on Tuesday, with even higher temperatures anticipated to come.
The broadcast then cut to a clip of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres saying, “And today this city—and far beyond—are experiencing the hottest day of the year—with higher temperatures to come.”
The event that he was speaking at—London Climate Action Week—was not identified. In fact, a banner with the London Climate Action Week logo that was behind Guterres was cropped out of the shot. The soundbite NBC featured was excised from Guterres’ longer remarks about the severity of climate change and the critical necessity of quickly and justly transitioning from fossil fuels:
We have just lived through the 11 hottest years ever recorded. And today this city—and far beyond—are experiencing the hottest day of the year—with higher temperatures to come. London isn’t just calling—it’s cooking. Around the world, climate disasters are becoming more frequent, more destructive and more costly. And the World Meteorological Organization has warned we ain’t seen nothing yet. El Niño is not just knocking on the door. It risks blowing the house down. Turning up the heat. Disrupting food and water systems. And hitting the vulnerable the hardest. Ten years ago, world leaders agreed in Paris to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Now scientists say average annual temperatures will exceed that threshold in the coming years.
Later in the speech, Guterres demanded that AI companies publicly disclose their energy usage and commit to powering data centers with renewables by 2030.
From a speech entirely about climate change and its tangible impacts, NBC Nightly News managed to cherrypick a soundbite of Guterres essentially saying nothing more than “it’s hot.” While the segment linked together these extreme weather events in Europe and the US as a global phenomenon, climate change didn’t even get a passing mention.
Records broken by unknown force
ABC World News Tonight (6/23/26) reported on weather like there was no such thing as climate.
ABC World News Tonight (6/23/26) with David Muir followed suit. Raising the alarm about tornadoes and flood watches in the east, severe storm threats in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming, extreme heat in the southwest and heatwaves in France, England, Italy and Spain, the broadcast didn’t mention the word “climate” once.
“We’ve lived here for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” a Fairfax County, Virginia, man said of the winds and storms that sent trees into cars and homes in the area.
CBS Evening News (6/23/26) led with fires, droughts, floods and storms across the US, spotlighting Utah, where one wildfire was the size of San Francisco. “The outbreak follows the state’s warmest winter on record and one of the driest, with just a fifth of normal snowpack,” said host Tony Dokoupil.
In the next segment, correspondent Leigh Kiniry reported from London about record temperatures across Europe. Uniquely among the corporate networks’ evening newscasts, this report alluded vaguely to climate change, noting that “the continent is warming faster than any other.” But viewers were given no clue as to how or why: Direct mentions of climate change were nonexistent throughout the entire broadcast.
‘Not one government is making progress’
PBS NewsHour (6/23/26): “But with the changing climate, what hope is there for family farmers?”
The lone exception to the erasure of climate change on the nightly news broadcasts was PBS NewsHour (6/23/26). While the show didn’t lead headlines with extreme weather, its segment about the European heatwave included a soundbite from a Paris resident expressing dissatisfaction with how governments have ignored climate change. “Paris when temperatures go high is just hell on earth,” she said:
It’s catastrophic. I’m worried for the coming years. We have known about climate change for a while, and not one government is making progress on this issue.
Later in the broadcast, PBS dedicated a segment to droughts in the Southern US affecting farmers in Georgia. The report was part of an ongoing PBS series called Tipping Point, which focuses on the impacts of climate change and communities’ efforts to adapt.
Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists explained:
Climate change is making these more frequent, both the short-duration kinds of droughts that we’re seeing in some places, but also the longer megadroughts like the Southwest is experiencing. The unpredictability of it, the extremes, both the droughts and then the whiplash with extreme rainfall events, that makes it very difficult to plan for these kinds of conditions.
The report went on to describe precision irrigation systems as a possible mitigation—though noting that their cost is often prohibitive. The segment points to “policy steps worth considering,” like helping farmers obtain these technologies through grants and low-cost loans.
PBS deserves credit as the only nightly broadcast that mentioned climate change at all. But while it addressed the issue of adaptation, it avoided the more fundamental question of causation; the burning of fossil fuels, and its connection to the segment’s weather horror stories, wasn’t mentioned at all.
FAIR (7/18/23) has previously documented that even when TV news connects extreme weather events to climate change, it seldom connects climate change to fossil fuels—but the industry seems to have taken a step backward.
The lack of climate coverage in legacy media follows a trend media analysts have been tracking since President Donald Trump’s second term began. A Media Matters study (3/4/26) found that ABC, CBS and NBC aired 35% less climate coverage in 2025 than in 2024. A FAIR study (4/14/26) found that trend mirrored in online news. But as coverage decreases, climate change’s effects only increase in frequency and severity.
