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New York Times (7/22/25)

This week on CounterSpin: The mainstream US media debate on the starvation and violence and war crimes in Gaza still, in July 2025, makes room for Bret Stephens, who explains in the country’s paper of record that Israel can’t be committing genocide as rights groups claim, because if they were, they’d be much better at it. Says Stephens:

It may seem harsh to say, but there is a glaring dissonance to the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. To wit: If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal—if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans—why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly?

“It may seem harsh to say” is a time-honored line from those who want to note but justify human suffering, or excuse the crimes of the powerful. It looks bad to you, is the message, because you’re stupid. If you were smart, like me, you’d understand that your empathy is misplaced; these people suffering need to suffer in order to…. Well, they don’t seem to feel a need to fully explain that part. Something about democracy and freeing the world from, like, suffering.

It’s true that corporate media are now gesturing toward engaging questions of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. But what does that amount to at this late date? We’ll talk about corporate media’s Gaza coverage with independent reporter and frequent FAIR.org contributor Ari Paul.

Disability Scoop (8/1/25)

Also on the show: The Americans with Disabilities Act is generally acknowledged in July, with a lot of anodyne “come a long way, still a long way to go” type of reporting. There’s an opening for a different sort of coverage this month, as the Trump administration is actively taking apart laws that protect disabled people in the workplace, and cutting off healthcare benefits, and disabled kids’ educational rights, and rescinding an order that would have moved disabled workers to at least the federal minimum wage; and, with a recent executive order, calling on localities to forcibly institutionalize any unhoused people someone decides is mentally ill or drug-addicted or just living on the street.

Does that serve the hedge funds pricing homes out of reach of even full-time workers? Yes. Does it undercut years of evidence-based work about moving people into homes and services? Absolutely. Does it aim to rocket us back to a dark era of criminalizing illness and disability and poverty? Of course. But Trump calls it “ending crime and disorder,” so you can bet elite media will honor that viewpoint in their reporting. We’ll get a different view from Scout Katovich, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

President Trump is pushing for a major redrawing of Texas’s congressional districts to favor Republicans and shape the outcome of future elections, including next year’s midterms. Voting rights expert Ari Berman says this “unprecedented” Republican gerrymandering scheme manipulates an already-gerrymandered map that “limits democratic representation. It already limits representation for communities of color, and now that would be much worse.” The map was released this week, and a hearing is underway today as Republicans try to ram it through.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Set in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, “Eddington,” directed by Ari Aster, blends elements of horror, Westerns, and satire that explore how we process such an earth-shattering event half a decade later. But its subplot about the development of a massive data center nearby explores just how this volatile landscape became profitable for tech corporations, while engaging with contemporary vignettes of Native life where Indigenous communities exist along the border, haunting the town’s history and politics.

In the film, the mayor of the town of Eddington, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), plays high-powered politics to the best of his ability in a small town, including cozying up to the shadowy tech company SolidGoldMagiKarp. The company has proposed a “Hyperscale Data Center Development” and Mayor Garcia touts the idea as a boon to the local economy, creating jobs. Sheriff Cross, however, sees it differently. To him, the world and its mask mandates have infringed on his town and life. As a result, he decides to run against Garcia for Mayor. 

From here, the action is set in motion. Defying masking orders is used for social media points, while young, mostly white activists, engage in online activism by invoking the Navajo Long Walk and calling out stolen land–talking points that operate more as currency than a genuine desire to engage with their Pueblo neighbors. Eddington, at its heart, is a Western. Like other Westerns, it evokes a moment of discovery and unleashes it on the viewing public. John Ford Westerns locate the founding mythologies of what animates American identity among red buttes and stagecoaches. Even in Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s revelatory vision of the first atomic bomb detonated in the New Mexico desert offers a view of evil’s origins. In “Eddington,” alienation drives the narrative, framed through social media, Zoom meetings, and the tech infrastructure pushing the community apart in every way possible.

That infrastructure, of course, exists off screen and in our lives. Earlier this month in southern Arizona, nearly 1,000 people in Tucson turned out to a city council meeting after local reporters revealed that officials had secretly planned an Amazon Web Services facility in their community. At a public meeting, angry residents cited that the city’s pattern of droughts would not meet the data center’s surging water needs. In Tennessee, residents in a South Memphis neighborhood have reported breathing problems due to nitrogen oxide emissions from burning fossil fuels used to power Elon Musk’s xAI’s servers, to run Grok, X’s resident chatbot.

Because of the speed of AI data center development, tribes have only begun to grapple with this trend and threats to water, land, and energy capacity. The Tonawanda Seneca Nation filed a lawsuit against the construction of a data center in upstate New York earlier this month, arguing the site would impede treaty rights, including hunting and gathering. Last year, the Arizona Corporation Commission, a utility regulator, approved an 8% rate hike to meet the energy demands brought on by the state’s rising number of data centers. In a separate measure, the Commission rejected a package to expand electricity to residents on the Navajo Nation, where nearly 13,000 households lack access.    