FAIR’s work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Donate today to be a part of this important mission.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
According to the Times report, Farage has found himself linked with five whole houses since 2020 – the year we officially left the EU:
His main residence – a £1.42m five-bedroom gaff in Surrey (Grade II listed).
His £885,000 Clacton residency – officially owned by his partner Laure Ferrari.
A Kent residency he lived in with his ex-wife (currently occupied by his daughter Isabelle Farage and an unidentified man).
Two beachfront properties owned through his production company, Thorn in the Side Ltd.
As reported:
The Times understands the Tandridge property is the Surrey woodland lodge, and the Folkestone and Hythe property is one of the Kent beachfront homes owned via his company. This means the Kent village property, the second beachfront home and the Essex address are not on the register.
Farage does not have to declare the Essex home because legally it is owned entirely by his partner. However, the case with the other two properties is less clear.
The Times spoke to a number of experts who mostly agreed that Farage should have erred on the side of caution and declared the properties. Does this mean he’ll get in trouble? It’s hard to say given what politicians usually get away with, but it’s certainly another case in which he’s given the impression that he’s on the blag.
…
dizzy: I’d say that Farage is far from open and honest about his affairs …
Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Outside court in London, Greta Thunberg says “We must remember who the real enemy is … who our laws are meant to protect.” Quoted from https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-68166341
We need change urgently. To try to bring that change, let’s think of where we want to be in 5 years time or sooner if possible. You’re all welcome to get on board, think and publish where you want to be in 5 years or less.
Some yet to be thought through ideas
Climate action is needed urgently. The rich are properly recognised as responsible for being the most damaging to climate. Tax the rich out of existence. Convert super-yachts to housing, do away with private jets.
CounterSpin interview with Seth Stern on criminalizing dissent
Janine Jackson interviewed Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Seth Stern about the criminalization of dissent for the July 26, 2026, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: The official government press release is headlined “Leader of Antifa Cell Members in North Texas Sentenced to 100 Years in Prison for Terrorist Attack on ICE Facility.” That statement from the Office of Public Affairs states that
eight North Texas Antifa cell operatives were sentenced for their roles in rioting, using weapons and explosives, providing material support to terrorists, obstruction and the attempted murder of an Alvarado police officer at the Prairieland Detention Center on July 4, 2025.
If you aren’t questioning the Trump White House version of reality, in which vandals snuck into the Reflecting Pool with “very sharp knives and razors” because they hate freedom, you probably don’t care about the Prairieland case. But for all of the rest of us, this is a nightmare: historically, legally, morally.
What is happening here, and how do people who think a country with aspirations for democracy, with the understanding that that critically involves protest and multiple voices, how do we respond to what has just happened in the case of activists who participated in a protest at Prairieland ICE Detention Center—or didn’t—and are now facing lives in prison?
There was never a time to not pay attention, to not understand that an official enemy campaign was always going to come for anyone designated undesirable—laws, practices, long-held understandings be damned. But if ever there were a time of comfortable ignorance, it’s over.
Here to help us see what’s happening in this case, and how to move forward, is Seth Stern. He’s the chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and he joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Seth Stern.
JJ: We can start with material facts about Prairieland. A group of people gathered outside an ICE detention center to protest the policy, the actions, of masked agents sweeping Black and brown people off the street and into camps, and then out of the country without due process, and to show audible support for those inside. And a man did shoot and wound a police officer.
But we know this case is not ultimately about a noise protest, or even the wounding of a police officer, because if it were that, the sentences would look different, and we wouldn’t be hearing things like “assault on democracy,” or “conspiracy to conceal documents.” Can you just set us up a little with why you are so concerned about this? Because injustice is old, but this feels new.
SS: It really does. What we’re seeing here is an attempt to criticize, not only an ideology, but a very loosely defined ideology. The administration’s theory is that because they attended the same protest as the shooter, and because they read some of the same literature as the shooter, might have shared political views with the shooter, you can from those facts alone infer a conspiracy, infer an organized—as the administration would call it—“terrorist attack.”
In reality, none of these people—including the shooter, in all likelihood—came to the protest with any intention of a police officer being shot. Certainly the other six defendants who were at the protest besides the shooter had no idea that was going to occur. There was no evidence, and no allegation, even, that anyone had planned a shooting.
When these people left their homes to go to a protest, they figured they would sleep in their own beds that night. At most, they might have contemplated the possibility of getting picked up for trespassing, or a noise disturbance, or the typical minor misdemeanors that people risk when they engage in protest activity. But there was no reason anyone would contemplate that they might be held criminally liable, their lives ruined, sentenced to decades behind bars, for merely attending a protest where someone else shot somebody.