“As these data centers are moving into their communities, people are starting to realize that there are huge physical manifestations to all of this artificial intelligence and all of this computing that we’ve come to just kind of accept in our daily lives,” said Deborah Kapiloff, a policy advisor at the Western Resource Advocates. “There is going to start being a lot more pushback from communities as they understand what this means for them in terms of changes to their communities and these data centers siting there.” 

At the end of the film, there’s an opening ceremony of the center. In the corner, next to Phoenix’s character who is now physically incapacitated, is also a Santa Lupe Pueblo leader, symbolically incapacitated. It’s revealed that the state has invested millions of dollars into clean energy projects on their land and are praised for their partnership and participation with the data center. It’s unclear if the endeavors were driven by the Pueblo, or what kind of say the nation had in the deal. As the credits roll, the center glows against the dusky blue land, almost breathing.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Data centers, drought, and dispossession: The real nightmares in Ari Aster’s ‘Eddington’ on Jul 31, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Miacel Spotted Elk.

“Turkish authorities in Ankara must take the threats made against journalist İsmail Arı and his relatives seriously and take decisive steps to better ensure their safety,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “The authorities should swiftly and comprehensively investigate the threats and hold those responsible to account, so all journalists in Turkey can safely do their jobs.”

Arı, based in the capital Ankara, said in a post on X that he filed a criminal complaint on May 16 notifying authorities that he was insulted, threatened and sent a list of his relatives via messaging app by an unknown foreign number earlier in the day, and at least one of his relatives was threatened in a phone call, according to the complaint reviewed CPJ.

Arı told CPJ via messaging app on Monday that the police provided a “caution protection” number for him to call and report incidents for 90 days. The journalist also contacted the Interior Ministry about the matter but did not receive a reply as of Monday evening.

Arı was previously targeted with death threats in late 2023 in connection with his reporting on an Islamist group in southern Turkey.

CPJ’s emailed request for comment to Turkey’s Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, did not receive a reply. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The Independent considers The Settlers to be a “masterpiece.”

The Middle East Eye hails the documentary as “an unflinching look at the Israelis [sic] intent on stealing the West Bank.”

The Islam Channel praises Theroux for “highlight[ing] the horrifying influence of the illegal Israeli settler movement.”

The title of the Spectator’s review was rather enigmatic: “How come the only Palestinians Louis Theroux met were non-violent sweeties?” The Spectator granted, “In a program called The Settlers, it’s perhaps fair enough that the focus should be so squarely on these people and their intransigence.”

And what about the documentary’s title?

Dictionary.com defines settler innocuously as “a person who settles in a new region or colony.” Is this the proper appellation? Others would argue that the term settler-colonialist is more accurate. The Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School states, “Settler colonialism can be defined as a system of oppression based on genocide and colonialism, that aims to displace a population of a nation (oftentimes indigenous people) and replace it with a new settler population.”

The documentary begins with the lanky, bespectacled Theroux asking a settler whether they are “deep inside the Palestinian territories”? The settler-colonialist Ari Abramowitz objected, calling it “the heart of Judea.” He further objected to a “jihadist Palestinian state” being located in the heart of Israel.

Abramowitz is forthright in saying he aspires to win territory from Palestinians.

The settler-colonialists are described as “religionist nationalists.” A young Jewish woman Ovi says, “I believe Gaza is ours … The Bible says this place was given to the Jews. This place is ours.”

Throughout the documentary, the Zionist goal is clear: to remove Palestinians and repopulate the land with Jews.

Theroux spends much time interviewing Daniella Weiss, the “godmother of the settler movement,” an unabashed Zionist, who claimed: “We do for governments what they cannot do for themselves… Netanyahu is very happy at what we do but he cannot say it.”

Gaza fits what Netanyahu cannot say, Weiss states the goal of “the practical idea of establishing Jewish settlements in the entire Gaza Strip. We very much encourage and enable the population in Gaza to go to other countries. You will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs disappear from Gaza. They lost their right to stay in this holy place.”

But Jews are not a pure monolith. Theroux interviews a protesting Israeli man who says, “The question is: what kind of country do we want to be? Do we want to be a colonizing country or do we want to be a country that at least offers peace and wants to live in peace with Palestinians?”

What can Gazans expect if settler-colonialists create outposts in Gaza? The documentary examines the situation in the West Bank where outposts are set up to expand and become communities with the aim of becoming recognized as settlements by the Israeli government. These outposts and settlements are under the protection of the Israeli military.