The prosecutors and judge made very clear that their purpose was to send a message to people sharing a similar ideology. The prosecutor said, “This is not any normal ideology. This is an ideology that endorses political violence,” presumably referring to anarchism, or whatever shared belief system these people supposedly had.
But almost everyone, in some circumstance or another, would endorse some form of political violence. Like, I’m the grandson of Holocaust survivors. I don’t really take issue with violence against Nazis. Does that mean that if I go to an anti-Nazi protest, and I have some anti-Nazi books, let’s say, on my bookshelf, that if someone else at the protest, who I’ve never met, commits an act of violence against a Nazi, that I’m then implicated in a conspiracy, and go to prison for decades based on what that person does? It sounds absurd, but it’s no more absurd than what happened at Prairieland.
And I shouldn’t neglect to mention, one of the individuals who was convicted, and sentenced to 30 years, wasn’t even at the protest. He’s somebody who allegedly transported a box of pamphlets, because his wife was at the protest, and he believed, according to prosecutors, that the box of pamphlets might implicate his wife, might be used against her, so he was “concealing evidence.”
Evidence of what? This wasn’t a how-to manual. Yeah, obviously, if his wife had been the one to shoot the police officer—which she wasn’t; nobody alleges she was—and he had a how-to manual on where to get a gun, how to get into this protest and how to shoot a cop, that would be a whole different case. We wouldn’t be having this conversation.
But that’s not what was in the box. They were ‘zines. They said nothing about this protest, about the Prairieland Detention Facility, about shooting this police officer. They were written years ago; they’re political theory that’s available at bookstores nationwide.
So when they say that he concealed evidence by moving these ‘zines, evidence of what? It’s evidence of an ideology. It’s evidence of somebody’s reading habits. There should be no universe where that can be considered concealment of evidence, because it’s not probative of anything. You can’t introduce somebody’s reading habits, or their library, their bookshelf, as evidence of a specific crime in court.
And if you can, we’ve got a big problem, because people have hundreds of books; books can be interpreted any which way. I have plenty of books on my bookshelf that I’m sure someone could characterize as endorsing some form of violence or another. That doesn’t mean I agree with the books. I might; it depends. But that’s really a preposterous way to conduct criminal proceedings, is to thought-police people to this degree.
JJ: And yet here we are, because I think, for a lot of folks, it sounds just as weird as you’ve just laid out. First of all, it sounds like these rulings are not saying you can’t protest. They’re saying, “You can protest, just not against the administration. Just not with these particular ideas.” We all saw January 6, but if you don’t like it, then it’s going to be labeled terrorism.
And I guess I’d want to pull you out on that, because we can say what folks did was not illegal, but if you keep changing the law to make things illegal, then the ground is shifting under our feet. And so what’s happening there, from a legal perspective? Are we just creating new categories, and now you can say yesterday you weren’t violating the law, but today you are, and so now you go under the jail?
SS: Theoretically you can’t do that, because we’ve got a Constitution that trumps any executive order, or even statute. In this case, we’re talking about NSPM-7, and the Trump administration’s new counter-terrorism memorandum, which don’t change the law. They’re simply an expression of prosecutorial priorities, and they instruct prosecutors to go after Antifa, to go after far-left groups, people who they view as “anti-American,” whatever that means.
People with “extreme gender ideologies”; no idea what that one means. I’ve never heard of any sort of trans “supremacy” movement that wants to lock up cisgender people. So presumably they’re just talking about people who believe that trans people should have rights, and now they’re on the same plane as terrorists, as ISIS, according to this administration.
It’s all pretty absurd, but at the end of the day, we have a Constitution that prohibits people from being locked up for what they think, write or read, as long as they are not inciting imminent violence.
So hopefully the appellate courts will reverse these convictions, but the law is only as good as the people who enforce it. So if the judiciary isn’t up to the task, if the judiciary is compromised, and lawmakers are unwilling to step in—and, of course, at the end of the day, the president has pardon and clemency power, but we know who’s president, so that’s not something you can rely on—then the law is not as good as the paper it’s written on. So that’s the situation we’re in. And if the appellate courts don’t correct this egregious error that the trial courts have committed, we’ll be in a really scary place.
Remember, in Georgia, they tried something very similar with the Stop Cop City protesters, very similar situation. They indicted 61 people who were part of the Stop Cop City movement, because a few of those individuals had allegedly committed criminal acts: arson, vandalizing police cars, whatnot. There was no indication that all 61 of those people had anything to do with those isolated criminal acts, but they were looped into a RICO conspiracy, solely because they, again, read the same ‘zines, shared the same ideologies, were part of the same movement, had the same alleged belief system.
That case fell apart, as it should have, after putting all 60 of those people through a whole lot of headache and expense, but still, it ultimately fell apart. And it was easy to dismiss at the time as though, this is just some local prosecutor who had an awful idea and made a fool of himself. Now it’s the federal government doing it.
And you mentioned January 6. These sentences here were far more severe than any sentences against anyone involved in January 6. That issue was raised with the judge, who said, “Well, this case was charged differently. This case was charged as terrorism.” So essentially incentivizing prosecutors, going forward, if they want to get headline-grabbing sentences and make themselves look effective, to overcharge, to continue charging defendants as terrorism, despite the lack of any evidence of them being terrorists, being affiliated with a terrorist group or having any terrorist intentions. So we should expect to see more of this. Hopefully other trial judges will do their jobs, and not leave it up to the appellate courts to clean up the mess.
JJ: I think language is playing a role here. I have said repeatedly that when news media took “war on terror” out of quotes, we lost something. A brain wrinkle got smoothed, so now we can just say “terrorism.” “I don’t know actually what it is, but I know it’s the very worst thing in the world and I don’t need to ask any further questions.” And we’re now at that situation with Antifa; what the actual heck? Now Antifa is being legally identified as an organized thing? What is meaningful? What changes when you allow folks to say, “Hey, we made up a name for everybody who thinks a certain way, and now you’re a group and you’re conspiring terrorism?”
SS: I certainly agree, even before the Trump administration, the idea of terrorism had kind of lost its meaning, but I think one assumption that everybody, for the most part, had was that to be labeled a terrorist, you have to have engaged in or collaborated with others who engaged in violence, and that you had to have some foreknowledge of that violence. And to get to a point where people are being convicted of terrorism for merely going to a protest, where the prosecution didn’t even bother trying to prove that they had any intention to commit an act of violence, that they had any foreknowledge that one of them might pick up a gun and shoot at a cop, is really quite alarming, because terrorism becomes less of an action and more of an ideology that people like Donald Trump can define as synonymous with dissent. Anyone whose beliefs are inconvenient to him, or that interferes with his agenda, becomes a terrorist. “Anti-Trump” and “anti-American” become interchangeable in the views of the administration and judges, apparently, who are sympathetic to them.
So it’s quite scary to have this kind of power to abuse the word “terrorism,” particularly in a domestic context. In the international context, we’ve long had the problem of prosecutors and judges and politicians characterizing things as national security threats with no basis to do so, going back to the Pentagon Papers, where the truth about the Vietnam War was almost censored because the administration at the time called it a national security threat for the American people to know the truth. Fortunately, the judiciary back then rejected that.
Reporters are threatened with prosecution under, for example, the Espionage Act, because their reporting supposedly poses a national security threat when, in fact, it merely is inconvenient to those in power. We see that, for example, in the case involving Hannah Natanson, the Washington Post reporter whose home newsroom was raided. That’s long been an issue in the context of national security in matters of war, international issues.
But now you’ve got any local dissident, any activist, any person in any of the 50 states who opposes the president’s agenda, being treated the same way, being treated as a national security threat. The line between First Amendment–protected dissent and terrorism is just entirely blurred by this administration. And, again, the judges have the power to set it straight. Whether they will or not is to be determined.
JJ: I will say I spoke with Mara Verheyden-Hilliard in 2017 about arrests after the first Trump inauguration, where police were saying, if you were somewhere near an act of property damage—I think it was a car being set on fire—if you were near it, it’s the same as you committing it. If you were wearing black, well, forget about it; you are obviously part of it.
At the time, a Washington Post poll was saying that one out of every three DC residents were saying they’d taken part in a protest against Trump since his first inauguration. And that was half of the district’s white residents, half of people making more than $100,000 a year and a fifth of respondents over the age of 65.
So what I want to say, and what I think you’re wanting to say also, is you’re not safe from this. The idea that you’re not going to do anything wrong is not going to protect you in this case. We’re seeing the straight-up criminalizing of resistance per se. And so I guess I’d ask you, what can we do? What can we be doing in the face of this?
SS: That is important to remember, because it is easy for people to look at this and say: “Well, I am not an anarchist. I don’t read these zines. I don’t go to these kinds of protests. My protests are permitted. I’m not at risk.”