The Texan-raised Abramowitz denies Palestinians exist. When pressed by Theroux on this, Abramowitz replies, “They are Arabs.”

The illegality of settlements is disregarded by Abramowitz. This is echoed by Weiss who shrugs off the commission of war crimes as a “lighter felony.”

Such Zionist views point to the impunity of settler colonialists in dealing with the indigenous Palestinians. One common war crime is preventing Palestinian farmers from harvesting their produce, particularly olives. Israeli soldiers will arrive, demand identification, and send the farmers away from their land. And if a farmer is lucky, he will still be alive after the encounter.

The filmmaker spoke of an “ideology of superiority of one group over another.” This even has rabbinical support.

Rabbi Dove Leor said, “To my mind, there was never peace with these [Palestinian] savages. There is no peace and never will be…. This land belongs only to the people of Israel. All of Gaza, all of Lebanon should be cleansed of these ‘camel riders.’”

To accomplish the disappearance of Palestinians, Weiss advocates using “the magic system of Zionism” to take over the land and repopulate it with Jews. “This will bring light instead of darkness,” says Weiss.

Issa Amrou, a Palestinian activist, guides Theroux around occupied Hebron and explains the life of Palestinians under occupation. The system of encouraging Palestinians to leave is through fear of the Israeli soldiers, checkpoints, closing Palestinian businesses, making life intolerable, and fragmentation of Palestinian towns, leading to Jews taking more land.

Near the end of the documentary, Theroux speaks again with the Texan-cum-settler-colonialist Abramowitz who makes known his feelings for Palestinians: “I don’t have tremendous compassion for a society that has an unquenchable genocidal, theological, bloodlust. It’s like a death cult.”

Says Abramowitz, “I reject the real premise that these people [Palestinians] are actually a real nation for a lot of reasons.”

“We know the righteousness of our cause. That’s what it means to be a Hebrew, what it means to be a Jew…”

The Israeli government’s recognition of the Evyatar settlement in the lands of the Palestinian town of Beita spurred a celebration, and Weiss arrived to speak to a jubilating crowd.

Theroux catches up with the settler-colonial godmother after her speech to the festive gathering. He asks what is wrong with a two-state solution?

Says Weiss, “We want to have a Jewish state based on Jewish rules, on Jewish values. It is not a relationship of neighbors.”

“Why not?” asks Theroux.

“Because we are two nations.” At least Weiss admits to there being a Palestinian nation.

Weiss makes clear that her overarching aim is Aliyah, bringing more settler-colonialists to the land. She does not think about the Palestinians because she is a Jew.

Theroux says, “That seems sociopathic.”

Weiss rejects this, saying, “It is normal.”

In the settler-colonialist Zionist mindset, othering is normal.

*****

People who care about humans elsewhere and are unfamiliar or uninformed about the plight of Palestinians ought to watch The Settlers and become familiar and informed. Theroux probably presents the situation as close to the line as one could hope to have broadcast. Through the narrative, the viewer will hear that there is anti-Palestinian racism and violence against them, but the discussion will not be graphic, and visually the violence is downplayed.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

After spending over a quarter of a billion dollars on Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign, Elon Musk is pouring money into a Supreme Court election in Wisconsin. Musk has spent more than $18 million to support Trump-backed candidate Brad Schimel over liberal Susan Crawford and has been paying Wisconsin voters $100 to help flip the state’s top court. This election could impact abortion rights, unions and Republicans’ ability to keep gerrymandered districts in place to control Congress. “The level of corruption at play here, the level of money at play here, really is a warning sign for what’s happening to our democracy,” says Ari Berman, voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones magazine.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In a major piece for Mother Jones magazine on “Why Ballot Measures Are Democracy’s Last Line of Defense,” voting rights correspondent Ari Berman discusses abortion ballot measures in 10 states, important downballot races in Wisconsin and elsewhere, and the movement to abolish or reform the Electoral College.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Janine Jackson interviewed Mother Jones‘ Ari Berman, about right-wing plans for minority rule, for the July 26, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Janine Jackson: With so much attention on individual politicians’ temperaments, and on the country’s political temperature generally, it’s easy to forget that US governance is based around structures. These structures are being undermined, but they also have design flaws, if you will, that have been present from the start, as explored in a new book by our guest.

Ari Berman is national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, and author of a number of books, most recently Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It, out now from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Ari Berman.

Ari Berman: Hey, Janine. Great to talk to you again. Thank you.

JJ: My ninth grade government teacher said that he didn’t think we’d remember much from his class, but there was one thing we needed to know, and periodically, he would just holler, “What’s the law of the land?” And we would shout out, “The Constitution!”

There’s a belief that we have these bedrocks of democracy—and they might be ignored, or even breached—but in themselves, they have some kind of purity. Where do you start in explaining why we would be helped by disabusing ourselves of that kind of understanding?