But I’ve mentioned Des Sanchez, who was convicted solely for transporting a box of zines. Think about the Don Lemon and Georgia Fort cases. They were arrested, of course, while covering a protest at a church in Minneapolis, against immigration enforcement there.
I don’t think anyone would characterize Don Lemon as a far-left anarchist type. You can like him or not like him, but that’s not something that he is. But the Trump administration sought a warrant that would have allowed it to gather from YouTube a list of subscribers to both Lemon and Fort’s YouTube channels.
Now, that warrant was fortunately rejected by a judge, but think about it. What possible evidence could a subscriber to Lemon and Fort’s YouTube channels have that would assist the Trump administration in prosecuting its frivolous case against those journalists? All they saw was what was publicly broadcast. The prosecution already has that. This is clearly an attempt by the Trump administration to gather information about who is in possession, who is accessing news, that it does not like.
So just as Des Sanchez was prosecuted for his box of zines, those who watch Don Lemon and Georgia Fort’s show may have faced danger or risk down the road. Why else would prosecutors want their information? It has nothing to do with their case.
So it’s certainly a mistake to believe that this is a problem that is limited to “Antifa,” or people on the political fringes. Stephen Miller has said the entire Democratic Party is a terrorist organization. Donald Trump has called the press “enemies of the people,” has called his critics “the enemy within.” He is not only talking about anarchists when he says that.
Seth Stern: “When there’s enough resistance, the administration will back down, or shift its priorities. People do have the power to do that.”
As far as what we can do, I would encourage people to make their voices heard. Of course, we’re not in a position where Congress is likely to act, and we don’t have control, directly, over what any judge does.
But we have platforms. We have local newspapers, we have social media, we have the ability to write letters to the editor, op-eds, posts, videos, create noise, create a chorus of dissent.
We’ve seen repeatedly, for example, with ICE in Minneapolis, that when there’s enough resistance, the administration will back down, or shift its priorities. People do have the power to do that. This isn’t a situation where there is some corporation that can be boycotted, where there is a direct lever to pull to stop the administration from criminalizing dissent. But if there is enough uproar, and if we make that uproar to some extent bipartisan, there can be sufficient pressure to, if not stop them, cause them to be a bit more cautious, and to dial it down.
We need to continue making noise about this, continue talking about it on radio shows, continue talking about it on social media and on newspaper pages. And we need to communicate clearly to people with different political ideologies that, hey, one day the shoe is going to be on the other foot. And once you give the government, once you give prosecutors the power to criminalize dissent in these ways, it’s a matter of time before the political tides turn, and that same power is used against you.
Whereas earlier in the Trump administration, I think there was this feeling of exuberance on the right, the feeling that this party is never going to end. We’re going to be in power forever. We’re not really worried about these sorts of hypotheticals, where it comes back to bite us one day.
Now I think there might be a little bit of recognition that this MAGA thing is not going to last forever, that the political tides might be turning, and people are a bit more concerned about how the abuses that they’re enabling, the powers that they’re granting the president, could one day be used against them. So I think it’s time to lean into that and send that message.
JJ: Absolutely. Let me just ask you, in case you have any final thoughts about what journalists or reporters—you know, it’s mixed. Independentreporters are bringing us the story. Elite reporters are doing something slightly different. Any thoughts about journalism, and the role it plays right now?
SS: Yeah. Well, it’s an old story where independent journalists—who are not necessarily abiding by this myth that good journalism has to be in this passive, neutral voice, that is so objective it doesn’t acknowledge reality—are calling it like it is.
Whereas some corporate outlets, although they have covered the convictions, they’re covering these convictions the way that they covered, say, the Iraq War: One side says that these people were terrorists, and the defense attorney says that they weren’t. The prosecutor says they are. Here’s a quote from both sides. Done.
It’s good they’re covering it, but in a way, they’re sanewashing it by reporting it that way, by not giving any sense of how unusual this is, how unprecedented and how absurd. And I’m not saying that they should editorialize, if that is not the style of journalism they do. There’s room for all different styles of journalism. But you don’t lose neutrality by providing some historical context.
So if you’re not going to come out and say in your own voice that this is alarming and preposterous, you can provide historical context. You can talk about how dissent has been treated in the past, how unusual these charges are. Compare it to, as I saw one, as you said, independent outlet do, compare it to the Haymarket cases, compare it to past abuses, McCarthyism, so on. Give readers that context. Don’t just get a quote from both sides and call it a day. This is a bigger story than that.
JJ: All right. Well, we have lots more to talk about, but we’ll end it now for now. We’ve been speaking with Seth Stern from the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Thank you so much, Seth Stern, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
SS: Anytime.
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Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