Jacobin (4/22/23)

AB: That’s right. Our understanding of the Constitution is basically these godlike figures in their powdered wigs decreeing the law of the land in 1787, and having the people’s best interests at heart. And in many ways, the Constitution was a remarkable document for its time, but the founders had their own self-interests at heart in many cases. And remember, these were white male property holders, many of them slave holders, and they designed the Constitution, in many ways, not to expand democracy, but to check democracy, and make sure that their own interests were protected.

And they realized that they were a distinct minority in the country, because they, as I said, were a white property-holding elite, and the country was not. There were a lot of white men without property, and then you think about women, and African Americans and Native Americans, and other people who weren’t part at all of the drafting of the Constitution.

And so the Constitution, in many ways, favors these elite minorities over the majority of people. It favors small states over large states in the construction of the US Senate. It favors slave states over free states in the construction of the US House. It prevents the direct election of the president. It creates a Supreme Court that’s a product of an undemocratic Senate and an undemocratic presidency.

So in all these ways, we have these fundamentally undemocratic institutions that form the basis of democracy. And that’s a fundamental contradiction, because, in fact, our country’s most important democratic document was actually intended to make the country less democratic. And that’s certainly something we’re not taught in ninth grade government class.

Poets.org

JJ: Absolutely. I think of Langston Hughes’ “America never was America to me,” but just to say it outright: US democracy has never meant one person, one vote. So it’s not that there’s this halcyon time that we should be trying to get back to.

AB: It’s funny, because in a way, that’s how we think that democracy should be, and that’s what the Supreme Court said in the 1960s, that the purest expression of democracy was one person, one vote. But if you look at so many of our institutions today, they violate basic principles of one person, one vote.

We don’t have a direct national popular election for president, in which each vote counts equally. Because of the Electoral College, some states matter more than others, and some states count more than others. So in New York, for example, we don’t have the same power of our vote as we do in Wisconsin, or even in Wyoming.

And then in the US Senate, smaller, more rural, more conservative states have dramatically more power than larger, more urban, more diverse states, because each state gets the same number of senators regardless of population. And in many ways, our core government structures violate these notions of one person, one vote.

That’s something that I don’t think we’re talking enough about. I mean, once again, we’ve switched presidential candidates, and it’s all about “how’s Kamala Harris going to do in these six battleground states?” without thinking, “Why do we only have six battleground states? Why do six states decide the elections, instead of 50?” This is a crazy system, if you try to explain to someone that’s not already familiar with how American politics work.

JJ: And yet, if you’re trying to be in the smart people conversation, to say something as basic as, “Well, wait, how come every person’s vote doesn’t count equally? Isn’t that the ideal we hold up?” Then you’re not invited to the party any more, because somehow being savvy is just kind of accepting these sort of fundamental anti-democratic propositions.

AB: It’s funny, and people don’t even know why the system exists the way it is. And that was a major factor into why I wanted to write this book, because I don’t think people even understand how we came to get the structure that we have today.

So the Electoral College was created because, No. 1, the Founding Fathers feared the people being given the right to directly choose the president. And that would be a very difficult argument to make in 2024, that the people should not have the right to choose the president. But, essentially, that’s why the Electoral College existed.

And then secondarily, it existed to protect the power of the slave state, which is something that we don’t talk about enough either, because James Madison, who was really the most influential Founding Father when it came to drafting the Constitution, he actually said that he thought the people would be the best way of choosing the president. But he said he worried that it would disenfranchise the South, because the South had so many enslaved people who couldn’t vote, therefore the Northern states would have more free people, and therefore the South would be at a disadvantage. So he basically came out and said, we should have a direct election of the presidency, except not for slavery.

Well, it’s not like suddenly slavery is over, then we got rid of the Electoral College. We abolished slavery, but we kept the Electoral College. And that’s the kind of thing that I don’t think makes a whole lot of sense to people.

And you hear various arguments against scrapping the Electoral College, but the fact is, 85% of Americans don’t have a vote that really matters in a presidential election. And that’s why polls consistently show that 70% to 80% of Americans don’t want to continue with the Electoral College. Because if you’re a Republican in California, the Electoral College isn’t helping you, either. And there’s a lot of them, too.

JJ: I’m amazed that people are able to respond and say, “We don’t want the Electoral College,” because they’re fighting against high school, and all the information that we’ve gotten, that’s saying that we’re a democracy, and this is the best system we can have. So the fact that people can independently come up with the idea that, no, actually, this isn’t working, is kind of amazing and wonderful for me. But I did want to say: It’s wrong to say Trump came along and ruined everything, but it’s also true that the inequitable effects of these structures have been compounding over time, to the point where they can be gamed, essentially.

AB: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think Trump is both an accelerant and a product of the broken system. I mean, Trump has never won a majority of votes. Trump has been helped by these counter-majority institutions. He was elected, and nearly reelected, because of the Electoral College. If there had been a national popular vote, he would’ve easily lost both times.

He was protected by a US Senate in which Republicans have dramatically more power, because conservative, white, rural states have dramatically more power. So the Senate first advanced his agenda, and then it prevented him from being held accountable for the insurrection.

Then the Supreme Court has dramatically helped him in this election, made it so that he’s not going to face trial for inciting the insurrection before the election, and helped him in so many other ways. And the Supreme Court’s a direct product of the undemocratic way that we elect presidents and elect senators, because five or six conservative justices were nominated by Republican presidents who initially lost the popular vote, and confirmed by senators representing a minority of Americans. So in so many ways, Trump has benefited from this anti-democratic structure.

And then, of course, he’s layered on all of these newer anti-democratic tactics on top of that. We weren’t talking about overturning elections before Donald Trump. There were disputes, of course, about elections, notably in 2000, but there were not efforts to just outright overturn elections until Trump came along. And so Trump has added a lot of anti-democratic features, but he’s been successful in the first place because of the anti-democratic system in which he exists.

Guardian (3/30/20)

JJ: And he’s also helped by saying things out loud, like saying, and I forget when it was, but saying, “We can’t expand voting access, because you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again if we expand voting access.” So he’s kind of laying out a template of what he’s doing.

AB: Exactly. Not only that, because other Republicans have done that too, but then he’s also sought to weaponize a lot of previously nonpartisan things. If you don’t like mail voting, well then, you try to sabotage the post office. No president’s tried to do that before.

If you don’t like the changing demographics of America, you try to sabotage the US Census. No president had tried to do that before, either, in the same kind of way. The whole Project 2025 blueprint, one of the biggest aims of that is to politicize these previously nonpartisan institutions, to turn the federal government from a bunch of civil servants into basically a bunch of right-wing ideologues, controlling every level of power.

And so I think that’s an overriding theme of Trump, is that not only do you benefit from an undemocratic system, but then you try to tilt the system even more, so that everything becomes politicized and everything becomes weaponized to try to benefit this elite conservative white minority, as opposed to benefiting every American, or the majority of Americans, in terms of how these programs or these government institutions are supposed to work and were set up.

JJ: It isn’t that it’s never been recognized that there are these fundamental flaws in the founding premises, if you will, of the country. There have been efforts, historically, to bring about a true multiracial democracy, and the resistance today is built on those past efforts of resistance, isn’t it?

AB: Yeah, exactly. There’s been this long push and pull between democratic and anti-democratic forces, and it would be inaccurate to say that the country’s always been democratic, and it would be inaccurate to say the country’s always been undemocratic. There have been these clashes, and at various times, we’ve expanded democracy. We passed the 13th and 14th and 15th Amendment, to give rights to previously enslaved people. We passed the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act and the Immigration Act and lots of other things, the 19th Amendment, to bring new people into the political process.

But at the same time, there’s been a backlash to those efforts. And I think you can draw a straight line between the backlash to the civil rights movement, and the backlash of the changing demographics of the country, and shifts in political power, and the Trump campaign. I think it’s very clear that when he talks about making America great again, the “again” is before we had things like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and when the government was dominated by white males.

JJ: Where, concretely, do you see the resistance that you refer to in the book title, which is not, just to be rhetorical, not just a push back against something, but also a push forward. And you’re explaining this importance of our dynamic understanding of history, that it’s always been conflict-shaped, that it’s always been a work in progress. Where do you see the resistance happening right now?

Ari Berman: “There’s 60–70% support for a lot of these policies…. The problem isn’t what people believe. It’s translating majority opinion into majority rule.”

AB: I see the resistance happening in terms of the efforts to try to create a more robust multiracial democracy, efforts to try to elect the first Black senator in Georgia, the first Jewish senator in Georgia, and to do all of these things that have happened. I see a lot of progress happening at the state and local level. I talk about Michigan in the book, a state that was very gerrymandered, very rigged, for much of the last decade, but where people put initiatives on the ballot to ban partisan gerrymandering, to expand voting rights, to protect abortion rights, to legalize marijuana, going around politicians to do these things directly, and to show that, actually, the country’s less divided than we think.

We always hear, “Oh, the country’s so divided politically,” and I think it is divided if it’s a D versus R. But if you ask people, “Do you want to protect fundamental rights? Do you want to make democracy work better for more people?” there’s overwhelming bipartisan support for that. There’s 60–70% support for a lot of these policies. So to me, the problem isn’t what people believe. It’s translating majority opinion into majority rule.

JJ: I was going to ask, where do the hoi polloi fit in? But that sounds like the answer is to get invested and get engaged at a level where you are making a difference. But at the same time, how do we go about making the changes that we want to make at the federal level, at these things that seem impermeable right now? What’s happening there?

AB: I think we need longer-term movements for structural change. And I think it starts with talking about it and doing something about it. I mean, you’re going to see Biden talking about Supreme Court reform. He should have done this four years ago, in my opinion, because it was very clear the Supreme Court was broken and undemocratically constructed and ideologically unhinged back then. But, nonetheless, the fact that he’s going to talk about it will make it easier if there’s another Democratic president to do something about it.

You look at the issue of voting rights; Democrats pushed very hard for federal voting rights legislation. They came two senators short of making it happen. That was a big disappointment. But they got 48 Democratic senators on record saying we should change the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation, which was a really big deal, because they did not start with 48 Democratic senators in that position. And I think if there were to be a Democratic Senate in 2025, there would be probably 50 votes to reform the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation, because the two senators that opposed it, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, are no longer going to be in the Senate. They’re no longer senators.

And so, sometimes, these things take more than one cycle. And I think that’s a lot of the problem with Democrats and progressives, is they’re thinking, OK, we need to accomplish these things in one Congress, or else we’re not able to do it. And, yes, we’d like to be able to achieve everything, but a lot of this stuff takes time.

I mean, the Project 2025 manifesto is the product of 40 or 50 years of conservative legal thinking and conservative weaponization of the government. It’s not like they just woke up one day and decided to do these things. This is a product of a long movement that they’ve pushed for many, many decades.

And sometimes you have to think that this is going to take more time, but I think it starts with a commitment to these issues. One of my frustrations is the Democrats have often been the party of the status quo. I mean, the Biden administration’s often defended how great American democracy is, as opposed to saying, “Yes, there’s a lot of good things about American democracy. There’s also a lot of flaws in the system that we need to improve.” And those flaws in the system are the ones that aren’t talked about enough.

Mother Jones (7/26/24)

JJ: Just a meta question about history, which, of course, the book is about lifting up relevant history. We have politicians, including Trump, saying, or strongly suggesting, if we don’t win the election, we’re going to take up arms and set up a civil war. But they still refer to the framework. They still say, “if we don’t win, that will mean the election isn’t fair,”—like, fairness somehow comes into the conversation, because they don’t come out and say, “We believe might makes right.” It’s too useful, still, to wave towards some principle of fairness, even if you’re obviously cynically invoking it. But I just think it’s why understanding real history, the dynamic, conflict-shaped history of this country, is so crucial. And if it weren’t crucial, they wouldn’t be trying to stop us from learning it.

AB: Exactly. That’s why there’s been so many efforts to try to prevent an honest teaching of history, because the more you understand the complexity of American history, and the fact that a lot of bad things happened that we still haven’t really done that much about, you understand that, of course, they don’t want to pass policies as a result of things that occurred; so they just want to make it like these things never occurred at all. And the fact is, things like the three-fifths compromise, Jim Crow, slavery, they happened whether we like it or not.

And the reason why they’re trying to prevent these things from being taught is because they’re trying to protect white power at all costs. And they have a whole agenda designed to weaponize and promote white power. And that ideology of white supremacy is premised on either just ignoring history, or distorting it to such a point that white supremacy is the only solution.

And that’s, in many ways, how we got Jim Crow. And I think there’s a lot of parallels between that and what’s happening today, where there’s stronger calls for racial justice, the country is changing. We’re heading towards the majority-minority future. And those people that don’t like it, they’re trying to build a wall—in some cases, a literal wall—to stop what they view as the coming siege.

JJ: And just finally, I do blame corporate news media for allowing fundamentally anti-democratic ideas, like anti-democracy ideas, to be one of the poles in our conversation about how to work our democracy, this triangulation that makes Trumpism just, “That’s a thing some people think.”

Now, clearly, it is a thing some people think, but a lot of people think it because it’s been made acceptable by what they read in the paper, as it being just part of a grownup conversation about how things should happen. I just wonder what you would look for from journalism at this time.

AB: I think the media have normalized Trumpism in a lot of ways, and I think that the media and Trump have a really abusive relationship, because I think for a lot of the media, they realize that Trump is this grotesque, anti-democratic figure, but they also can’t look away. So they’re just constantly giving him airtime, and he’s the best thing for their ratings. And so I think, for a lot of them, the Biden era was kind of boring, and it was maybe too substantive, and Biden himself wasn’t that interesting or charismatic. And so, on the flip side, Trump is such a reality show that you can’t look away.

But I think sometimes the way they cover it, even if it’s bad things Trump has done, like the criminal trial, they cover it in such a lurid, scandalous way that it kind of makes it feel like they’re covering just any person that would be convicted of doing something bad, as opposed to reminding someone, this guy tried to overturn American democracy. He did the worst possible thing you could do, and he’s just back.

And I don’t blame the media solely for that. I blame the United States governing institutions, that there was no mechanism that worked to disqualify him. I mean, the only actual mechanism would’ve been impeachment, and the Senate was too cowardly, and also skewed, to do it. So I don’t blame the media alone, but I also think, so much of the media coverage has focused on Biden’s age, or various things Trump is doing, in terms of picking a running mate and things like that, and sort of covered this election as if it’s normal, as if it’s a normal election, as opposed to the guy who tried to completely subvert American democracy could be back in.

And I just think that’s something that we haven’t heard nearly enough about. That’s not just the media’s fault, but I think the media play a role in the fact that that’s not at the top of voters’ minds.

JJ: Let me just give you one last opportunity to end on a note of hopefulness, or a forward-looking thinking, because these things are being recognized, and folks are trying to address them at various levels. And just what would you say to somebody who’s like, “All right, well, I’m going to pull up the covers.” How do we move forward here?

AB: What I always say is that if you’re not voting or not participating, someone else is, and they’re getting more power because of it. So I understand that it’s an exhausting time, that, in many ways, people are just kind of done with everything. And I feel that way too sometimes. I mean, that’s a natural response.

But, unfortunately, if people don’t get involved in changing the government, it’s going to create a void, and someone else will. And the reactionary forces are more than willing, and more than prepared, to try to fill that void.

So I would urge people to get involved wherever they feel like they can make a difference. And, again, if you’re overwhelmed by the national level, and you’re overwhelmed by the presidency and you’re sick of hearing about it, sick of talking about it, try to get involved locally.

Like I said, research if there’s a cool ballot initiative. In New York, for example, there’s going to be an initiative to pass a New York version of the Equal Rights Amendment. That’s a really interesting thing that nobody really knows about.

There’s lots of competitive state legislative elections, congressional elections, other elections that matter, where maybe you’re more inspired to get involved if you’re turned off by the presidential race.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2024)

And I also think we saw, based on the switch in the ticket, a lot of people were yearning to get involved in the presidential race, but wanted a different kind of choice. And you saw that when there was a different kind of choice, people responded to that. So I think it’s more just, find a way to get involved. Politics doesn’t have to be your entire life, it’s actually not healthy for it to be your entire life, but it can be part of your life, and I think that that way you can make a difference, and not allow a more reactionary movement to fill that void.

JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with journalist Ari Berman from Mother Jones. The book is called Minority Rule. It’s out now from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Thank you so much, Ari Berman, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

AB: Thanks so much, Janine, I appreciate it.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2024)

This week on CounterSpin: Donald Trump said, on Fox & Friends in 2020, that if voting access were expanded, meaning easing of barriers to voting for disabled people, poor people, rural people, working people…. If voting were made easier, Trump said, “You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Why wouldn’t news media label that stance anti-democratic, and shelve any so-called good-faith partisan debate? And call for the multiracial democracy we need? And illuminate the history that shows why we aren’t there yet?

Ari Berman has been tracking voter rights, and why “one person, one vote” is not the thing to memorize as a definition of US democracy, for many years now. He’s national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, and his new book is called Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It. We’ll talk about that with him today.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

We speak with journalist and author Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule, which details how the United States has since its founding privileged the rights and interests of a small elite over the needs of the majority. He outlines how, for the first time in U.S. history, five of six conservative justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote, and confirmed by senators elected by a minority of Americans. Berman says the court’s makeup is the product of two skewed institutions: how we elect our presidents through the Electoral College and how we appoint U.S. senators — both of which are flawed because they violate one person, one vote, violating the principle of equal representation, and empowering white, rural, conservative and wealthy citizens at the expense of more diverse and progressive parts of the country. “Our institutions are so antiquated, so undemocratic, that we need fundamental reform to change them, to democratize them,” Berman says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“Turkish authorities should stop turning a blind eye to reporter İsmail Arı’s criminal complaints about the online threats he is facing and take them seriously,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Arı has legitimate worries for his safety and authorities are legally obliged to protect him, and any other members of the media who are in danger, in every way they can.”

Arı, a reporter for the leftist daily BirGün, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on September 19 that he had been receiving death threats but prosecutors had not investigated his complaints.

Arı told CPJ that he had been targeted with online insults and threats since he started reporting on the activities of an Islamist group in southern Turkey after the area was struck by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on February 6, killing tens of thousands.

Arı told CPJ that most of the threats came through X and Instagram. Some messages came from named accounts and some mentioned the Islamist group in their messages, Arı said.

Arı said Istanbul prosecutors had rejected at least 10 complaints that he and his lawyer had filed since February for “insults and threats.” In their rejections, authorities simply said that there were no grounds for investigating insults, and they did not mention the threats, he said.

“They purposefully do not recognize the threat,” he said.

CPJ emailed the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office for comment but did not receive a reply.

Since 1992, 31 journalists and media workers have been killed in Turkey, according to CPJ data.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Turkish authorities must immediately release the defendants and drop the terrorism charges, which are solely based on their journalistic work,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities should also take necessary steps to ensure that pretrial arrest cannot be weaponized against the members of the press.”

The journalists and media worker were charged with membership in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). They are employed by local ARİ, PEL, and PİYA production companies and produce Kurdish-focused shows and content, which the indictment alleged were propaganda for PKK. The government has designated PKK as a terrorist organization. 

The defendants — 15 of whom have been under pretrial arrest for 13 months — have denied the charges and, if convicted, face up to 15 years imprisonment under Turkey’s anti-terrorism laws. 

Turkey was the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with 40 behind bars at the time of CPJ’s December 1, 2022, prison census. Of those, more than half were Kurdish journalists.

CPJ’s email to the Diyarbakır chief prosecutor’s office did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The post How Many Rappers Must Die So That Ari Melber Might Look Dope appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ishmael Reed.

On Wednesday, April 12, the 4th Court of Serious Crimes in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır charged 17 Kurdish journalists and a media worker with membership in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which the government has designated as a terrorist organization, according to multiple news reports and the 728-page indictment, which CPJ reviewed. They face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty under Turkey’s anti-terrorism laws. 

The defendants are expected back in court on July 11, 2023, and have denied any ties to terrorism during their interrogations last year and their testimonies summarized in the indictment.

Fifteen of the defendants have been in pretrial arrest without charge since June 2022.

“Turkish authorities must immediately release the journalists and the media worker who have been behind bars since June 2022 and stop charging members of the press reporting on Turkey’s Kurdish issue under the country’s terrorism laws,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “Turkey has long been one of the world leading jailers of journalists and this latest crackdown shows authorities’ fear of any semblance of independent reporting.”

Turkey was the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with 40 behind bars at the time of CPJ’s December 1, 2022, prison census. Of those, more than half were Kurdish journalists.

According to the indictment, the journalists and media worker are employed by local ARİ, PEL, and PİYA production companies and produce Kurdish-focused shows on news, culture, arts, political debates, and documentaries. 

The indictment alleges that the content produced was propaganda for the PKK and its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan. The content is broadcast by European-based, pro-Kurdish broadcasters Sterk TV and Medya TV.

The 14 journalists and media worker who have been charged and remain in detention are: 

• Abdurrahman Öncü, a camera operator for PEL Production Company
• Aziz Oruç, an editor for pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency and freelance producer
• Elif Üngür, a broadcast reporter for PİYA Production Company
• İbrahim Koyuncu, a freelance camera operator and editor
• Lezgin Akdeniz, a camera operator for ARİ Production Company
• Mazlum Güler, a former camera operator for PİYA and former owner of ARİ
• Mehmet Şahin, a broadcast reporter and commentator for PEL
• Mehmet Ali Ertaş, a news editor for the Kurdish-language weekly Xwebün and a producer at PEL
• Neşe Toprak, a broadcast reporter for ARI
• Ömer Çelik, freelance producer
• Ramazan Geciken, camera operator for PİYA
• Serdar Altan, a broadcast reporter for PEL
• Suat Doğuhan, camera operator and owner of PİYA
• Zeynel Abidin Bulut, a broadcast reporter for PEL and an editor for Xwebün
• Remziye Temel, an accountant for ARİ

The following journalists were also indicted but remain free pending the trial:

• Esmer Tunç, camera operator for PEL
• Kadir Bayram, camera operator for PİYA
• Mehmet Yalçın, camera operator for ARİ

Safiye Alagaş, an editor for the pro-Kurdish news website JINNEWS, was arraigned with the other journalists in June 2022 and remains imprisoned, their lawyer, Resul Tamur, told CPJ via messaging app. She will be prosecuted separately alongside JINNEWS reporter Gülşen Koçuk on charges of terrorist organization membership and terrorism propaganda. 

CPJ’s email to the Diyarbakır chief prosecutor’s office did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

A crucial election in Wisconsin on Tuesday will decide the fate of democracy in the state and have major ramifications for the 2024 presidential election, says reporter Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones. At stake is a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which currently has a 4-3 conservative majority. Although technically nonpartisan, the election is a showdown between Democratic-backed Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz and Republican-backed former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly. Berman says the outcome of the race could determine if abortion remains illegal in Wisconsin, as well as the future of voting laws and redistricting. “Every time the state Supreme Court under conservative control has been asked whether or not they want to expand democracy or constrict democracy, they have fallen on the side of constricting democracy,” says Berman.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.